It took me a while to understand why some of today’s leading generals in the war to enforce politically correct speech and behavior codes are Latinas. Jewish organizations were the foundation-builders of PC nonsense, and white feminists and black activists have in many cases one-upped the founders with their skill and enthusiasm for banning “offensive” speech and expression.
Gay and lesbians have also had a good run with the ball (wait…is that phrase transphobic?).
But growing up in L.A. in the ‘80s I never knew a politically active Mexican, and damned if I wasn’t surrounded by Mexicans. Hell, to this day I still don’t know whether to say “Hispanic,” “Latino,” or (in Edward James Olmos voice) “Chicano.” I was never sufficiently lectured and browbeaten on that issue.
The Joy of Hate: How t...
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So it’s with great interest that I’ve been monitoring the rise of the young Latina PC police. My take on the newfound prominence of Latinas in the field is that they share with Jews the ability to be many victims at once, and, therefore, to have multiple ways in which to be offended. Just as a Jew can find identity through religion, ethnicity, race, or nationality (Israel), Latinas have the female thing, the ethnic thing, the racial thing, and the nationalism thing. Plus, many of them declare not just Latina identity, but Native American too, and that’s a peach of a thing to claim these days (hell, it can even get a white woman elected senator).
All of this came to mind last week when USA Today ran an op-ed by Latina activist Dani Marrero, international news editor of the Suffolk Journal (the undergraduate student newspaper of Suffolk University). The op-ed, titled “4 things not to do while celebrating Cinco de Mayo,” was exactly the type of badgering my Latino schoolmates negligently refused to provide me.
