Identity Politics

Why are all the Latino commentators in CNN Republicans, Mexican looking and ... ahem ... botoxed?

Ms Unhinged Malkin is using data of the white supremacist organization NumbersUSA, to prove that Latinos who voted for Hillary Clinton were "corruptly" naturalized under her husband's administration.

Is that really so? How can she be so certain that all of those who voted for Clinton are naturalized immigrants as opposed to old American Latino families with no links to their countries of origin?

This is the untold story of Super Tuesday. For all the talk from Democrats and Republicans about whether immigration is or is not a wedge issue in 2008, the fact of the matter is nobody is exit polling and on the look out for recently naturalized citizen voters.

More to the point for pundits who are scrambling to feign to know all things latino, nobody is going out of their way to define demographically what "Latino voter" means.

• Is a Latino a recent immigrant?
• Is a Latino a native Northern Mexican who never immigrated to the US?
• Is it Nuyoricans only or does it include also Puerto Ricans born in the island?
• When confusing Hispanic and Latino, are we also including people born in Spain and Portugal but naturalized in the United States?
• And how many generations does it take before you loose the identity politics moniker and become a "full American"?
• Too many people are tossing around the "Latinos only vote for white Democrats or the Clintons" without qualifying the term Latino or Hispanic and that's a problem.

Hillary reemploys "The Cry" on the eve on a hotly contested primary election.

Yep, it's official. Hillary Clinton is running to be Crybaby-in-Chief. According to the Tribune Co.'s politics blog, the Swamp, Clinton teared up after a heartfelt introduction by a former colleague at the Yale Child Study Center in New Haven, where she worked in college. The emotional speech led "Clinton's eyes to fill with tears, which she wiped out of her left eye," reads the report (so clinical). "Well, I said I would not tear up; already we're not exactly on the path," Clinton said immediately after. AHEM. Now, to be fair to Clinton, who after all is human no matter what people say, hearing a tearful tribute to you from a former mentor is exactly the kind of thing that would choke up nearly anybody. But it won't be lost on the press that she happened to cry just on the eve of an important primary vote, and that she happened to do so in a state where she has been losing her edge.

The blogosphere explodes.

i’m a free woman. and being free means you get to think for yourself, and you get to decide for yourself what to do. so i say i am not a traitor. no, i’m not a traitor. i’m just following my own truth, and that truth has led me to barack obama.

[...]

don't play me small. i am not voting for barack obama because he's black. i am voting for barack obama because he's brilliant.

OH SNAP!

When it comes to smackdowns, Oprah is the queen.

Via Baratunde.

Black Angelina

This ad for A Mighty Heart has been cycling through our site and just have to comment on it.

I sincerely still do not what to make of Angelina Jolie playing a black (albeit light-skinned) woman.

Yeah, sure, Marianne Pearl is her BFF but still, the former struggling actress in me just goes, Damn!

I can't help but see this as yet another example of how, not just latina neither just black, but black latina actresses are rendered invisible by the Hollywood crowd.

UPDATE: Keith Ellison is also the first ImpeachPAC candidate to win a Congressional Election. Congratulations!

Massachussets elects its first African American governor and first woman Attorney General.

Now comes word Keith Ellison is the first American Muslim to be elected to the House of Representatives :

A significant community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis cast their first votes for him in the crowded September primary. Ellison also was the surprise choice of party regulars.

While Muslim Americans make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population and have largely been a non-factor in terms of political power, get-out-the-vote efforts in several Muslim communities could indicate they may become an emerging force.

Roughly 2 million Muslims are registered U.S. voters, and their ranks increased by tens of thousands in the weeks prior to Tuesday’s mid-term elections, Muslim groups have said.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Islamic militants, Muslim Americans have become sensitized to what many feel is an erosion of their civil rights. U.S. foreign policy that targets Muslim countries also has generated a sense of urgency, experts said.

Massachussets elects its first African American governor and first woman Attorney General.

Now comes word Keith Ellison is the first American Muslim to be elected to the House of Representatives :

A significant community of Somali immigrants in Minneapolis cast their first votes for him in the crowded September primary. Ellison also was the surprise choice of party regulars.

While Muslim Americans make up less than 3 percent of the U.S. population and have largely been a non-factor in terms of political power, get-out-the-vote efforts in several Muslim communities could indicate they may become an emerging force.

Roughly 2 million Muslims are registered U.S. voters, and their ranks increased by tens of thousands in the weeks prior to Tuesday’s mid-term elections, Muslim groups have said.

Since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks by Islamic militants, Muslim Americans have become sensitized to what many feel is an erosion of their civil rights. U.S. foreign policy that targets Muslim countries also has generated a sense of urgency, experts said.

“(Americans) treat us differently after Sept. 11. My own father was attacked,” said Ellison supporter Khadra Darsame, a 1995 immigrant from Somalia. “Ellison said everybody matters equally and he told us what he would do ... he will do the right thing.”