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Posts Tagged ‘Illegal Immigrants’

In his latest installment, Sexist Latino Contributor Don Felix registers his beliefs on the practice of asking beauty pageant contestants heady political questions.

Felix Mengano’s views aren’t necessarily those of Ethnic Avenue, its affiliates, sponsors, or detractors.

Asking Dumb Beauty-Pageant Girls Important Questions

By: Felix Omar Mengano Jimenez, Sr. – Sexist Latino Contributor

I’ve always thought beauty pageants were pointless. Sure I watch them, but they just don’t make a whole lot of sense to a guy like me. If you want to showcase beautiful women, why not have them parade onto the stage in the nude? Or, if you must have some competitive element to the whole thing, why not have them wrestle in mud, guacamole, or another similarly viscous substance? If you want to show some intelligent women, put a few (fully dressed) female college professors out there and ask them nuanced questions about their areas of specialization. That’ll easily fill up a few hours (and few seats).

But don’t try to combine the two. It never works. One side always sufferers—and I bet you can guess which side. They’re not fooling anyone by trying to integrate other areas besides looks into pageants. These things aren’t about anything but looks. Miss America is never brilliant, but just okay-looking. But they do it anyway, so what you get is a bunch of girls that are dumb as rocks straining their brains (which they never really use except in other pageants) to come up with answers like this:

Of course, that’s just the most famous in a series of idiotic pageant answers in recent years, answers to important political and social questions that should never be posed to these type of girls—pageant or not. The interesting part is that these dumb girls seem to consistently espouse hard-right, conservative leanings. I wonder if that’s any coincidence. No where is the folly of asking important questions to pageant contestants more clear than with Sarah Palin—a factory of pageant-style verbal diarrhea.

The latest installment in this tired story is Miss Oklahoma, who over the weekend released this gem:

The best part is that she uses the classic passive-aggressive, I-don’t-actually-know-what-I’m-talking-about line “but I can see both sides” after having made a decisive, committed statement– about states’ rights, no less. Anyone that’s ever taken a sixth-grade history class or read a non-fiction book in his life knows that “states’ rights” is code for all sorts of shit—most of it segregationist or confederate. The slave states seceded from the Union over “states’ rights.” People that wanted to keep black kids out of white schools claimed states’ rights. It’s a loaded term. And everyone, especially in the South, knows what it means.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m all for asking questions of beauty-pageant contestants. But they ought to be the types of questions that are appropriate for them. You wouldn’t ask Stevie Wonder for directions. You wouldn’t ask Bill Gates how to rebuild a transmission. So instead of asking beauty pageant contestants what they think the role of hydrocarbons is in climate change, we need to be asking things like: “those were some impressive moves, Jeannie, have you wrestled in guacamole before?”

The big thing in the news these days is an Arizona state bill, signed into law by appointed hag-governor Jan Brewer (see below), that basically requires regular-ass police officers to go around asking people for proof of citizenship if “it looks like they could be illegal.” I’m not making this up. What’s more, if police don’t do their (new) job, they can be sued by regular people for not enforcing the law.

Frankly, I don’t like chiming in on things this mainstream because pretty much anything that can be said about a topic like this gets said in the first few minutes, and I tend to be slow. So that means, invariably, I’m left unintentionally repeating the same shit some other guy said. This is the reason I didn’t say much about the whole Tiger Woods harem thing (except about his disappointingly cheap taste in sandwiches), the “balloon boy” story, and the healthcare reform “debate.”

Forget, for a minute, the coincidence that the illegal-immigrant debate seems to always come up in election years, especially ones in which Republicans are in the minority (i.e., out of power) and are hoping to make some gains by lathering up the masses about issues they don’t ever intend to solve—simply recycle the next time they need something to work people up with. Also forget the fact that you could solve the problem pronto by simply enforcing the laws that already exist, and throwing the CEO of any company that hires an illegal immigrant in jail for a few years.  (Like when you also throw the John in jail, not just the prostitute.)

I assure you, a lot of people would be leaving if no one would hire them. But of course that would hurt millionaires and billionaires and corporations, who benefit from cheap illegal labor that undercuts unions and their ridiculous demands for fair pay and benefits and the occasional vacation day. Remember: it was the conservative messiah, Ronald Reagan, that passed the largest amnesty for illegal immigrants in American history (1986), making millions of “illegals” legal overnight. He hated unions.

I could go on. But this isn’t about that.

This is about the question of what an illegal immigrant looks like, since that’s now become an important part of the dialogue on this issue. You can’t profile people by their race, because that would illegal. So these guys are handling that sticky question in a couple of interesting ways.

On the one hand are the right-wingers that claim to not know what an illegal looks like at all, deferring to the “professionals” in this arena.

Exhibit A

Then there are the ones that say they can tell, but with all sorts of other indicators apart from race. Definitely not race.

Exhibit B

Look guys, I know spotting an illegal immigrant (or at least a potentially illegal immigrant) without resorting to racial profiling isn’t easy for the untrained eye. But years of living in the great City of Los Angeles–the mecca for Guatemalan, Vietnamese, El-Salvadorian, Mexican, Ethiopian, and every other variety of immigrant you could dream up–has giving me a keen sense of what else to look for.

I know I may be hurting my ethnic brothers and sisters, but here’s a simple guide for you guys. Pay me back with what you do best–some tax breaks and exotic pyramid-scheme-like investment vehicles.

Right-Wingers’ Quick Guide to Spotting Illegal Immigrants

General FOB-ness

This is what the idiot in the second video above (Rep. Brian Bilbray) was dancing around, but couldn’t—or wouldn’t–articulate. Everyone knows when they’re dealing with someone that just “ain’t right.” It’s like when you spot an unseasonably pale (but straight) white guy, wearing a mesh tank-top and John Stockton coochie shorts, exposing his wickedly hairy legs (and, in some unfortunate cases, some of his junk) in the middle of Los Angeles. European, right? You bet.

Or like when you see a white girl in Teva­ sandals, shorts, a fleece vest, and a Nalgene bottle hanging from her outdoorsy backpack in the middle of your city. Unless you’re in a certain region or two of the country, you know she’s an unassimilated transplant.

John Stockton and his now-infamous shorts.

Similarly, people that haven’t properly integrated into the American Way of Life are going to telegraph that shit from a mile away. Mixing up our treasured clichés. Calling dollar bills notes. Singularizing plurals (Starbuck Coffee). Wearing a cowboy hat and mustache.

Every race and ethnicity has its unique set of FOB dead-giveaways. Learn them.

Broke-Asses

Seriously, when was the last time you saw a rich illegal immigrant (that wasn’t a king-pin in a movie)? I’m sure they exist, but they’re not the ones mowing your neighbor’s lawn or standing outside the Home Depot. Being poor is definitely a sign.

Brown

Let’s face it guys: you’re going to have to use some tangential indicator of race to pluck out the illegal immigrants you want to actually get rid of (the south-of-the-border variety). The great thing is that using color isn’t necessarily using race. Brown is generally a good start, but combine that with broke-ass and FOB, and you have yourself a good candidate.

A good candidate.