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 Askia At-Large
Askia Muhammad
Columnist Page
Friday, May 13, 2005; Page 22
Gov. Schwarzenegger, Sen. Hayakawa: How Quickly They Forget
From the Just-Off-The-Boat-Himself Department, California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger’s latest gaffe, surely takes the cake.
On a Los Angeles radio talk show in late April, “The Goven-nator” praised the so-called “Minutemen” volunteers who have been patrolling the Arizona/Mexico Border as having done “...a terrific job, and they’ve cut down the crossing of illegal immigrants by a huge percentage.” Never mind the fact that even President George W. Bush has called the Minutemen just what they are: “vigilantes;” the governor is out of place on the level of compassion for his fellow human.
Apparently, liberals have been giving Gov. Schwarzenegger a free pass because he married into the Kennedy-Camelot Clan, and because he reflects the “Left Coast” version of “Compassionate Conservatism.” Wrong! He deserves no more free rides!
You see, for an immigrant who has risen to a high position to turn his back on the yearning for a better life which all humans seek, which brought him to this country in the first place, is un-fathomable. Did he forget?
Did he forget that the land which the Mexicans seek to occupy used to be Mexico! The land was stolen from them when the U.S. President trumped-up phony intelligence that Mexican forces had attacked U.S. soldiers in U.S. territory, in order to persuade Congress to declare war. Mexico used to include not only Arizona, New Mexico, and California, but also Nevada, Utah, and Colorado to boot.
Those people who are called “illegal immigrants” are simply returning to the land from which they were driven by the conquering Americans, who subsequently stole their land and developed it with the riches the nation had earned from hundreds of years of free labor from millions of captured Africans who were made slaves.
Maybe the immigrant Governor of California forgot those salient points from California history. Maybe he forgot that for White Europeans like himself, there were no quotas on visas to immigrate to this country. But despite the need for someone like Mexican bracero-workers to come here to perform the stoop labor that Whites don’t want to do, and which they can’t force Blacks to do...Mexicans are no more welcome in this country than are Africans, South East Asians, Arabs.
It would be funny if it weren’t real. An immigrant who rose to political power–patois-and-all–a staunch opponent of immigration to this country.
It reminds me of another prominent California politician who had a distinctly “multi-cultural” background. He was Republican Senator S.I. Hayakawa.
Before he rose to political power, first as President of San Francisco State College, and then as U.S. Senator, many people knew of him. He had a distinguished career as a semanticist, a “word-smith,” an author and an educator, who actually opined on the meaning of things, and the origin of words, ideas, thoughts.
Like our forgetful California Governor, the Senator from California was a staunchly conservative politician. Though he was not “White” and shared the suffering and humiliation that went with simply being of Japanese ancestry living in the U.S. during World War II, our Senator always voted “the White interest.” In all of his years of distinguished public service, Dr. S.I. Hayakawa always sided with the racists and obstructionists, who opposed any advancement toward equality of non-White people with Caucasians everywhere in the world.
What I didn’t know about Dr. Hayakawa was that he, too, had a short memory. I discovered it when I came to Washington working for The Chicago Daily Defender. I learned that Sen. Hayakawa was, in addition to being a distinguished linguist, was also an alumnus of The Defender.
It seems that when Dr. Hayakawa earned his Doctorate in the early 1940s, there was no self-respecting journal, magazine, publisher, or even library that would hire a Japanese-American. The only place Dr. Hayakawa could get a job in any way related to his training and exemplary scholarship, was at the lowly Black newspaper, The Chicago Defender.
How quickly some of them forget.
Maybe it has something to do with the myth of racial equality of opportunity that sits like a halo over California, which is particularly effective in scrambling the brains of non-Whites, like University of California Trustee Ward Connerly, like the late California Senator S.I. Hayakawa, and like the California’s incumbent Governor. |
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