Nativist flag whining

The Republicans drum up an anti-immigration drive, hoping to fan nativist sentiment to help them at the polls in November. And when Latinos react publicly against it, the nativist whiners start saying it's all the Latinos' fault. One thing, they're whining because some of the demonstrators in Los Angeles last weekend were carrying [gasp, choke] Mexican flags.

Daniel Hernandez has some good thoughts about this in The Flags Are Back LA Weekly 03/29/06:

The sight of the Mexican flag in L.A. is particularly disconcerting to some because of the fear of the so-called Reconquista, a shadowy and ultimately baseless conspiracy of a Mexican reconquest in the U.S. Southwest that conservatives love to talk about.

The irony, though, is that mostly Chicanos and Mexican-Americans, people born in the U.S., carried the Mexican flag. And it was mostly the immigrants, the people from Mexico, who carried the Stars and Stripes.

Also from LA Weekly, Whose Backlash? Nuestro backlash by Marc Cooper 03/29/06:

Why should anyone feign surprise when an entire population that cleans our offices, cuts our lawns, serves our food, makes our beds, tends to our children, and pays taxes but gets no refunds, finds it expedient to mobilize politically against its wholesale criminalization? It's asking a lot, don't you think, for workers to remain silent and impassive as their arrest and deportation are actively being contemplated in Congress? The only surprise is that it has taken this long to materialize.

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