Brown is the New Beige

Latino Goes with Everything

A Media Shmedia column

by Scott Patrick Wagner

My friend Polly asked me the other day, "Why are Latinos voting for Hillary Clinton instead of Barack Obama? Why are we hearing they have this loyalty to the Clinton Administration?"

Knowing that I'm half-Latino (yes, I know, the name is not a dead giveaway) is probably why she posed this question to li'l ol' yo. Well — hell if I know, Polly. Unless it's because the Clintons never referred to Latinos as the "little brown ones," like the supremely slack-tongued George W. Bush does. Or perhaps, as my new favorite pop-culture website, Guanabee.com, would suggest, Latinos aren't so much in favor of a Clinton woman (machismo being what it is) as they are trepidatious of a black man (because, as the column-writer explains, the only image of African-Americans that many Latinos know is the Hollywood stereotype of the gangster/drug dealer).

If Latino-ness should make me Barack-shy, then I guess I won't be the spokeshombre for the community; the half that's Latin is outweighed by the half that's Just Plain Fed Up With Business As Usual. For the record, I am totally Obammy-bound (am I allowed to make a pun based on the song "Alabammy-bound" or is that un-PC?). Pundits have been saying that Latinos are going to make the difference in this election. I suppose that doesn't mean the Cubans in Miami, who always vote Republican (because, I guess, anything to the "left" makes them shudder with post-traumatic Castro disorder). Certainly, the California Latinos who voted in the primary did not catch Obama fever ("once you go Barack, you never go back"). (Were either of those last two catchphrases racist? I just don't know.)

Beyond their apparent electoral pull, Latinos do seem to be making a splash across the genres. Yes, there was that Latin-is-cool mini-explosion that happened when Ricky Martin sang about La Vida Loca. That was back in 1999, kids. Since then, things seemed to Anglo-out for a while. Now, all of a sudden, everyone's jumping on the Latino bandwagon. The (very) White Stripes have adopted a new psudonym, Las Rayas Blancas, and re-recorded some of their music in Spanish. Eva Mendes is in rehab. Eva Longoria is in some basketball player. Javier Bardem is a scary almost-Oscar-winner. Naomi Campbell is dating Venezuelan nutball dictator-wannabe Hugo Chavez (maybe). Anderson Cooper even has a Latino boyfriend (his name is Julio — look it up). And Jessica Alba, whose ethnicity could previously have been described as Something, is now PR-loca trying to let us all know that she's Latin, baby. For the record, by "PR," I mean "public relations," not "Puerto Rican," since she isn't. Which brings up another interesting thing about Latinos (listen up, Dubya): they aren't all brown. Latinos come in every shade from Cameron Diaz to Juan Valdez, and about half a million different countries (geography isn't my strong suit). My point is, there's so much diversity in the culture(s), I find it hard to think that all Latinos are lining up in any one direction, let alone that of La Clintona.

I guess it's pretty great that America seems to be mainlining Latinos instead of mainstreaming them; it's always nice when a culture is celebrated for its own flavor instead of being pressured to assimilate. And I wonder if this new round of Viva la Diversidad could actually be a harbinger of more widespread things. If acceptance of cultural un-white-ness spreads far enough into the zeitgeist, then perhaps Obama won't have as long a haul as might otherwise appear. Maybe old white guys (people like, oh, I don't know — Dick Cheney?) will start to get a little of the attitude that all the other sectors have had to tolerate at one time or another. I'm not saying there should be tit for tat, but wouldn't it be fun if — just for a while — old white guys got systematically deprived of education and benefits and safe neighborhoods? And had to go to real prisons instead of the country-club ones? I'm just saying.

My childhood wasn't normal. (Perhaps you already guessed that.) I spent a lot of it in Mexico City, against a backdrop of cultural extremes that had little to do with race. In the States, between all the Latino-Anglo marriages in my family and my chronic obsession with "I Love Lucy" reruns, I thought everybody had one Latin parent. I have never been able to understand the prejudice toward Latinos because I don't perceive "them" as a separate group. I know I'm not winning any David Dukes contest with this sentiment, but I wish everyone in this country had a chunk of "foreign exposure" in their background, to one culture or another. It's hard to be a hater when related through your mater. Or something like that. Vote Obama.