Beto O'Rourke and "ethnic play acting"

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Beto O'Rourke and "ethnic play acting"

Postby cmsellers » Tue Oct 23, 2018 2:36 am

This National Review article on Elizabeth Warren accused Beto O'Rourke of "ethnic play acting" and compares him and Warren to Rachel Dolezal (I'm surprised the author didn't bring up Krysten Sinema). I don't really want to get into the Warren thing, but this accusation against O'Rourke is one I've seen repeatedly from right-wing commentators.

Now, O'Rourke has never claimed to be Hispanic, as far as I can tell these complaints stem from the nickname "Beto." That nickname stems from the way he grew up in El Paso—it is a nickname his Hispanic classmates gave him. I don't believe that cultural appropriate is or should be a thing, but apparently some Republicans have a definition that would make most SJWs blush, at least when applied to Democrats.

But it also raises an interesting point. Culturally, O'Rourke is more Hispanic than Ted Cruz. O'Rourke spent pretty much his entire life in El Paso, immersed in Tejano culture, Ted Cruz spent his entire life in English-speaking areas and has tried to downplay his Cuban ancestry. And unlike being black or Indian (but like being Cherokee), being Hispanic is an ethnicity, not a race. Ethnicity is often more about culture and geography than about blood, especially in the Americas.

In fact, if O'Rourke had been born on the opposite side of the border to those same parents, he would be Mexican-American and therefore Hispanic, just as with a great many people in Latin America with no roots in the Iberian Peninsula. Now, for O'Rourke to claim to actually be Hispanic would be unorthodox, in questionable taste, and a political landmine. But given his childhood immersion in Tejano culture, I feel that would have a not implausible case were he foolish enough to make it.

I certainly think it is ridiculous to say that by using his childhood nickname he is falsely presenting himself as Hispanic. But what do y'all think?
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Re: Beto O'Rourke and "ethnic play acting"

Postby Absentia » Tue Oct 23, 2018 4:41 pm

The fact that he brought up Rachel Dolezal (in 2018!) is the clue that he's grasping at straws. If that's the best ad hominem they can muster against Beto, maybe he really should run for president.
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Re: Beto O'Rourke and "ethnic play acting"

Postby gisambards » Wed Oct 24, 2018 9:03 pm

The article is just a weak attempt to try and tar a credible candidate with a politician from the same party's stupidity. O'Rourke has never claimed to be Hispanic, and yet (unlike Warren and Native Americans) does also actually have a lot of knowledge of and experience with Hispanic culture, so there's no comparison. Also, as Absentia has already pointed out, the fact they have to reach so far back to find a single other example is also telling.
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Re: Beto O'Rourke and "ethnic play acting"

Postby cmsellers » Wed Oct 24, 2018 11:25 pm

Kyrsten Sinema, the Democratic Senate candidate in Arizona, was listed as Hispanic for several years in the National Association of Latino Elected Official (NALEO) registrar, something which only happens after NALEO calls a politician's office to verify the information. (She also reportedly went to a NALEO Conference on a scholarship for Hispanic officials, but I can't find a mainstream source for the latter claim, so I'm skeptical.)

While Sinema has never claimed to he Hispanic publicly, and the likely explanation is that someone in her office erroneously said she is Hispanic, the far-right media briefly seized on it before focusing on her days as a far-left activist. I suspect the Dolezal was used instead because the author didn't want to use two examples of white Democrats "pretending" to be Hispanic when they had an actual case of a white woman pretending to be black.
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Re: Beto O'Rourke and "ethnic play acting"

Postby Marcuse » Wed Oct 31, 2018 7:03 pm

I don't think the problem really is with Beto claiming he's Hispanic per se. The criticism from the right is likely more to do with painting Beto and Democrats as more interested in appealing to ethnic minorities than they are with...um..."ordinary folks". I'm putting that in quotations because I want to emphasise I don't agree with that, but it seems to be the line. It plays well with the Republican base to claim, especially in a border state, that the Democrats care more about Hispanic people than they do white Texans, and criticising him over the assumed name is one way to do that without just saying he doesn't care about white people.

To an extent, I can see where it's coming from. Politics in the US (particularly but not exclusively) is being segregated along racial lines, with African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics increasingly part of the Democrat sphere. You can see the anxiety on the right about this, which is common to a lot of places actually, that the foreigners will outbreed them. It's common in Europe, and it's something the Buddhist majority said of the Rohingya in Myanmar too, so it's not an uncommon idea. They worry that soon the right won't be able to win because the party of just white people won't be able to outvote all the POCs, and they can't stop people letting them in. The problem there though is that the Republicans don't do anything to win voters of color and until they do this will be a problem for them. It's not necessarily the Democrats' fault they currently opt to appeal to those people.
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Last edited by Marcuse on Thu Nov 01, 2018 9:47 am, edited 1 time in total.
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