Positives About Latinos Bring Out Negatives in Some

The caller’s voice bristled with anger and sarcasm. Somehow I had managed to disgust him with a column about the closeness of Latino families and how some, like mine, grow apart under the pressure of assimilation.

“I’m sick and tired of your racist column in El Tiempo de Los Angeles,” said the anonymous reader, mockingly converting this newspaper’s name to Spanish and pronouncing it with pomposity.

The very premise of the family column was racist, he argued. He claimed it was built on stereotypes that he boiled down to this:

“If you assimilate, that’s a bad thing because you become like those terrible, nasty Americans who aren’t close to their families. . . . And then conversely, [you imply] that all Mexican families are close. Well, your own family proves that’s not the case. . . . So you stereotype whites, you stereotype Mexicans. Your racist rantings just don’t measure up to anything more than self-serving.”

At this point, the caller’s message turns ugly. But let’s not look under that rock right away. So far, his reaction could still be considered constructive.

Most readers reacted favorably to that column, which called for preserving togetherness among siblings even after parents pass away. People of different ethnic roots said they were prompted to contact their own brothers and sisters after reading it.

Still, my sarcastic critic is not alone. Never have I been called a racist as often as I have since starting this column last year for The Times on Latino culture and ethnic issues.

Reader reaction on this point is not just random. There’s an ideological underpinning to these accusations, based on a conservative challenge to multiculturalism as racism in reverse.

I’ll get to that too. But first, let’s define our terms. What do we really mean when we call people racists?

The Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, for example, contains a clear and succinct definition of racism: “The belief that some races are inherently superior (physically, intellectually or culturally) to others, and therefore have a right to dominate them.”

Examples, sadly, are all too easy to find. Apartheid in South Africa. Segregation in the United States. The Nazi extermination of Jews. The assertion by some black militants that the white man is the devil.

The question of reverse racism makes the matter much messier. If the oppressed hate their oppressors, is that racism too? Not necessarily, by this definition, since victims would have to believe in the inferiority of their victimizers. Not all hate based on race is racist hate.

Nowadays, even once-legitimate remedies to racism are considered racist themselves. That includes affirmative action, although nobody ever advocated minority preferences because whites are inferior.

It’s gotten to the point that some critics dismiss as racist any assertion of racial pride or cultural identity. Diversity and multiculturalism are “the new racism,” argues Michael S. Berliner of the Ayn Rand Institute in Marina del Rey, a think tank that promotes capitalism and individual rights.

“ ‘Ethnic diversity’ is merely racism in a politically correct disguise,” write Berliner and associate Gary Hull. “Advocates of ‘diversity’ are true racists in the basic meaning of that term: They see the world through colored lenses, colored by race and gender.”

OK. Guilty as charged, if advocating diversity makes me a racist. And indeed, I view the world through the prism of race and gender. I’m a man and a Mexican raised in the United States. I’d have to be in a coma to avoid being shaped by those realities.

My sarcastic caller, on the other hand, appeared to advocate a colorblind philosophy that rejects the racial generalizations he accused me of. Yet he concluded with an ugly--and clearly racist-- generalization of his own, smearing Latino students as “bottom-feeders” because they score low on standardized tests. He blamed not poverty and language but “laziness and lack of support from the family--I guess those are Mexican values as well. You racist!”

That type of prejudice has compelled me to use my column to accentuate the positive about Latinos--respect for elders, family unity, good manners, bilingualism, the open display of romance. And I’ve argued that the United States should benefit from the cultural strengths of its immigrants, rather than force them to conform.

I don’t mean to imply that immigrants can’t also benefit from America’s strengths--its fairness, orderliness, and openness to dialogue and debate. But those attributes will prove empty if we twist the real meaning of words like “racism” to suit political purposes.

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Agustin Gurza’s column appears Tuesday. Readers can reach Gurza at (714) 966-7712 or agustin.gurza@latimes.com