Friday, September 29th, 2006...3:20 pm
Don’t Call Me Wetback, Redneck (With Appologies to Sly and the Family Stone)
Rep. Russell Pearce called for mass deportations of illegal immigrants the other day. Well, that’s pretty much what we’d expect from Pearce. Bad, but Pearce is sort of like fellow Valley resident Mike Tyson. We watch every new outrage and it just doesn’t suprise us anymore.
The trouble here was that Pearce decided to use a term that many find very offensive: wetback. Yes, he used it in a historical context, since he was quoting the name of the Eisenhower-era program “Operation Wetback.” There were a thousand ways to talk about this program without using the term, he could have even said, “the unfortunately named Operation Wetback.” Nope, he chose to use that term.
By the way, Rusty, Evan Mecham claimed his endorsement of the term “Pickaniny” was in a “historical context” too. I haven’t heard George Allen use this dodge yet. Give him time.
The offensively named Operation Wetback (see, Rusty, that’s the way to handle historical context) caught up naturalized Americans, even people that were born here. This was from a project that wasn’t even of the scale that Pearce is calling for. How do we do this without violating the civil rights of Hispanics? I’m not even sure how we find all of these people, given the reluctance of people in his party to go after employers.
Even his own Republican running mate, Rep. Mark Anderson, voiced misgivings about the idea to the Arizona Republic:
It’s not realistic, once the border is secure, we can come up with some way for people to earn their citizenship
Pearce is a “senior advisor” to Len Munsil, who has been relatively moderate on these issues. How does Munsil feel about Pearce’s endorsement of this plan or for that matter, his use of the term “wetback”?
NB - I wrestled with the title of this post. I figured that, like Pearce, I was going to be “very graphic” to make a point.
1 Comment
July 4th, 2007 at 9:47 am
[…] I have enough friends and relatives (on my Mexican side even) who are angry about illegal immigration to know that concerns about it doesn’t always come from racism. However, when I read the rhetoric and watch the attitudes toward migrants (and heck, immigrants in general) from folks like Pearce, Randy Graf and Chris Simcox, I have to wonder if their trouble is simply over policy. When I question the motives of these folks, it’s because I hear code words like “threat to our culture” and “invasion” that would make Pat Buchanan proud. Heck, they go beyond codewords sometimes. […]
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