Watch this space.

LET'S THROW ANOTHER LOG ON THE IMMIGRATION FIRE

The US Census Bureau recently made the announcement that due to the increasing number of Hispanics, the country was approaching a time that would find the population consisting of more than half minorities. That got me thinking. I was under the impression that the designation minority (an unfortunate choice of words to start with) was applied to African-Americans in the language of civil rights legislation and programs instituted to redress the wrongs of slavery and Jim Crow. Everyone else is on their own. We aren’t running a Head Start program for the third world. Traditionally, immigrants came to America with their own assistance programs. They’re called bootstraps. You reach down and pull yourself up. How did Hispanics, who have been in this country for more than 500 years, suddenly become a minority? Why are they a minority and not, say, the Cajuns, whose history mirrors that of the Chicanos, only starting in neighboring France, not Spain?

I asked the Census Bureau what it means by minority. They replied:

The U.S. Census Bureau does not use any specific or official definition of "minority." In some general data classifications, which appear on the web, people who reported themselves as any race other than the single-race White, or who reported as Hispanic, were broadly considered as part of an aggregate minority population.

Well now, that’s odd. Why do Hispanics have a separate category? And if they don’t have a specific definition for minority, how do they know Hispanics fit the criteria? And why Hispanics? Did they pick it out of a hat? I tried another tack, went at it from another angle. What, I asked, does the Census Bureau mean by white? They replied:

White refers to people having origins in any of the original peoples of Europe, the Middle East, or North Africa.

OK, I know I’m not dealing with the Geography Bureau, but….

What, I asked next, was it about Hispanics, obviously having origins in one of the prominent peoples of Europe, that excludes them from the white race and makes them a minority? But I fear I was too blunt. While my previous questions were answered promptly, this last one got no response. I asked again. No reply. I’ll answer it myself:

Nothing.

Hispanics are, whether they like it or not, full-fledged members of the white race. Cameron Diaz is more akin to Paris Hilton than she is to Halle Berry. Who is the person of color, Alberto Gonzales or Al Pacino? Neither. They’re both Caucasians. And if past behavior carries any weight, Hispanics are not only in the White Man’s Parade, they could be the standard bearers. Just ask the Aztecs (if you can find any).

Being an immigrant doesn’t afford any special consideration. There are no human beings native to North or South America. We (or our ancestors) all came from somewhere else. Immigration rights? Immigration is a privilege.

Why should this matter? Beyond the basic misrepresentation, there are two very important reasons: It cuts into the resources set aside for African Americans and, perhaps more importantly, it promotes the increasing factionalization of America. It is, to use a very fashionable word, divisive and we should have none of it.

The Way Forward

The scene: Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld hunkered down in the bowels of the White House, in a place where no one else will hear…

“Well,” Cheney says, “they’re not buying it. We gotta drop it. Don’t mention it again.”

“I know, I know,” Bush grudgingly agrees. “I just really liked ‘stay the course’. You know, like John Paul Jones.” He throws one hand behind his back and leans forward, the other hand holding an imaginary spyglass. “Damn the torpedoes! Stay the course!”

“That wasn’t John Paul Jones,” Rumsfeld says. “They didn’t have torpedoes in the Revolutionary War.”

“Whatever,” Bush says. “Anyway, now what are we going to say?”

“Well,” says Cheney, “I know what we can’t say. We can’t say anything remotely like ‘escalation’ or ‘increase the number of troops.’ ‘The way forward’ was good, Rummy.”

“Yeah, well there’s more where that came from,” Rumsfeld snaps his fingers like a crapshooter. “And don’t call me Rummy.” He turns to give the Vice President a dirty look before continuing. “How about this: augmentation, not escalation.” He grins at the Preside and raises his eyebrows, not unlike Groucho Marx.

“I like it,” says Bush.

“When I think of augmentation,” offers Cheney, “I think of breast augmentation.”

“That’s the beauty of it. Tits. Who doesn’t like tits?”

“I like tits,” Bush chimes in.

“Now, dig this, baby,” and the former Shock and Awe shitkicker crouches and draws up his hand, pointing it like a pistol at Dick Cheney’s head, “troop surge."

“What about the benchmarks,” Bush asks. “What are the benchmarks? Last night Laura told me I wouldn’t know a benchmark from a broomstick. What exactly is a benchmark?”

“Look it up,” Rumsfeld says.

“That’s what Laura said. Is there a dictionary down here?”

“Dictionary?” Rumsfeld hisses. “We don’t need no stinking dictionary.”

“Words mean whatever the hell we say they mean,” Cheney says.

“Thank you, Humpty-Dumpty,” Rumsfeld says.

Cheney returns the dirty look.

You may be an anglophile if…

There always has been and always will be Americans who think Britons speak and write a higher class of English.This, of course, is nonsense. American English is the transplanted language of Shakespeare. Yet there are those who think colour is more elegant and the theatre shows more class. This was always amusing. A rack of sunglasses in the drugstore was the family eye care centre.

Lately, however, Briticisms are cropping up in speech and this is another matter altogether. It is somehow harder to ignore Richard Roeper on At the Movies describe a film character as "spot on", or newsreader Anna Davlantes on Chicago’s WMAQ-TV report that the injured from a car crash were "taken to hospital". Someone’s been watching too much BBC America. Can a bloody wanker be far behind?

The Official Language of Illinois

On January 10, 1923, the Hon. Frank Ryan, a member of the Illinois State Senate from Chicago, introduced a bill establishing "...the American Language as the official language of the state of Illinois." On June 19 Chapter 127, Section 178 of the Acts of 1923 became law.