March 17, 2016
Kunta Kinte
In the case of the Yale lecturer and the two Mizzou officials, the multiple apologies that were offered had no effect. There could be no resolution other than termination.
Whereas the Yale and Mizzou stories received massive national coverage, nobody wants to talk about Juan Meraz. The Meraz controversy was covered by the Springfield News-Leader and local TV affiliates, but not a single national outlet picked it up. The Meraz case disrupts the beloved black-white dynamic that the press loves to foster. There’s simply no way for the media to make this story fit the narrative. And for the Black Lives Matter banshees, the Meraz case represents the ultimate nightmare. It’s like a diagnosis of colorectal cancer; in a flash, you see your own mortality staring straight at you, and you realize you may not have many more tomorrows. To black Americans, the Meraz incident foreshadows the death of Fiddler’s dream of the “black man’s better day.” In a brown future, the coddling and pandering and quaking that blacks have come to expect every time a black person demands reparations for a slight, no matter how small, will grind to a halt. In this revised timeline, the future sees black Americans as not empowered but impotent.
And remember that the Meraz dustup wasn”t a case of low-income blacks and Hispanics fighting over jobs or gang turf”this episode took place in a university office for diversity and multiculturalism, a place where the nonwhites are supposed to “get along,” a place where it’s supposed to be them against the white man. You know…coalitions of rainbows and choruses of “Kumbaya.”
And worst of all, the sumbitch barely got a slap on the wrist! Meraz was afforded an opportunity that no white person in a similar situation would have been allowed”he was permitted to say “sorry,” and that alone closed the matter. And if that wasn”t enough, a petition by black students demanding his firing received only 49 signatures, whereas a petition spearheaded by Hispanic students urging the university to take no action received 2,129. Keep in mind that this didn”t happen in the Southwest. This was Missouri, where only about 3.4% of the population is Hispanic. Missouri is totally one of those states Kunta Kinte might have reasonably assumed would one day be “his.”
Black Americans can only bully and caterwaul their way to victory when their targets are “white non-Hispanics.” Hispanics”regardless of how they categorize themselves racially”are unmoved by BLM guilt-tripping, and unafraid of confrontation. However, “white Hispanics” pose an especially daunting challenge to the black community. Many Hispanics/Latinos come from nations that are racially stratified, with lighter skin being at the top of the pyramid. I doubt I”ve ever been to a more unashamedly racist nation than the Dominican Republic…seriously, that place makes apartheid-era South Africa look like a Benetton ad. And for several years I produced films in L.A. for the “white Hispanic” market, and all I”ll say about that is that black folks are not exactly going to find a lot of work in that corner of the industry (and no one in that market is going to be cowed or influenced by “hashtags of outrage” like #OscarsSoWhite).
What truly makes the future nightmarish for American blacks is the prospect that the white “ruling class” will eventually be displaced by (or will meld with) a new demographic of whites”white Hispanics”who are immune to every trick in the “how to get what you want” handbook of the professional black complainers. For a community that has progressed very little in terms of overall strategy beyond “yell at white people until they kiss the boo-boo, make things better, and reward you with a lollipop,” this is a very bleak future indeed. I am unconvinced that the black community will be able to adapt to it, but I think many can see it coming all the same.
The writing is on the wall, plain as day…en Español.
