Monday, August 27, 2007

A Silent Majority Redux: The Hispanic Vote

By Rosa Martha Villarreal

In a recent New York Times editorial on the resignation of presidential advisor Karl Rove (“Building Coalitions, Forgetting to Rule”), David Frum repeated one of the new and virtually uncontested stereotypes about U.S. Hispanics by alleging that Mr. Rove courted this constituency by advocating for "open immigration."

Exactly who is Mr. Frum referring to? U.S. born and assimilated Hispanics? Foreign-born Hispanics who are resident aliens or illegal aliens? Is Mr. Frum stating facts or merely parroting the slanderous skewing of the so-called "data" on Hispanics?

These careless allegations bring to mind former President Richard Nixon's 1969 speech on the "silent majority." Nixon's assessment was, in sum, that the majority of the voters did not participate in the theater of social and political activism but silently expressed their concerns — and resentments — through the ballot box.

Likewise the U.S. Hispanic voters — the majority of whom are assimilated, usually middle-class, native-born Americans of legal immigrants or citizens — are the postmodern "silent majority" component of this constituency. I know because I am one of them. Like other middle-class Americans, the Hispanic silent majority shuns political activism and theater.

(It is a pretty safe assumption — being that the protests were mobilized from within the undocumented community — that those who marched in the immigration protests of 2006 were undocumented individuals, the American-born children of such persons, and political activists.)

In contrast, when the pollsters carefully document the data, the numbers reveal that the priorities of U.S. Hispanics center on the economy, the war in Iraq, education, national security, taxes, and public safety. Ironically enough, we, too, are concerned about the ramifications of uncontrolled immigration and its effects on the environment, the economy, and social services.

Many of us are registered Democrats, not because of a desire for "open borders," but because we feel the Republican Party doesn’t care for middle-class interests. While it is true that as many as 12-18 million Hispanics in the U.S. are foreign-born, that leaves another 20 million native born, English speaking, cultural Americans. And we are much better educated than the likes of Mr. Frum or Heather MacDonald of City Journal would have one believe.

As Linda Chavez has pointed out in her recent commentary in the Wall Street Journal, most U.S. born Hispanics do graduate from high school. I invite you to look at the K-12, college, and university faculties of California. What you will find is a significant number of the educators are Hispanic (usually Mexican-American). Of my parents' seven children, for example, three of us have a university degree (I personally have two B.A.s and a Masters), and the other four have at least associate degrees.

What conservatives like Mr. Frum construe as a desire for "open borders" is Hispanics' sympathy for the human plight of illegal immigrants. Many of us have immigrant parents (mine came legally in 1954), and we recognize the desire of these newcomers as kindred to our own experience. Like most Americans we recognize, however, that immigrating to the United States or any country for that matter outside of the legal channels is unproductive for the immigrant and creates a dangerous potential for the infiltration of terrorists. So if we Hispanics really don't want "open borders" why do we vote against candidates (usually Republicans) on anti-illegal immigration platforms?

The answer is simple: Because immigration has become the prism by which we discern attitudes towards Hispanics in general. When a mantra of negativity is parroted over and over again, when the social pathologies of poverty are ascribed to the Hispanic "race," it reminds us of the pathetic and discriminatory attitudes of European-Americans towards Spanish-Americans of yesteryear.

Prejudicial attitudes and disparagements that many of us experienced personally. Such as the time when my high school counselor tried to remove me from college prep courses because my "people" just weren't good enough to go to college. (I challenged her to let me stay and changed her mind forever.) Or the time when my parents lost a nice apartment when the owner realized that, although they were "white" they were "Spanish" and she didn't rent to "those people."

The reason there isn't an outcry over this stupid and blatant public bigotry is because we are, as President Nixon said, a "silent majority."

The politicians are not going to win us over by playing mariachi music or running Spanish ads, especially since most Mexican-Americans can't speak or understand Spanish. And they are not going to win us over on a platform tailored strictly around amnesty. Furthermore, insulting our patriotism and disparaging our ethnicity will definitely not get anyone our votes.

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© Rosa Martha Villarreal, 2007.  Rosa Martha Villarreal, a MexiData.info guest columnist, is a member of PEN USA.  She is the author of "The Stillness of Love and Exile" (Tertulia Press 2007); and "Chronicles of Air and Dreams: A Novel of Mexico."  She can be reached via e-mail at rvillarreal@tertuliamagazine.com.