Quinnipiac: African-American and Jewish Support for Sotomayor Higher Than Hispanic Support
Judge Sonia Sotomayor with President Obama and Vice President Biden in the White House East Room on May 26 (Pete Souza/White House)
What did I say?
From my post “Supreme Court ‘Hispanic Panic’” of last week:
“If Judge Sotomayor does prevail, it will likely be because of her outstanding legal resume, and the current control of the Senate by Democrats. However, I think that the potential “Hispanic backlash” concern for Republicans is highly overrated. Sotomayor is Puerto Rican.”
The point that I attempted to make was that the term “Hispanic” tends to be too broad a description, where it can relied upon to be indicative of any ethnic/racial behavioral patterns. There are many cultural, nationality and racial distinctions between Americans of Puerto Rican, Dominican, Mexican, Cuban, Colombian (etc.) descent.
Witness this week’s Qunnipiac University poll, which asked voters their opinion about the nomination of Sotomayor to the United States Supreme Court. The news is generally good for Sotomayor and the Obama administration: according to the poll, the nation’s voters approve of the nomination 55-25 percent.
African-American voters show the strongest support for the nomination, at 85-2 percent; the second level of highest support comes from those who identify as Jewish, at 66-18 percent; then comes Hispanic support at 58-24 percent. White evangelical Christians are the only group that opposes the nomination, 41 percent against and 35 percent in favor.
Since I am 1/4 Puerto Rican, and 1/4 Cuban in heritage, it was actually the “wise Latino” embedded in me that figured all of this out.
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Having lived in Miami for 20 years I have a beauty for you, Bill: How do “Hispanics” feel about normalization of relations with Cuban?
I think the only monolithic voting block in the country based on ethnicity is Afro-American. If so, does that make them more powerful or less powerful?
Exactly, Bob. Whether its normalizing relations with Cuba, statehood for Puerto Rico, or immigration reform for Mexicans and Central Americans, how do we limit these issues into a generic “Hispanic” or “Latino” framework?
But where are we going with this, Bill? Should such designations as Latino, Hispanic, Afro-American, Asian-American (what a useless term that is since Asia goes from Israel to Indonesia, India to Siberia) be done away with? Some of them? All of them?
As for what we should call each other. I don’t think that’s all too difficult to figure out. One suggestion is to use “Spanish-speaking peoples” when talking about all “Hispanics” — BTW the words “hispanic” and “latino/a” sound European anyway and therefore are highly suspicious IMO, and that they all speak some variation of Spanish, well the European in that is self-evident. Another suggestion is doing what Europeans have been doing for a coupla hundred years: we could use actual and ever more specific geographic places of origin when that is somehow significant to a conversation, such as Honduran American or Brazilian American.
And that Puerto Rican appointees to the Supreme Court are not supported by other Spanish-speaking peoples in toto, just means that they are like all other immigrant-citizens of this country — that is, for example, being European doesn’t mean that all Norwegian Americans should be expected to agree with all Italian Americans just because their ancestors came here from the same continent. Always good to be aware of and sensitive to such things, so I thank you for pointing all that out. (About time someone did.)
Oops. Brazilians don’t speak Spanish, do they? Isn’t the major language there Portugese? I’ve got a lot to learn …
In response to another comment. See in context »Rockyinlaw said:
“As for what we should call each other. I don’t think that’s all too difficult to figure out. One suggestion is to use “Spanish-speaking peoples” when talking about all “Hispanics”…
I say:
But how does one designate second and third generation “Hispanics” who don’t speak Spanish? Utilizing language as the basis for group designation, If your name is Lopez, Cepeda or Bonilla, and you don’t speak a lick of Spanish, what then makes you “Hispanic”?
In response to another comment. See in context »rockyinlaw said:
“Another suggestion is doing what Europeans have been doing for a coupla hundred years: we could use actual and ever more specific geographic places of origin when that is somehow significant to a conversation, such as Honduran American or Brazilian American…”
I say:
This makes more sense to me.
In response to another comment. See in context »I think the underlying idea is/was to identify people who were subjected to discrimination. In some ways that idea has become, in and of itself, discriminatory. It’s racial profiling, or an attempt at it.
Let me raise a terrible paradox: Hispano-Americans (and Afro-Americans) suffer the most from the wage suppression that results from our high levels of immigration, most of which comes from Mexico and Central America. Yet, being “hermanos,” they are assumed to support our open borders policy and politicians actively support high levels of immigration in hopes of garnering the “Latino” vote. Racial profiling.
In fact, in Arizona, low-wage Hispanics vote about 70-30 in favor of immigration-reductionist policies. We should be talking about the working poor and the crumbling middle class; not about ethnicities rather than sound policies.
Oh, my liberal brethren! So irrelevant! Basta ya!
Bob said:
“But where are we going with this, Bill? Should such designations as Latino, Hispanic, Afro-American, Asian-American (what a useless term that is since Asia goes from Israel to Indonesia, India to Siberia) be done away with? Some of them? All of them?”
I say:
I really don’t know. But isn’t that the beauty of “post-racial” America? The excitement of the unknown.
You do know, Bill. You’re willing to say that we’ve moved into the the age a “post-racial” America. It is perhaps the greatest achievement of any society yet to exist. Let’s not let politicians continue to market racial profiling.
In response to another comment. See in context »Terminology, designations, classifications: it’s sensitive stuff…for some. Where I teach Spanish, our up-to-date second-year textbook has a chapter on “estereotipos”, clearly designed to tell US students that the way they stereotype hispanics/latinos is wrong. Problem: my students don’t stereotype anyone with regard to race, ethnic origen, gender, sexual identity etc. It’s not part of their makeup. Generation W (W= “Whatever”) doesn’t think that way. They’re amused, if not bemused, that the textbook authors believe they need to be indocrinated, reeducated. They’re well past all that.
Not that their rapidly-aging professor is. This same textbook–in the chapter on stereotypes–freely uses the term “anglo” (as in “anglosajon”) to refer to all white northamericans, a terminology common to the Spanish-speaking world. I am not amused. I use it as a teaching moment and tell them, sorry, that’s a stereotype too, that my Irish grandmother and my German grandmother would be rolling over in their graves if they knew I was now an “anglo”.