Cashing In on the Ethnic Politics Gravy Train
2nd July 2014
Like the U.S. government, the New York Times isn’t sensitive enough to Latino culture to use terms like “mestizo” or “mulatto.” They can’t even use the words in this article, much less in one about George Zimmerman. But Latin Americans use those terms: for example, here’s an article about mestizo Bolivians protesting that they should be be allowed to check “mestizo” on the Bolivian census. (Leftist President Evo Morales is a member of a specific Amerindian tribe elected on a tribal rights platform, and he wants everybody in Bolivia to officially identify with a specific Amerindian group rather than with the mestizo majority: classic divide and rule politics on Evo’s part.)
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It has always been absurd that only Hispanics get an ethnicity, so now Arab activists are trying to cash in on that absurdity by getting a second official ethnicity for themselves. (Can we get the neocons upset over the Arab ethnic preference push? They still swing some weight.)