A U.S. President of Mexican Descent? Never…
Posted January 15th, 2008by Ilan Stavans
Bill Richardson is out. Will anyone ever remember him?
Only three of the presidential candidates for the Democratic Party primaries seem lively and provocative: Barak Obama, Hilary Clinton, and John Edwards. The intense, treacherous competition between Obama and Clinton is inspiring, not only because of their high intellectual caliber (one went to Wellesley as an undergraduate, then to Yale Law; the other went to Columbia as an undergraduate, then to Harvard Law) and fierce ambitious drive, but also because both candidates represent historical benchmarks: Blacks and women, long marginal players in the nation’s power house, are finally not only in the spotlight but driving forces of the system as a whole.
John Edwards, a distant third, is a populist and a safe bet for traditional white voters. (When will he pull out too?)
A fourth candidate, Bill Richardson, was always an enigma. What state was he governor from? Arizona? Colorado?
Richardson, whose mother is Mexican, represented the Latino constituency. Or did he? His problem, of course, was that he never came close to touching a chord. He had trouble making his message come across. But did he have a message? In spite of his vision, enormous experience and good heart, Richards, truth must be told, was never meant to be more than a footnote in the 2008 presidential race: a Latino option—this at a time when, I’m afraid, Latinos are actually an anti-option.
The climate of fear we live in regularly points to Latinos as menacing creatures, aliens from another planet that have as their sole mission to ruin America. Sounds like a Sci-Fi plot? It surely does whenever I hear a comment on a radio show by an anti-immigration pundit. Remember Night of the Living Dead? Switch the zombies for Mexicans and you’ll have a realistic picture.
Why trust one of them—so says Lou Dobbs—when Latinos take away our jobs, refuse to pay taxes, kill innocent civilians in major urban centers, sell drugs to our teenage kids, drop out and thus bankrupt our educational system, and destroy our gorgeous English language? Not only did Richardson do well in pulling out of the presidential race; actually, he should pack his suitcases and go home.
I’m being sarcastic but I’m not making things up. It will take decades, if not more, to overcome the stupidity currently afflicting the United States. The land of equality justice, whose struggle during Civil Rights era awakened the population to the unfairness of the past, is again deep in xenophobia.
Will Obama and Clinton ever speak about this ugliness? I doubt it. It’s too politically dangerous…
Latinos have been at the forefront of American history. But that role is seldom acknowledged. It’s far easier to think in stereotypes. Ever heard of Junípero Serra? Mario Molina? Julia Alvarez? How about Cesar Chavez?
Richardson would never have done anything about the atmosphere either. A friend of mine, after hearing the candidate had pulled out of the race, couldn’t even remember Richardson’s first name. Was it Dick? Maybe Brian? No, it was Bill, I said. “But Bill isn’t a Latino name, is it?”
Ay, caramba!
In any case, Richardson’s sheer presence in the early stages of the Democratic primaries begs the question: How much longer will it take for a candidate of Latino ancestry to become a U.S. president? Only when we’re ready to get to know him on a first-name basis: Juan or Maria, just like Barak and Hilary.
We already appear to be moving beyond the black-and-white dichotomy. When will we be ready to consider brown as an option, real and metaphorical?
