There Is No Magic Dirt

~ Clarissa

A large part of the reason why many Hispanics didn’t vote for Harris is that she’s a woman and she’s black. Pretending that these were not factors that mattered to them makes us Democrats who hide from reality behind words. And I’ve already repudiated being a Democrat.

It’s obnoxious to see people contort themselves into all sorts of shapes to pretend that this was solely based on the Hispanics’ dislike of Harris’s economic policy. Why are we lying to ourselves?

The truth is that the world outside America and Western Europe is a lot less hospitable to women. And it’s really inhospitable to gays. It also recognizes absolutely no historic debt to American blacks.

There is no magic dirt. Nobody becomes feminist, anti-racist and an LGBT+ ally by stepping on American soil. People bring their entire selves when they emigrate. You can either have mass migration or widespread enthusiasm over “the first woman of color president.” You can’t have both. Take your pick and live with the consequences.

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Published by Clarissa

28 thoughts on “There Is No Magic Dirt”

  1. I agree, immigrants don’t magically become Americans the minute they land in the states, it will take generations depending on where they come from and how close they are to Western European/Anglo culture. Liberals don’t want to admit that many Hispanics are racist against dark skinned people and that blacks are at the bottom of many Latin American societies, they attribute this to white supremacy when it was there all along.

    Assimilation into American culture can take generations, immigrants who were despised in the 1800s have descendants who completely American with some ethnic touches. Irish immigrants were loathed by many Americans when they first came, but in a few generations they had moved on to respectable working class and middle class status. Many of the men become police officers, firemen and office workers while the women became teachers and secretaries and many Irish Americans were clergy members. Heck, many Irish Americans became successful entertainers and professional athletes beloved by Anglo Americans, it just took a few generations.

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  2. I don’t get this post.

    But really, I thought Harris’ loss wasn’t about her race or gender with anyone. I thought it was about the failed policies of the current administration. Wouldn’t this post read the same if you replaced with “Hispanics” with “Ukrainians” or “Russians” or any variety of eastern Europeans? (Sorry, Clarissa)

    Don’t most Hispanics in the United States self identify their race as white, regardless of generation? I know a lot of Hispanics would be classed as the equivalent of white in their home countries. And Cubans, a large chunk of Hispanics, generally vote for Republicans and their historical greater anti-Castro positions anyways. (I know, Castro is dead.)

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    1. “a lot of Hispanics would be classed as the equivalent of white in their home countries”

      In a lot of Latin American countries racial identification is largely up to what the individual says and people might label themselves according to aspirations or values.

      A person who’s entirely (or almost entirely) Native American might self-identify as mestizo (mixed) or even white because they aspire to a higher social class. Someone with a lot less indigenous ancestry might self-identify as indigenous for political, ideological or branding reasons (see Frida Kahlo’s indigenous wardrobe despite having only a quarter or so native ancestry).

      The US used to have the ‘one drop’ rule (any African ancestry made you Black) and Brazil had almost the opposite (unless you were completely African you could call yourself white).

      They don’t let go of this view of race when they live in another country.

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      1. My family is Cuban American and I can vouch for this world view, people who are light-skinned see themselves as white even if North Americans don’t, it’s more about different graduations of skin color than a binary. In my case, my parents were born in Cuba and all my great-grandparents were born in Spain, so racially my family is white.

        But I’ve met other Cuban Americans who are clearly white with light-colored hair and eyes and fair skin who don’t believe they are white, they actually believe that since their family came from a Caribbean island, they can’t be white. These folks can be seriously obnoxious calling themselves people of color when physically they look like average white Americans with Spanish surnames, many other actual people of color find this annoying. I knew from a young age that we are white, my parents look like average white Americans and I look like a white hipster chick. This is what happens when race is a binary, one can be Hispanic and completely white. And this is why many Hispanic organizations are run by clearly white people, it’s the same system back in Latin America where the whites run stuff and lord it over dark skinned peons

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        1. “Cuban Americans who are clearly white with light-colored hair and eyes and fair skin who don’t believe they are white”

          Years ago I had a friend who was from Puerto Rico (by way of Paraguay) with a russian sounding last name pale skin, freckles and very light brown hair who casually dropped in conversation once that she wasn’t white…

          “different graduations of skin color than a binary”

          I remember a student colleague did a paper on the racial taxonomy of a Latin American country (or maybe region) and there were over twenty categories (and not a simple branching model either it was very complex).

          From what I recall skin tone was just one factor and not the most salient. A very big thing was hair, typical caucasian, indigenous and black hair are all distinct (and then there are all the possible combinations… caucasian-black hair is very different from indigenous-black hair etc etc )

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          1. I had a Jewish-Mexican colleague whose parents had come over from Germany and who kept ranting about “we, the children of the Aztecs.” It was embarrassing but not to her because she clearly wasn’t getting it.

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      2. People are being told they are “persons of color” who should feel commonality with Kamala Harris on that basis. But they don’t see themselves that way. If it’s ok for a man to self-identify as a woman, why can’t a Latino identify as white? Where’s the logic?

        By the way, I’m still getting questions from Ukraine about my story about land acknowledgements that I told on the show back in October. It’s so ludicrous that people keep asking for confirmation that it really happens. Apparently, Native Americans don’t like it either and were the ethnic group that went the most for Trump. I’m really not shocked.

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        1. ~thinks back to the periodic hilarious scuffles between virtuous white college activist types and the Seminole tribe down in SFL, where they decide that having a Native American for a mascot is racist… without, you know, asking the tribe what they think.

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  3. Also this. The only immigrants who want more 3rd world immigration are bottom tier trash, wards of the state, who cannot speak the language, and cannot survive independently outside of ethnic ghettos.

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    1. That’s my Mom right there, while she is proud to be Cuban American she doesn’t want to be around lots of Hispanic people, especially Mexicans, Central Americans and South Americans. She thinks they’re all low-class peasants who come to the US to get welfare benefits and don’t want to fit in, they just want to mooch off taxpayers. People like her wave of immigrants want to be American citizens and fit in to a degree, they’re embarrassed by immigrants who don’t learn English and act like yokels.

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      1. My peeps in TX say the same thing. Everybody’s Latino there, practically, but the ones who emigrated legally and whose kids grew up there… they get upset when fresh immigrants move in next door. The noobs play loud music and make bad neighbors, apparently.

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  4. Clarissa, I’ve read that Latino men went by a huge majority (I think 30 points) for Hillary Clinton back in 2016, and Mexico now has a woman for president and Puerto Rico just elected a woman as its governor. Latino men also went for Barack Obama by huge numbers in 2008 and 2012. So I don’t know if I agree that Latino men not going for Harris had much of anything to do with sexism.

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    1. Hillary was white. Claudia Scheinbaum is, too, and she’s a puppet of AMLO so it was like voting for him.

      I honestly don’t care what people think about this because I spent half my life in Hispanic communities and they just don’t perceive either women or blacks like white Americans do. But feel free to disbelieve.

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      1. I am not saying you’re wrong, I don’t know enough, just that the evidence doesn’t seem to make it so cut-and-dried. It is probably more nuanced. BTW, the politically-correct word now is “black people.” Saying “blacks” will get you accused of being a racist. I got banned from a Reddit forum for using that word.

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  5. Sure, the immigrants brought their culture with them, except that in the US, the macho manly man they voted for was a CEO instead of a general.

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  6. Clarissa

    “Nobody becomes feminist, anti-racist and an LGBT+ ally by stepping on American soil.”

    Have to admit that I missed this because of the elections thorough repudiation of the wretched excesses of all three of those movements. Those of the latter two are obvious to most; but what of the other, what is your current definition of feminism?

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    1. Latin America exists within a worldview where grabbing women physically in the streets for ha ha fun is normal and cute. Americans with their silly little #MeToo are bringing in millions of men who aggressively sexually harass women constantly. American women live in a paradise, surrounded with respect and I’d even say coddled. Yet they insist on bringing into the country crowds of men who won’t be nearly as sweet and respectful to them as their own men.

      It’s worse in Canada where already 20 years ago it was very hard to be a woman in cities like Montreal. Muslim men were downright nasty to young women. I can only imagine how much worse it’s gotten since then.

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      1. My grandmother hated every second of the years that the family was stationed in Istanbul. She was spat on just walking down the street. Because according to the local culture, American women were all whores.

        But sure, let’s wholesale import that to the US… I’m sure it’ll be fine.

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        1. A very very liberal colleague traveled to Turkey with two teenage daughters. She came back … not that liberal anymore. What shocked me is that her experience there was completely unexpected to her. She thought men everywhere were exactly like her courteous, respectful neighbors in America.

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  7. LOL, hmmm, neither of you answered the question. Have to repeat that males tend to measure everything, suspect that might well even be an evolutionary trait ;-D

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    1. Oh! Of course.

      In the US, feminism today is the belief that “woman” is a valid and important concept which describes an immutable biological fact. That women have a different physiology than men and that female spaces, sports and sex-based rights should be preserved and protected. That womanhood is in-born and can’t be achieved by wish, force of will or medical procedures.

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  9. And my longer explanation for Canada’s increased susceptibility to insane foolish behavior, remember Cicero’s warning: “A nation can survive its fools and even the ambitious.But it cannot survive treason from within.” I remember Judy Rebbick proudly proclaiming that her S.O.W.* group had gutted the equality clause of our Charter** to protect affirmative action. There is now no mechanism to legally challenge sexual/racial/religious preferences other than, of course, that bête noire, the Caucasian male and possibly Christian ;-D

    *Status Of Women, but not so bright group then ruined their perfect acronym by appending National Association ;-D

    ** Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms, our supposed constitutional protections

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