Part 2

Last week, I focused on the latest statistics, trends, and calamities regarding Latinos. This was an obvious topic. After all, just check out the name of this website. 

But now we will continue this series by focusing on our ethnic minority brethren, African Americans. Here’s some positive news about Black Americans that you may have missed:

The wage gap between Black and White workers has shrunk over the past five years. It is “still enormous,” according to economists, but the discrepancy has undergone “a pretty meaningful reversal.”

Hey, that’s good, right? Well, I’m glad you’re happy with that little nugget of mildly upbeat news.

Because everything else kind of sucks for Black people.

I’m not just talking about systemic racism (which is, you know, a real thing). Nor am I talking about the perennially bleak stats that show how poorly Black Americans are doing. Hey, I’m not even talking about the overt racism that the Trump years provoked and that still festers over American life.

All that horrible shit is a given.

I’m talking about confirmation that “Black homeowners are having to ‘whitewash’ their homes or conceal their race to get a higher appraisal.”

I’m referring to the fact that “people of color in the US face heightened risks of harm from climate-induced disasters,” and that “Black people are 40% more likely … to live in areas with the highest projected increases in mortality rates due to changes in extreme temperatures.”

There is also the news that Black neighborhoods are increasingly becoming surveillance states (I mean, even more than the surveillance state that most of us live in). And don’t forget that the U.S. maternal mortality has “more than doubled since 1999, and most deaths were among Black women.”

Finally, as if trigger-happy cops and angry Karens aren’t enough to make Black people fear for their lives, many studies indicate that those “stand your ground” laws — which conservatives absolutely love — are linked to “rising deaths and racist violence.”

OK, this is getting pretty grim. Surely, the protests of 2020 and the societal changes that arose from that are poised to have an impact soon, right?

Well, to the surprise of pretty much no one, America’s enthusiasm to address racial injustice, while still higher than it was a couple of decades ago, has cooled recently.

For example, many diversity, equity and inclusion leaders who were “hired in waves to help companies achieve an ethnically balanced workforce after George Floyd’s murder in 2020, are being phased out, leaving experts in the field concerned that corporations’ talk of affecting change was just empty words.”

I know we’re all shocked that corporations are even capable of empty words. I mean, they just seem so sincere and concerned with our well-being otherwise.

Schools are not faring much better. We are all too aware of Florida’s efforts to ensure that racism is never discussed, but perhaps you didn’t know that nationwide, White Americans “are just as likely to favor as to oppose a ban on teaching Advanced Placement courses in African American studies in public schools.” In other words, White people are divided over whether schoolkids should even hear the words “Jim Crow.”

So it appears that we have to put our faith in technology to improve the situation. Hey, what about artificial intelligence? 

Unfortunately, researchers believe that “AI has embedded our cultural biases and threatens to perpetuate discriminatory human behavior.”

So once again, this is all very bleak. It apparently sucks to be either Latino or Black.

But just wait, because in my next post, I will explain how being White in America isn’t so great either. 

Yeah, that’s a cliffhanger.

Good News, Bad News

It’s time for our semi-annual look at the state of Latinos in America. Actually, this is not a regular feature, because I don’t write regular features. But it’s either this or try to catch up on the latest Trump travesty, attempt to decipher once again what Republicans mean by “woke,” or analyze the latest celebrity breakup.

Trust me, this is a much better option. 

So what news?

First, my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will now offer its first bachelor’s degree dedicated solely to Chicano and Latino studies. This means that “Hispanic students will be able to get a degree in the study of their collective history and culture.”

Yes, it’s about time, and good news from my home state. When I went to UW-Madison, I was one of about 200 Latino students on a campus of 40,000. This degree would have been a great option for me, although I likely would have stuck with my BA in journalism, because otherwise I would not be able to bring you fast-breaking news stories like the following:

“For the first time in modern American history, most white people live in mixed-race neighborhoods” which “marks a tectonic shift from just a generation ago.”

This is not so much good news for Latinos as much as it is good news because of Latinos. You see, diverse neighborhoods, which are beneficial for society, “have expanded from urban cores into suburbs that once were colored by a steady stream of White flight from inner cities.” And the main reason is that “a soaring Hispanic population powered the diversification.”

You’re welcome, America.

Racially mixed neighborhoods “are increasing the most in the suburbs” and introduce “new groups of often left-leaning voters into typically conservative White-dominated enclaves.”

And speaking of voters, and Hispanics, please note that researchers believe that “young Latino voters will be vital to the outcome of the 2024 presidential election.”

That’s also good news, because there is no way that Latinos, so long demonized by the Republican Party, would ever vote GOP.

Um, wait. A recent poll implies that many Hispanic voters are “drifting toward the GOP.”

Apparently, many Latinos, especially older Hispanic men, “preferred the way Trump handled the economy when he was in office to Biden’s performance so far.” I guess they really like that economic collapse and the fact that Trump left office with fewer jobs than when he started, the worst presidential job record since the Great Depression. 

The poll also showed that Latinos often line up with the GOP on “issues ranging from the funding of police departments to the ‘greatness of America’ to the continued use of fossil fuels.” This just goes to show that you can punch people around, blame them for every problem, and even threaten to kick them out of the country, and many of them will say, “I’m going to ignore all that because gay people make me uncomfortable.”

Hell, even Republican Latinos in Congress struggle to keep their GOP colleagues from going full-on xenophobic. So do these old Latino male voters really think the Republican Party is going to give a damn about them?

Sorry, this post started as a compendium of good news but quickly morphed into a list of travesties. So let’s end on a high note.

OK, here’s something:

“While the face of the opioid crisis has predominantly been considered white and rural, overdose deaths among Latinos have skyrocketed in recent years,” nearly tripling over the last decade.

Damn, forget I said anything. Bad news has carried the day.

Better luck next week.

A Quick Pause

OK, here’s the good news:

I have signed a contract with a publishing house, and my next book should be coming out in early 2024.

Here’s the bad news:

I have just a few months to finish the manuscript, which thus far consists of one page and a truly killer sentence to start the second page.

So this is going to take some work.

As such, I may have to take periodic breaks from this site to devote more time to writing my book. This is one of those occasions.

I will be back in a couple of weeks with a full-fledged post (assuming that I can make it further into my manuscript — say, to page 3).

In the meantime, I will rely on my new good friend, artificial intelligence, to dazzle you with random images of bizarre providence, which you can see on my website.

See you soon.

Back to Basics

People are constantly bitching that the world is getting crazier every day.

OK, they may be right.

But the good news is that the world is not getting any more complex. Because at this point in American culture, we all know exactly where we stand.

Is it a surprise that an unrepentant conman, pathological liar, overt bigot, and fledgling dictator would endanger national security, and then complain that he is the one being oppressed? And yet pundits still express shock at this.

Is it an unexpected twist that the followers of this corrupt megalomaniac would enthusiastically support him and dismiss damning evidence that they can see with their own eyes? It should not be, but we have perfectly rational adults who still think this latest grotesquery will somehow convince the Republican Party to abandon their lunatic messiah. I mean, really, who can possibly believe that?

However, perhaps the most straightforward, most uncomplicated aspect of modern politics is the philosophy of the GOP. This principle can be expressed as the following:

Any allegation against a liberal or a Democrat is sufficient to lock ‘em up. There doesn’t need to be a trail, or formal charges, or any evidence at all. Just a deranged conspiracy theory is proof that the liberal should be imprisoned, or even executed.

In contrast, conservatives are allowed to commit whatever crimes they want, including treason and murder. But any attempt to hold them accountable is a witch hunt. It doesn’t matter if there is overwhelming evidence, or formal procedures that were strictly followed. If you try to prosecute a conservative for anything, they have every right to shoot you.

If you don’t believe me, just ask that guy who marches around with a pig’s head on a stick.

He knows the deal.

The Art of Projection

Let’s say you were a member of a political party that increased the national debt to astronomical levels. And you did this not by investing in the country’s development or funding programs that benefitted Americans. You did this by cutting taxes for rich people who already have more money than they will ever need.

I assume that you would then scream that the other political party has a spending problem. Furthermore, even though the other party has cut the debt more than you ever have — not just recently but over the course of decades — you would threaten to destroy the economy unless they cut it more.

Yes, you would be a Republican.

Now, this level of hypocrisy is not just galling. It’s pathological. It’s also dangerous and potentially catastrophic, but that’s merely a bonus for the GOP.

Conservatives are way into projection — that is, accusing others of behavior that they themselves indulge in.

For example, studies have shown that white people with a high degree of racial resentment are more likely to be Trump supporters. Despite the fact that racist attitudes permeate the GOP, a majority of Republicans still insist that white people are the ones being discriminated against. Yes, white conservatives who despise minorities say it’s actually the minorities who are racist.

Or consider that “all the threats and violence against Pride in stores is exactly what evangelicals think is happening with their wholly imagined ‘War on Christmas.’” No, crowds of atheists are not lighting Christmas trees on fire in stores. 

But conservatives are too busy smashing up Pride displays to acknowledge that.

Even more disturbingly, we all know that conservatives are spending virtually all their time trying to outlaw drag queens, under the guise that men who dress like women will inevitably rape children. But to my knowledge, no drag queen story hour ever ended in child abuse. Plenty of church services have ended that way, however, and it seems like another youth pastor is arrested every week for molesting kids. And of course, the Catholic Church — which is perfectly happy to lecture everyone on morality and “normal” sexual behavior — covered up reports of “hundreds of clergy members who were accused of sexual abuse … of almost 2,000 children who were harmed over seven decades.”

And that’s just in the state of Illinois.

Meanwhile, the leader of the party of Law and Order is currently facing his second indictment and was recently found liable for sexual assault and defamation, which is interesting for a guy whose catchphrase was “lock her up.”

So why do conservatives project so much? Why do they act in reprehensible ways, and then shriek that it is everybody else who committed those horrible acts?

We need a political psychologist to decipher the Freudian rationales. But until then, we will simply have to endure their constant lecturing, and repeated threats, and loud shrieks about the vile behavior of others.

And we will have to wonder exactly what they are trying to hide.