Wednesday, April 5, 2006

Racism Gets a Whitewash

Latino racism and immigration

by Michelle Malkin

Few things make liberals more uncomfortable than being confronted with the racism of politically correct minorities. Two weeks ago, I wrote about Autum Ashante, the precocious 7-year-old black nationalist poet, who said white people are "devils and they should be gone." If this daughter of a Nation of Islam activist father had instead been an Aryan supremacist child of a Klan activist, she'd still be all over the network news and pages of pop culture magazines (as a pair of white nationalist teen pop singers, Lamb and Lynx Gaede, have been since last fall). But with rare exceptions, nobody wanted to touch Autum's spoon-fed hatred with a 10-foot-pole. That would be, you know, "intolerant." We have to "respect diversity."

Well, this weekend, militant racism from another protected minority group was on full display. But you wouldn't know it from press accounts that whitewashed or buried the protesters' virulent anti-American hatred.

An estimated 500,000 to 2 million people, untold numbers of them here illegally, took to the streets of Los Angeles to protest strict immigration enforcement and demand blanket amnesty for border violators, visa overstayers, deportation fugitives, immigration document fraud artists and other lawbreakers. Mexican flags and signs advocating ethnic separatism and supremacy filled the landscape. Demonstrators gleefully defaced posters of President Bush and urged supporters to "Stop the Nazis!" Los Angeles talk show host Tammy Bruce reported that protesters burned American flags and waved placards of the North American continent with America crossed out.

Bet you didn't see that on television.

One of the largest, boldest banners visible from aerial shots of the rally read: "THIS IS STOLEN LAND." Others blared: "CHICANO POWER" and "BROWN IS BEAUTIFUL." (Can you imagine the uproar if someone had come to the rally holding up a sign reading "WHITE IS BEAUTIFUL"?) Thugs with masked faces flashed gang signs on the steps of L.A.'s City Hall. Students walked out of classrooms all across Southern California chanting, "Latinos, stand up!" Young people raised their fists in defiance, clothed in T-shirts bearing radical leftist guerrilla Che Guevara's face and Aztlan emblems.

Aztlan is a long-held notion among Mexico's intellectual elite and political class, which asserts that the American Southwest rightly belongs to Mexico. Advocates believe the reclamation (or reconquista) of Aztlan will occur through sheer demographic force. If the rallies across the country are any indication, reconquista is already complete.

Lest you think these ideas are moldy-oldy 1960s leftovers that no one subscribes to today, listen to Sandra Molina, 16, a junior from L.A.'s Downtown Magnet High School, who complained to the supportive Los Angeles Times: "This is unjust. This land used to belong to us and now they're trying to kick us out."

Nor are these sovereignty-obliterating grievances confined to the wacky West Coast. In Milwaukee, Wis., marchers carried signs that read: "If you think I'm 'illegal' because I'm a Mexican[,] learn the true history because I'm in my HOMELAND."

Open-borders sympathizers in the press strained to look the other way. As Slate writer Mickey Kaus, who attended the L.A. demonstration, noted, the Los Angeles Times buried any mention of the presence of Mexican flags in its initial "propagandistic" report -- and then eliminated any reference to them at all. Cracks Kaus: "I used to write this sort of press-releasey 'news' account when my college paper assigned me to 'cover' anti-war demonstrations that I'd helped organize! . . . The Times' effort is filled with representative quotes from participants, without a note of dissent."

Apologists are quick to argue that Latino supremacists are just a small fringe faction of the pro-illegal immigration movement (never mind that their ranks include former and current Hispanic politicians from L.A. Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to former California Democratic gubernatorial candidate Cruz Bustamante).

But you'll never hear or read such forgiving caveats in the mainstream press's hostile coverage of the pro-immigration enforcement members of the Minutemen Project -- who are universally smeared as racists. For what? For peacefully demanding that our government enforce its laws and secure its borders.

Yes, borders. Last time I checked a map of North America, they still do exist.

Unless we give in and let the bullies and their appeasers whitewash those out of existence, too.

Michelle Malkin is a syndicated columnist and maintains her weblog at michellemalkin.com. She has also authored books such as Unhinged and In Defense of Internment.