TUCSON – In interviewing me about the election, a reporter from CNN asked, “As a white guy from a working-class background, why do you think Trump did so well with white working-class men?”
That didn’t really happen, but if it had, I would’ve answered:
Your assumptions are wrong. First, you assume that I’m white, although I see myself as off-white, given that my olive-skinned Italian ancestors were not seen as white when they immigrated to America, and, in fact, were often treated like blacks.
Second, although I have working-class roots and used to be a card-carrying member of a Painters local in St. Louis and then a Steelworkers local, I’m no longer working class.
Third, contrary to how the government and its cadres in the DEI industry have trained the media and all other major institutions to think about race and ethnicity, the many ethnic groups, nationalities, and social classes arbitrarily classified as “White” are not homogeneous and don’t have the same genetic makeup.
But most important, it would be presumptuous of me to speak for all people classified as White.
That imaginary interview came to mind while watching a segment on BBC News, in which a so-called Latino spokesperson in the US was asked by a pasty-faced Anglo anchor why so many Latinos had voted for Trump.
The highly educated BBC anchor, demonstrating how poorly educated he was, didn’t seem to know that Latinos are very diverse—that, for example, Cubans aren’t the same and don’t vote the same as Puerto Ricans, who aren’t the same and don’t vote the same as Mexicans.
Likewise, the interviewee, not wanting to ruin his one minute of fame, didn’t respond as follows:
Which Latinos are you referring to? Latinos are not monolithic or homogeneous. They can have ancestral roots in either Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, Venezuela, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Haiti, Guadeloupe, Martinique, Puerto Rico, Saint-Barthélemy, or Saint-Martin
Latinos are also highly diverse in terms of race and ethnicity. They can be either Amerindian, Black, Mestizo, Mulatto, Zambo, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, German, French, British, Greek, Polish, Ukrainian, Croat, Irish, Jewish, Armenian, Lebanese, Syrian, or Palestinian.
Why do you people in the media insist on seeing all Latinos as identical? I find that offensive and an insult to my heritage.
American journalists have been trained even more than their BBC counterparts to think in terms of the seven contrived racial/ethnic categories of White, Black, Hispanic (or Latino), Asian, Native American, Pacific islander, and Middle Eastern. The training has been so effective that they can’t comprehend how anti-science it is to condense the rich diversity of the world into seven catchall categories. Nor do they seem to have any idea how much societal mischief, racial animus, and racial hucksterism have resulted from doing so.
In a similar vein, election results have been broken down in the media by race, but I have not heard any crackerjack reporter or commentator explain how anyone knows the race of voters. My ballot didn’t ask for that information, unlike many other documents that do ask for it. Are there machines that read the DNA on ballots at county tabulation centers?
If so, the machines would blow a gasket with my Italian DNA. That’s because a large number of races and ethnic groups of various colors have tromped through the Italian peninsula over history, spreading and mixing their seed. Even a different species, Neanderthals, tromped through the peninsula, which is why most Italians still have some Neanderthal DNA.
Don’t tell CNN. A reporter might call me to ask why Neanderthals voted for Trump.
Mr. Cantoni lives in Tucson and can be reached at [email protected].
