A Platform Based on Fear and Hatred

We know they have a constituency, but is it bigger than the voting bloc they are alienating? Can conservative Republicans continue to offend Latinos and not pay a price on Election Day?

Apparently, some of them still think so. They believe there are political gains to be made from appealing to Americans who are easily susceptible to xenophobic fear tactics.

Don't let them tell you they only have a problem with "illegal" immigration. If you keep talking to them, you'll soon find they are the same people who are opposed to bilingual education and favor making English the official language, the same people who keep repeating a long list of misconceptions about Latinos.

They tell one another that Latinos refuse to assimilate, that we want to turn the United States into a Third World country, that we refuse to learn English and that we want to impose the Spanish language on our fellow North Americans.

Nothing could be further from the truth. But their list of Latino myths and stereotypes is practically endless.

And based on their distorted view of the 40 million Hispanic Americans, these fear-mongering politicians and their followers promote what is clearly an anti-Latino platform.

What else would you call Newt Gingrich's outburst over bilingual education last week? The former House Speaker and possible candidate for president went out of his way to appeal to Latino haters.

In a speech before the National Federation of Republican Women, Gingrich equated bilingual education with "the language of living in a ghetto."

In the Hispanic community, these remarks were taken as an attack on the Spanish language and the people who speak Spanish, although it was not surprising coming from a fear-monger like Gingrich, who has been earning the wrath of Latinos for years.

This time, the remarks were offensive in many ways. Certainly, most Spanish-speaking people don't live in a ghetto, and many have benefited tremendously from bilingual education, myself included. But even worse, the phrase shows contempt for both the Spanish language and the poor people who have the misfortune of living in a ghetto.

It was meant to evoke hatred.

"We should replace bilingual education with immersion in English so people learn the common language of the country and they learn the language of prosperity, not the language of living in a ghetto," Gingrich said.

The remark was received with cheers — of hatred.

Some of these hatred-promoting politicians speak in code language, using certain key terms, like "amnesty" or "American culture" or the "fabric of the nation" to communicate with their hawkish constituencies.

They tell you they want to make English the official language, for example, but they don't tell you that their real motive is to turn back the clock on the civil rights Latinos have gained in the last four decades.

They want to deny Latinos the right to vote in the language of their choice.

Most of them hide the motives behind their mean-spirited agenda. But not Gingrich. He spells it all out.

"The government should quit mandating that various documents be printed in any one of 700 languages depending on who randomly shows up" to vote, said Gingrich in a huge distortion of reality. In fact, there are some 230 languages spoken in the United States. And according to federal law, ballots printed in more than one language are only required in districts where more than 5 percent of the voting-age population, or 10,000 voting-age citizens, are non-English speakers.

In response to the uproar caused by his remarks, Gingrich's camp said he did not mean to offend Latinos, and that Gingrich is even learning how to speak Spanish — as if that would erase his race-baiting performance.

Gingrich was clearly practicing the racial politics he has always mastered. He is the kind of politician who follows the anti-Latino platform. He likes to say that bilingualism is "a danger." You wonder how promoting less knowledge of languages is a good thing. But he does. The world can speak English and many more languages, but these conservative extremists think all we need to know is English.

Gingrich likes to promote such ignorance. Last week, the Associated Press cited a 1995 speech in which Gingrich said that bilingualism poses "long-term dangers to the fabric of our nation" and that "allowing bilingualism to continue to grow is very dangerous."

He is the kind of politician who likes to say that American culture is at risk, when he is smart enough to know that American culture has been in transition since before the birth of the nation, constantly enriched by the flow of immigrants.

Those are immigrants who, by the way, have been coming here since the Spanish came in the 16th century and the British came in the 17th century.

To find out more about Miguel Perez, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate Web page at www.creators.com.

COPYRIGHT 2007 CREATORS SYNDICATE INC.