Arizona Racists! Profiling! Nazis!

David C. Stolinsky, MD
May 6, 2010

The hostile reaction to the Arizona immigration law was predictable, but that does not make the reaction logical or factual. Critics from President Calderon of Mexico to Cardinal Mahony of Los Angeles to the Los Angeles Times complained bitterly of “racial profiling.”

Of course, Calderon did not compare the new Arizona law to existing Mexican law, which calls for two years in prison for entering illegally, and 10 years for the second offense, as well as deportation − assuming you survived the term in a Mexican prison.

But wait. In order to have “racial profiling,” don’t you need a race?

Recently, former Los Angeles Chief of Police Daryl Gates died. The Los Angeles Times, never Gates’ friend, carried an obituary. It referred to the 1992 Los Angeles riot, which ended Gates’ career. The media, and now even history books, claim that the riot was precipitated when “the all-white jury acquitted the four white police officers of beating black motorist Rodney King.”

Does that sentence seem accurate to you? It shouldn’t. It contains three factual errors:

1.    The jury wasn’t all white. It included two non-whites, a Latino and an Asian. African Americans were called for jury duty, but stated that they had made up their minds.

2.    The jury didn’t acquit the four officers. It acquitted three of them, but hung on the fourth, who would have been tried again on felony charges, had not the federal trial intervened.

3.    The officers were not all white. Three were, but the fourth was named Briseno, pronounced by the media as “Brisenyo,” as though it were written in Spanish as “Briseño.” He had black hair and a thick mustache. He was Latino on his father’s side. He looked Latino. He had a Latino name. He was, in fact, more Latino than the recent President of Mexico, Vicente Fox − who is also part Latino, but does not have a Latino name and is well over six feet tall.

I wrote to the Times’ readers’ representative, a sort of ombudsman. I pointed out these facts. But I was told that there would be no correction. The jury acquitted three of the four, so saying that they were all acquitted was mostly correct. I was also told that Officer Briseno was part “Anglo,” and in any case, Latino or Hispanic is not a race.

I never said it was a race. I wasn’t complaining that Briseno’s race was incorrectly described, but that he was incorrectly described − for the purpose of inflaming community tensions and selling more papers.

Do you see the self-contradiction? When describing Briseno, the Los Angeles Times calls him “white” and insists that Hispanic or Latino is “not a race.” But when condemning the new Arizona law, the Times complains that it will lead to “racial profiling.”

Oh, now I see. Latino is a race when it suits the liberal agenda, but it is not a race when it doesn’t. I think I’ve got it. By George I’ve got it.

This on-again, off-again manner of assigning “race” is nothing new. In fact, it applies to me. Decades ago, when I was a medical student at the University of California School of Medicine in San Francisco, I discovered that the front sheet on patients’ charts contained check-boxes for “race.” As I recall, the “races” listed were Caucasian, Negroid, Mongoloid, American Indian and Semitic.

That is, according to the prestigious University of California, I as a Jew was not “Caucasian” or “white.” To me this was hurtful, but not surprising. Only a few years earlier, one-third of all the Jews on Earth were murdered because Hitler and his “Aryan” fanatics also believed that Jews were not “white.” Like modern liberals, they were obsessed with “race.”

I initiated a complaint through someone else, worried that there would be retaliation. Eventually the offensive checklist was revised. But the story doesn’t end there. Years later, my wife inquired about admission to the Ph.D. psychology program at UCLA.

She was told that, though she was an honors graduate of UCLA, her chances were slim − that is, unless she was a Pacific Islander. They needed one to fill their affirmative-action quota (excuse me, “goal”). I suggested that she inform the admissions officer that she had spent two weeks in Hawaii and still had a straw hat in the closet − perhaps that would count for partial credit.

My wife told me what she thought of my sense of humor and got her Ph.D. elsewhere. But you see my point. When it was good, in fact life-saving, to be “white,” my wife and I would have been considered “non-white.” But now that it is bad to be “white,” we are considered “white.” Talk about bad timing.

It’s the same for former Officer Briseno. When he was acquitted in the Rodney King trial, he was “white,” not Hispanic, and subjected to hatred. But just imagine the media outrage if he had been convicted and the other officers acquitted. The Times and other liberals would have leapt to his defense, and whined about “racial prejudice” on the part of the jurors.

So no, you don’t need a race to have racial profiling − not if you are a liberal. Then you can use the term “race,” which has no scientific validity in the first place, as though it were made of the finest rubber. It is elastic enough to cover anything you favor, yet it snaps back painfully to smack anything you oppose. How convenient.

The new Arizona law mirrors federal law and is infinitely milder than Mexican law. Yet those who favor it are compared to Nazis and communists. The motives of conservatives are, by definition, racist and evil.

Of course, the motives of those who favor unlimited immigration are never questioned. Democrats could not be interested in getting more voters, residents of upscale communities in getting more gardeners, or religious leaders in getting more members. No, they are liberals, so their motives are, by definition, pure and good.

Arizonans couldn’t have genuine concerns.

● They couldn’t be upset about a border so porous that it makes a sieve look solid by comparison.

● They couldn’t be worried about drug-related crime spilling across the border.

● They couldn’t be troubled that Phoenix is now the nation’s kidnapping capital, and in the world is second only to Mexico City.

● They couldn’t be concerned with overcrowded schools, hospitals, welfare offices and jails.

● They couldn’t be anxious about undocumented day-workers crowding around hardware and home-improvement stores.

● They couldn’t be outraged when illegals murder citizens.

● They couldn’t be apprehensive that Middle Eastern terrorists could sneak across with other illegals.

No, Arizonans must be racists.

On the contrary, one gets the impression that Arizonans controlled their frustration so long as they believed that the federal government had merely dropped the ball on immigration. But they felt compelled to act when they came to suspect that the feds were actually carrying the ball toward the other team’s goal.

A nation that fails to control its borders is not a real nation, but merely a geographical area where diverse people speaking a multiplicity of languages mill about, pursuing conflicting goals − until the whole unstable structure collapses into a multicultural, multilingual, multilateral mess.

Eventually we may come to understand that E Pluribus Unum is not compatible with words beginning with “multi.”

http://www.statesymbolsusa.org/IMAGES/US-GreatSeal-Obverse600px.jpg

Dr. Stolinsky writes on political and social issues. Contact: dstol@prodigy.net.

www.stolinsky.com