Janet Murguia spins "La Raza" and their promotion of extremist groups

Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza takes to the pages of the Huffington Post to offer "There They Go Again: Tom Tancredo, Mark Krikorian and the Politics of Hate and Fear" (huffingtonpost.com/janet-murguia/there-they-go-again-tom-t_b_251584.html). See the earlier National Council of La Raza promotes radical groups for the backstory. She says:

Krikorian of CIS joined in yesterday trying to give Tancredo's rant some credence by harping on the term "La Raza," as in "The National Council of La Raza." Both Tancredo and CIS claim this term translates pejoratively into "The Race" instead of "the people" or "the community" as we use it (not unlike the way the Navajo use the term "the Dine"). Instead of quoting the man who coined the term, former Mexico Secretary of Education José Vasconcelos, who spoke of "La Raza Cósmica" as an ethnicity that welcomes diversity, CIS quotes others who claim a more sinister agenda is afoot.

Would, say, a Swede ever be eligible to be considered "Raza", "Dine", or part of the "Raza Cosmica"? Somehow I don't think so. In Mexican-American communities it's abundantly clear who's "raza" and who isn't, and it's a racial or at least ethnic signifier: someone is either "raza" or not depending on... ta da... their racial characteristics. And, while I'm sure sometimes exceptions are made, in order to join the Navajo tribe you would have to prove that you have Navajo blood.

In brief, Murguia's "community" is a gated one, depending on someone's race (or a mixture of races). Her "diversity" doesn't include those who don't have the "right" races/ethnicities in their backgrounds.

She also briefly mentions one of the core parts of Tancredo's article: the fact that the NCLR is promoting extremist groups. See the backstory link above for the details. Oddly enough, she just says that's been answered in their "The Truth about NCLR" article available from nclr.org without explaining why her group is promoting someone who joined the Brown Berets while in the sixth grade and why her group is promoting MEChA chapters including one that wants to "liberate" "Aztlan".

Thu, 08/06/2009 - 01:02 · · Importance: 4