Showing posts with label Arizona racism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Arizona racism. Show all posts

Wednesday, April 4, 2012

How do you get rid of conservatives in government? The Hispanic vote

A lot of political attention will be turned toward Arizona in the next few months leading up to the November election, but it’s not because of its paltry number of electoral votes that resulted from Republicans screwing with the primary date.  It’s because of its growing Hispanic voting population that is becoming stronger and more vocal by the day.  It is also due to the country’s fascination and ridicule of the farcical antics of the state’s inept GOP politicians.

To start, the only way Jan Brewer, a Republican, became Arizona’s Governor is her support and signing of the anti-immigration law, SB-1070, and few if any Latinos will forget that.  The author of that bill was state Sen. Russell Pearce, also a Republican, who was the first state senator ever to be recalled.  All this taken into consideration, a new Fox News Latino poll had some interesting results that should scare the hell out of Republicans.

  • President Obama is the overwhelming choice among likely Hispanic voters.  Head to head, the best any of the GOP candidates could do is get 14 percent of their vote.
  • This is a nationwide trend resulting in a rejection of the Republican candidates the more they learn about them.
  • 80 percent of the Hispanics voting for Obama in 2008 would vote for him again in November.

There are five top states where Hispanics represent a sizeable portion of the eligible voting population and they are New Mexico, 42.5%, Texas, 33.7%, California, 27.1%, Arizona, 21.3%, Florida, 19.2%,  There are a number of eligible voters in New Mexico through Florida who are not registered, as follows: 202,650, 2,154,600, 2,026,500, 405,300 and 638,400, respectively.  That’s 5,427,450 potential voters for the progressive side…in just 5 states.

In this same report, Hispanic News evaluates the Latino population in relation to how it might cast its vote.  New Mexico is rated “open/tossup” for the Senate, “very competitive” for President.  Texas, “open/Rep,” no comment for Pres.,  California is considered a Democratic state, Arizona is “open/tossup for Senate,” no comment for Pres., and Florida is “tossup” for Senate and “very competitive” for Pres. 



In other projections, HN says, “By the 2012 election, Latinos will account for over 10% of the citizen adult population - potential voters - in 11 states.  In another 13 states, Latinos account for 5-10% of the citizen adult population. All told, that's 24 states where Latinos have the capacity to influence electoral outcomes…”  There are others with recent significant Hispanic growth.   In Connecticut, Georgia, Penn., Wisconsin and Massachusetts they represent 5% of potential voters.

HN estimates that 21.5 million Latino citizen adults will be eligible to vote in November 2012. That’s up from 19.5 million in 2008, a sizeable increase of almost 10 percent.  I can only speak personally for Arizona, where the anti-immigration rhetoric is much worse than the rest of the country; a fact I believe will have a big effect on the election.  The hate in Arizona shared by white conservatives for illegal immigrants also extends to Barack Obama.

It is too late for the GOP to reverse their tough stand on immigration and this stance has probably already made up the minds of many if not most Hispanics on how they will vote.  Because we live and die on polls, although on occasion they can be completely wrong, it will be interesting to see the first study after Republicans have an official nominee.  If it heavily favors the President, I look for some robust campaigning by the left on immigration reform.

Monday, February 27, 2012

Arizona mock Gov. Jan Brewer takes racism back to pre-1964

It was July 2, 1964, when President Lyndon Johnson signed into law the Civil Rights Act that outlawed major forms of discrimination against African Americans and women, including racial segregation. 


AZ Gov. Jan Brewer

It was bad enough that a troubled, less-than-capable head of state Jan Brewer greeted the President of the United States to Arizona with a finger-wagging in his face in an attempt to dominate him.  That was more than adequate to prompt charges of bigotry against the leader of a state known for its racists and an intolerant conservative legislature that, along with much of the state’s population, also hates Hispanics.

Now Brewer is not the greenest saguaro in the desert but Politico thinks she has ignited a “firestorm” around the potential of race becoming an issue in the 2012 election.  And there is no state better than Arizona to coddle this movement with known racist, bigot and recalled state Senator Russell Pearce and his buddy J.T. Ready, another racist and also a neo-Nazi, to fan the flames.  However, jaundiced Jan didn’t stop with her finger in the face of Barack Obama.

Following the incident and on Fox News and various other media outlets, she offered up several versions of the incident.  She accused Obama of being “thin skinned,” and said that she felt threatened by his attitude.  Harry Shelton, Sr. VP for the NAACP commented: “What were you afraid he would do, steal your purse?”  Although there are those who support her in Arizona, she and other state politicians like her continue to bring unbridled ridicule to the state.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson pointed out that we are celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Civil War but are seeing an awakening of the States’ Rights movement of the 1940s, that fought the federal government because of its opposition to federally mandated racial desegregation.  I grew up during that movement and experienced several Dixiecrat Party political rallies in Tennessee that opposed integration.  The party was formed in 1948 and dissolved in 1948.    

PoliticusUSA says the fact that we have a black President doesn’t indicate any progress toward race equality.  Further, “The racism in America is not limited to hatred of African-Americans, and the past year’s negative rhetoric against immigrants, the poor, and Muslims has been a display of white supremacy that has permeated the general population and many of our politicians.” 

In other words, the feeling of superiority over others knows no bounds when they are different than we are.

PoliticusUSA also said, “Conservatives’ attacks on ACORN, NAACP, and the Southern Poverty Law Center were not for their activism or defense of civil rights, but an attack on African Americans.”  Their concern is rooted in the fact that blacks, Hispanics and other minorities will eventually organize and use their voting power to oust the conservative bigots and make equal rights mean what the Constitution originally intended.

If you want a demonstration of Arizona racism, you must see the following Russell Pearce and J.T. Ready video:



Politico reports, “An AP-Ipsos poll taken just before the 2008 election showed that Obama’s support would have been as much as 6 percentage points higher had he been white.”  Because of the concerns over the economy, this “racial bias” will be played down in 2012.  Although the racial effects were there in 2008, they didn’t decide the election, according to Tammy Frisby, a research fellow at the conservative Hoover Institution.


Getting along

If you must have your specific illustration of racism against Barack Obama, Politico says it is “visceral,” providing the following example: “That was true in 2008 — when a handful of rabid Obama haters sent out emails that included crude caricatures of Obama as a Muslim, a monkey, Buckwheat or worse.

Mary Frances Berry, former chairwoman of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, thinks we should focus on how the President handled the tarmac finger wagging and ignore Jan Brewer’s motives.  Obama characterized the moment as “no big deal” and moved on from there.  Unfortunately, Arizona, and much of the rest of the nation, isn’t able to do the same.

Wednesday, January 18, 2012

Arizona can thank National Football League for Martin Luther King holiday

Russell Pearce, JT Ready
Racism is still rampant in Arizona evidenced by the anti-immigration law SB-1070 passed in 2010 by deposed State Sen. Russell Pearce.  The state finally got rid of the likes of him, surrounded by his buddy J.T. Ready, racist and neo-Nazi from Pearce’s hometown of Mesa, AZ.  Maricopa County Sheriff Joe Arpaio, a Pearce supporter, has his own problems with racial discrimination from his raids on towns in his county for the sole purpose of harassing Hispanics.


Russell Pearce, Sheriff Arpaio

The people of Arizona must agree with this dogma because they elected Arpaio Sheriff in 1992 and he is still in office.  Pearce was elected to the Arizona legislature in 2000 and served there eleven years before he was recalled in November of 2011.  They both come from solid Arizona roots dating back to 1987 when Gov. Evan Mecham rescinded the former Governor Bruce Babbitt’s decision to honor Martin Luther King with an Arizona holiday.

That was almost 25 years ago but the Rev. Warren H. Stewart still remembers the struggle that eventually ended up with a MLK holiday in Arizona.  Stewart, a prominent Phoenix pastor who was the face of the movement then, says the state legislature viewed King as a Black hero but also as an agitator.  In those days African-Americans represented only 3 percent of the population.  But in 1990 voters went to the polls to decide whether or not King should have his holiday.  The proposition failed and Stewart felt he had done all he could.

Below is a must see video of Evan Mecham racism and other stupidity:



But then the football hit the fan.  By now Arizona had a reputation for being a racial battleground.  The state was boycotted by well know musicians and national conventions decided to take their business elsewhere.  However, it was the cancellation by the NFL of the 1993 Super Bowl scheduled to be played in Sun Devil stadium that broke the racists’ backs.  The game was moved to Pasadena, California. 

Rev. Stewart set things in motion again but didn’t like the idea that the change of the state’s attitude was due almost entirely to the loss of the Super Bowl.  Stewart took his dilemma to apartheid activist Leon Howard Sullivan who lived in Scottsdale and who said the Reverend had piqued the consciences of the business community, followed by his admonition to take their money because it was for a good cause. 

Stewart did and ran a campaign resulting in MLK Day being approved by a vote in 1992.  Arizona was the only state that had to put this holiday to a vote after a 1986 decision by President Ronald Reagan naming it as a national holiday.  On the first King Holiday in January of 1993, 19,000 Arizonans celebrated, joined by civil-rights activist Rosa Parks and musician Stevie Wonder.  Phoenix won the Super Bowl for 1996.

Rev. Stewart still believed the King Holiday was only a symbol and much still needed to be done for Arizona to move “from symbol to substance” in the treatment of all races and ethnicities.  Just recently he said that after 20 years this still has not happened.  He mentioned the anti-immigration bill SB-1070 and said the incivility of politics today is turning Martin Luther King’s dream into a nightmare. 

My gut tells me that if Arizona doesn’t wake up soon from this horrible dream and get rid of those in state government that harbor those prejudices, there won’t be enough advertising possible to draw tourists and new business back to the state.

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