The First Non-Latino President
Posted January 27th, 2009by Ilan Stavans
I’m worried about Barack Obama’s Hispanic base—or lack of it.
To explain my worries, let me explain that I’m certainly not the only Latino pleasantly surprised by the support he received from Spanish-speaking people in California, Texas, New Mexico, and even Florida in the concluding stages of the campaign. His astute staff managed to overturn the deeply rooted racism at the heart of the largest minority group in the country. Needless to say, that kind of racism isn’t much of a secret. Watch just a few minutes of a prime-time telenovela on Telemundo and you’ll realize the extent to which Hispanic whites are cool and black and mestizos are not.
And, while on the subject of television images, I doubt I was the only person to notice the absence of folks like me among the millions greeting President Obama at the Washington Mall on Inauguration Day. Yes, I noticed a Brazilian flag. And, I saw J. Lo and Marc Anthony singing (and not bickering) at a late-night ball. But that’s about it. No salsa, no merengue, no bachata—the lineup of performers was visibly un-Latino.
Maybe I’m being facetious now, but I confess that I did not laugh at Rev. Joseph Lowery’s comment that “Brown can stick around. . .” In fact, I found the line offensive. Stay where? The only person packing his suitcase was Bill Richardson, who was forced to return to New Mexico after proving to be a potential casualty in the confirmation hearings. Hispanics come in every shape and form. We become a unit when displaying endless amounts of passion. I’m afraid none of that unifying spirit was on display on Tuesday.
No doubt this a moment to savor: the United States has its first black Jewish president. What I fear we didn’t get is a truly multicultural boss. In fact, listening to political commentators discuss how whites and blacks have come together makes me wonder if, rather than advancing, we haven’t regressed. During the final Bush years it felt as if the nation was growing up—maybe out of resistance to an abusive government—by reaching beyond the false black-white dichotomy. The fact is, we haven’t been a black-and-white country for a long time. The Civil Rights era wasn’t only about the black struggle; it was also about Chicanos, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, and what is known as “others.”
I hope our first non-Latino president ratifies what we already know—that the nation exists in Technicolor.
