This racialist is akin to the union organizer of a past era - but now government money rather than wages, now reparations and entitlements rather than mere patronage are his requisition. He knows where and when to press his demand: now to bully the meek college president; now to be more cautious in the push for quotas and entitlements at the less pleasant arena of farm, construction site or food plant, with tougher pink folk of tattoos and missing teeth.
The chief fear of the race manipulator? That unchecked immigration may cease; that his minions may learn to read and write English with ease; that his brother or sister may marry "the other"; that a Mexican middle class might flourish in private enterprise apart from government service or entitlements; that the Mexican propensity for duty, family and self-sacrifice might yet take hold in the United States and make him obsolete.
Sometimes in the murky world of affirmative action, the activist turns out not really to be Mexican at all, but Chilean, Basque or Spanish! Indeed, we at the university regularly hire those from abroad with Hispanic last names to ensure that we are seen as a "diverse" community. (Part of the genius of the postmodern term "Hispanic" is that it gives quite a lot of cover for well-heeled Europeans and South Americans to receive preferences over native-born Americans.) The racialist may also be the well-meaning but Spanish-illiterate Latino weekend anchorman, who suddenly changes his name from John to Juan and never meets another "r" he won't trill. In the new media patois, local Hispanic politicians and judges in the news become "Hooseee Gonzzaleees," while murderers and rapists who appear on the screen are merely "Joe Gonzales."
The professional Latino means well, but his passion is not put in the service of racial or ethnic harmony, much less the truth. He is a professed tribalist of the first order who does not wish to live within his tribe. He has little desire to help his brethren by promoting the kind of assimilative culture that he simultaneously critiques and wants, and knows is his only salvation if his car, house and job title are any indication. He may make speeches and films about gang violence and teen pregnancy, but he never really tells us why these phenomena are widespread among "his people" or how they can be prevented. It is so much easier to leave cause and effect unacknowledged, so much more lucrative to sprinkle racism and victimization as cheap condiments here and there in his public rounds.
In this context, it is hard not to have grim thoughts about the white, liberal, guilty and frightened college presidents of the past few decades who set up racial satrapies on California campuses. Now safely retired in California coastal or mountain retreats, they have left behind a legacy of absurd intellectual ghettoes whose inhabitants are always angry. March once on the president's office in the 1960s and acquire a Chicano studies professorship; march twice and gain an entire ward, replete with separate theme dorms and private graduation ceremonies. After all, if in their private lives such white men preferred to live only among other affluent white people, why at work wouldn't they approve of separate dorms, departments and graduations for brown people?
Few of the Mexican-American friends I grew up with in my hometown speak fluent Spanish anymore, whether or not they finished college. (Completing eighth grade then provided a far better education than finishing high school does now.) They may not all be titled and degreed, but almost all are informed and can read, write, compute and understand the basic tenets of the culture they have helped to build and maintain - and which they most certainly think is far superior to that of Mexico. Their children know only a few words of Spanish - quite in contrast to the present 65 percent of all foreign-born Hispanics in the United States, who now speak only limited English. Most of my generation has become insurance salesmen, mechanics, contractors, teachers, civil servants, occasionally wealthy businessmen and high government officials - in other words, the present-day "future of California." There are no Mexican flags on their cars, which more likely sport decals like "Proud Parent of a Lincoln School Honor Student" or "Semper Fi" About half of them, it seems to me, are not married to Mexican-Americans.
Most vote as Democrats, but are probably anti-abortion and perhaps even support the death penalty. Some joined and prospered in the Marines; others run the Lions and Kiwanis clubs. They are sensitive to occasional news of prejudice, yet display little affinity for the race-and-ethnicity industry that has taken hold on the CSU campus at nearby Fresno. In their daily lives, they are more worried about gangs and Mexican crime than about white racism. A few seem conscious of race, but only when the father is Anglo, the mother Mexican. This is because affirmative action (whether now legal or not), they believe, is not so affirmative toward a Justin Smith who is half Mexican as to a Justin Martinez or even the suspect Justin Smith-Martinez, although each is Mexican in the same measure.
But perhaps the well-integrated middle-age and middle-class residents of Selma are an exception and belong to an age gone by. For the most part, the children of illegal aliens not only are not learning the skills to compete with native-born Americans; they also in frustration are receptive to the lure of ethnic chauvinism - constantly promoted by their teachers - to treat their wounded pride. In surveys conducted by the Russell Sage Foundation from the mid-1990s, children of immigrants were shown to have doggedly resisted assimilation. Five thousand students were surveyed at 13 years of age and then again at 17 to inquire about their attitudes toward their adopted country. Even after - or perhaps because of - four years of enrollment in American high schools, they were
