"George W. Bush is a racist." Those where the first words I heard about modern American politics when I came here to study back in 2000. How did my friends know? Well, he was the Republican candidate. I wouldn’t want to be associated with someone like that, so I became a Democrat.
That scenario is not uncommon. That is how a large number of Hispanics get their feet wet in American politics. Conservatives are against other races, other countries and the poor, aren’t they? That general view of distrust for those racist southern conservatives is reinforced constantly in the media. Not that they are all racists, but everyone knows about that elusive “racist element” discussed all day on MSNBC and every day in the pages of the New York Times. The same narrative is showcased on Univision and in Hispanic newspapers all over the country.
Ask any Hispanic about their view of the Tea Party. Those unsubstantiated racist accusations worked initially. Why do you think so many millions of liberal dollars go to continue the politics of race? It works.
This phenomenon helps explain what Aaron Blake writes about in his Washington Post column stemming from a new report from Pew Research’s Religion and Public Life Project, which finds that "one-in-four Latinos are former Catholics." The survey found a growing number of Hispanics who identify as evangelical, who are generally more likely to identify as Republican and more engaged in politics. Hispanic evangelicals were 12 percent in 2010 and now 16 percent in 2013.
But Blake writes gleefully that Republicans can’t be encouraged by this because, after all, "even if Hispanics do become evangelicals, they’re still more likely to favor Democrats (48 percent) than Republicans (30 percent)." Blake continues, "Take evangelical Hispanics; 70 percent of them say abortion should be almost completely or mostly illegal and 66 percent oppose gay marriage, but they still align with Democrats by a significant margin, 48-30."
Why is that? Blake’s conclusion is that we just don’t care about those things that much, or in his own words, "Social conservatism isn’t a voting issue."
May I submit to you another hypothesis based on my own experience as a Hispanic? Liberals depend on obfuscation and racial exploitation to maintain their grip on us.
We care deeply about the more than 50 million babies aborted since 1973. It is a voting issue. Why do liberals refuse to engage in a meaningful discussion of when life begins? Remember candidate Obama’s answer that it "is above [his] pay grade"? I still remember the day my father called me and said he had read the president’s biography and, "he is pro-life," he said. Yet he has proven to be the most pro-abortion president in history. His policies assume life begins when a baby is born, just like Cecile Richards actually said when trying to avoid answering the question on America with Jorge Ramos.
Hispanics care deeply about Christians being punished because of their belief in God’s model for marriage. It is a voting issue. Why did President Obama run saying he believed in God’s model for marriage?
Why does the racism issue pop up in every discussion about every topic, as it relates to conservatives? It works to put Hispanics and other minorities in apprehension. Remember the MSNBC tweet about the new Cheerios ad featuring a bi-racial family: "Maybe the rightwing will hate it, but everyone else will go awww: the adorable new #Cheerios ad w/ biracial family"?
The left’s modus operandi is to divide Americans into groups. By race, by religion, by "sexual orientation," whatever; divide and conquer. "We don’t progress," they tell us, "because of 'them,' they’ve rigged the system against you." It is repugnant to me. I did not grow up putting people in boxes against each other. But liberals live by it.
Even the news about this research brings up the themes. Katherine Ritchey of the Pew Research Center writes of the study: "These trends suggest that some religious polarization is taking place among U.S. Latinos." I want to be fair to Miss Ritchey. I don’t know her, and I would not want to question her motives. But I cringe when reading that line. What polarization? I am an evangelical Christian. I am a Southern Baptist. My mother is Lutheran; my father is Catholic. There is no polarization.
I find more and more of my fellow Hispanics waking up to these exploitations of our fears. The media landscape is changing. The left’s monopoly on messaging has broken, and they can’t manipulate every group as they once did. Have you seen all the efforts now to police radio and the Internet? They are desperate. They absolutely hate Fox News, Drudge, and Breitbart, among many others.
This is slowly happening for the Spanish-speaking media as well. Just last month, the Media Research Center (MRC), which has been so instrumental in exposing the leftist media bias under the leadership of Brent Bozell, launched MRC Latino. This new watchdog group will hold Hispanic media to the same standard of objectivity that has given MRC so much success with the mainstream media. Groups like Concerned Women for America (CWA), the nation’s largest public policy women organization, have begun to make resources available in Spanish to help empower the Hispanic community. The new offices for the El Paso chapter of CWA of Texas just opened a few months ago under the leadership of Rosa Cabrera. Rosa is also a radio talk show host who is bringing a conservative voice to a predominantly Hispanic population in the El Paso area.
This is why I believe that, though it will take a while, we will continue to see an increase of Hispanic conservatives who reject the left’s bogus claims and will start raising their united voices in support of what we believe to be true and good. The left should tremble at the thought.
