October 08, 2005

Linda Chavez' "ethno-centric rant"

Remember the Linda Chavez column where she supported illegal aliens taking Katrina rebuilding jobs?

A letter to the editor of the Daily Republic in Northern California responds to her article:

[Chavez] speculated that the reason we don't see sob stories about the 200,000 Hispanics from New Orleans is that they had their act together so much better than other minorities. The real reason is that they didn't really exist.

New Orleans had a population of about 500,000. By the government's best estimate, including likely illegal aliens, there were just fewer than 15,000 Hispanic people in Orleans Parish in 2000. Even if that population doubled over five years, Ms. Chavez's 200,000 is off by a factor of six or more. Maybe Linda misplaced a decimal point, or maybe she didn't bother checking her facts before launching into an ethno-centric rant...

Posted to Immigration2005b at October 8, 2005 08:29 AM

Comments

Some loyal American is chavez, who gives us such mendacious recyclings of latino ethnic chauvinism. What's right is what wins, and wins the net public subsidy, as an imitator of hitler could say?

Posted by: John S Bolton at October 8, 2005 05:03 PM

Chavez actually used the phrase "nearly 200,000 Hispanics living in and around New Orleans". This idiot, demonstrating how dense some paranoid radical anti-immigration fanatics are, misreads it, and thinks she's suggesting that 200,000 hispanics live in NO. What a buffoon! And his idiocy is displayed for all to see in the newspaper and internet.

Posted by: Ralph at October 9, 2005 04:29 AM

What's the radius for "around"?

According to this link, the figure 200k is not a bad approximation for the Hispanic population of the entire state of Louisiana at the time of the hurricane. If that's the case, some (not me, of course) might say that speaking of "nearly 200,000 Hispanics living in and around New Orleans" is at best way overstating the number of Hispanics living in and in the near vicinity ("around" -- not many people would include the entire state in "around") of New Orleans, or at worst a sign of 'idiocy'. But 'idiocy' in a good cause, I guess -- racial pandering and demagoguery of the kind only non-whites are permitted to engage in.

In actual fact of course, the Hispanic population "in and around New Orleans", using anyone's reasonable definition of "around", is doubtless a lot closer to 15,000 than it is to 200,000.

"idiocy"

Indeed.

Care to go for "petty" as well? No? How about "hateful", then?

Posted by: eh at October 10, 2005 08:32 AM