News/Commentary

‘Proximity to whiteness’?! New narrative brewing in real time as Hispanics move to GOP

October 27, 2022 | | Print Article

There’s a narrative brewing on the left that Hispanics are the new racists, white nationalists, and white supremacists. Why? Because they’re increasingly turning to the right politically. And evidently, the left has little other explanation for this.

Now fast-forward to Wednesday, when Fox News host Laura Ingraham hosted a panel with three Hispanic GOP stars, including Rep. Mayra Flores.

During the panel discussion on Fox News’s “The Ingraham Angle,” the eponymous host played a clip of media figures fretting over the Hispanic community’s racism.

After playing the clip, Ingraham said this to Flores: “This is actually their argument, that because Latinos are beginning to again slowly but steadily shift to the right on some of these common-sense issues, that it must be because of racism.”

Flores responded by explaining that the real reason Hispanics are flocking to the Republican Party has nothing to do with racism.

Listen:

“You see, the Democrat Party has walked away from the Hispanic Community. … My father was a Democrat all his life, and he said they walked away from our values. They are no longer standing with God, in family, and hard work. They stand against everything I was raised with. And that’s the reason why so many people are walking away,” she said.

“Now they’re calling us racist!? Racist for what? For wanting our lives back — the life that we had two years ago? Two years ago we had more money in our pockets. We were able to provide for our kids. Now our family are struggling to pay their rent, groceries, gas. These are the issues that are impacting the American people. These are the issues that are impacting my district. And I’m 100 percent focused on my constituents,” Flores added.

So are, presumably, almost all Hispanic political figures, save for a few rare exceptions like disgraced former Los Angeles City Council president Nury Martinez, a Hispanic Democrat. Earlier this month, someone shared a recording of her and two of her city council colleagues making racist remarks, particularly about black people.

Thanks to the actions of these three people, the media wound up going crazy with a flurry of reports and op-eds about the entire Hispanic community’s alleged “anti-blackness.”

The idea that Martinez’ behavior was a unique anomaly was simply not something they were willing to accept. Indeed, The New York Times penned a whole report about the alleged “racism within the Latino community.”

“Many people [in Latin America] are now of mixed ethnicity, but people with lighter skin have remained at the top of the socioeconomic hierarchy, while those with darker skin, whether Indigenous or Black, often tend to be poorer and to be shut out of elite social and political circles,” the piece reads.

“That unofficial caste system was exported to the United States, which has its own history of racial stratification and tensions. Among Latinos, who are all considered people of color, studies have found that those who are lighter-skinned are more likely to make economic strides than their darker-skinned brethren, like Black Cubans, Indigenous Mexicans and Central Americans,” it continues.

But at least the piece was centered around Martinez’s reprobate behavior, which was an act of actual racism.

The same cannot be said about some recent commentary from MSNBC’s Joy Reid and The Atlantic’s Jemele Hill.

Responding over the weekend to new reports highlighting Republican Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ impressive support among Latinos, both Reid and Hill attributed the support to the Latino community’s “proximity to whiteness.”

Look:

Both were subsequently flooded with criticism.

Look:

Vivek Saxena
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