Donald Trump, Judge Gonzalo Curiel, And The Secret Of La Raza

A recent flap around the #NeverBoring Donald Trump was over his demand that the judge presiding over the civil lawsuit against Trump University recuse himself from the case. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal , Trump said, “U.S. District Judge Gonzalo Curiel had ‘an absolute conflict’ in presiding over the litigation given that he was ‘of Mexican heritage’ and a member of a Latino lawyers’ association.”

Trump thereby crossed the line between a Queens Galoot and something sad. His remarks drew extensive criticism from friends and allies, and even from aspirants to high office under a Trump presidency such as Newt Gingrich. They cost him some of the warmth he was beginning to cultivate within the GOP. Trump did something of a walk back still protesting that he was being unfairly treated:

It is unfortunate that my comments have been misconstrued as a categorical attack against people of Mexican heritage. I am friends with and employ thousands of people of Mexican and Hispanic descent. The American justice system relies on fair and impartial judges. All judges should be held to that standard. I do not feel that one’s heritage makes them incapable of being impartial….

And, in a dismissive attempt to put this behind him, “I do not intend to comment on this matter any further.”

There’s much more to be done.
Trump obliquely made a link between Judge Curiel and “La Raza” by identifying Curiel as “a member of a club or society very strongly pro-Mexican.” This linkage was made explicit by some of Trump’s loyalists.

Behind this story lurks an even greater story and a potentially valuable lesson. The lesson? There is room in La Raza for most, maybe all, Republicans and ample room for La Raza in the GOP.

The National Council of La Raza (NCLR) was a client of mine many years ago. It’s a distinguished organization, the predominant, mildly center left, old line Latino civil rights organization. (NCLR called upon me to help it find abundant funding for its national charter school initiative, and we did.) NCLR has no connection to the group using the name “La Raza” with which Judge Curiel was loosely connected nor to many small groups that go by that name.

There is ample confusion regarding the meaning of “La Raza.”

As reported by Reuters :
The words 'La Raza' translate from Spanish to mean 'the race,' which Trump fans cite as proof the NCLR is a group of people who hate anyone who isn’t Hispanic.

Lisa Navarrete, an NCLR spokeswoman, rejected that interpretation, saying that 'thousands' of groups had names that included 'La Raza' as a “nod to our common heritage.”

As NCLR’s president and CEO Janet Murguía states on NCLR’s website :

The term was coined by Mexican scholar José Vasconcelos to reflect the fact that the people of Latin America are a mixture of many of the world’s races, cultures, and religions. Mistranslating 'La Raza' to mean “the race” implies that it is a term meant to exclude others. In fact, the full term coined by Vasconcelos, 'La Raza Cósmica,' meaning the 'cosmic people,' was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent in the Hispanic people. This is an inclusive concept, meaning that Hispanics share with all other peoples of the world a common heritage and destiny.

And further:
NCLR’s work as a civil rights institution is about inclusion and participation in the American Dream, including extensive efforts to assist new immigrants in the process of fully integrating into American life.

There is an even more fascinating backstory which points to a natural but broken linkage between Latinos and the GOP.

“La Raza,” sure enough, means “the Race.” But, just as Murguía says, it is shorthand for “La Raza Cosmica.” That was the title of an iconic essay by former Mexican education minister (and unsuccessful presidential candidate) José Vasconcelos. Vasconcelos wrote this 1925 essay to propound a counter-narrative, and antidote, to Hitler’s 1925 Mein Kampf and the Nazi propounding of a “Master Race.”

Vasconcelos wove a rather proto-New Age story, inventing an inclusive new demographic category based in love, harmony, and beauty. Latino alludes to Latin. “The Cosmic Race” posits the Latinos as the cultural torch-bearers of the highly civilized Romans. This essay provides a strange yet lovely narrative of Latinos carrying forward the culture of Rome, based in beauty and harmony, in opposition to the Saxon – barbarian – culture based on violence and domination.

This harks back to the sacking of Rome by the Visigoths and Vandals. La Raza Cosmica brought this ancient twilight struggle forward into the 20th century. Whatever the level of historicity, it was a perfect parable with which to oppose Hitler. This fanciful romance (a word derived from “Roman”) is neither racist nor sinister. It’s a noble stand for civilized values in the face of Nazism, then, and xenophobia, now.

I long have been vocally critical of much of the conservative movement and GOP for their failure to recognize Latinos as a social and political El Dorado to be enthusiastically embraced. If you do not know that the Latinos fully share conservative and mainstream Republican values you are, thanks to the terrible job that we in the media do, woefully ignorant.

Mexico’s “Declaration of Independence” from Spain was cut from the same cloth as our own Declaration of Independence. Mexico’s version is called the Grito de (Cry of) Dolores. As proclaimed by that great republican independence leader Fr. Miguel Hidalgo :

My children: a new dispensation comes to us today. Will you receive it? Will you free yourselves? Will you recover the lands stolen three hundred years ago from your forefathers by the hated Spaniards? We must act at once…. Will you defend your religion and your rights as true patriots? Long live our Lady of Guadalupe! Death to bad government!

As I wrote elsewhere :
The Declaration of Independence and the Grito are rooted in the same ground: Dignity.

The Grito represents an opportunity for conservatives and Tea Partiers to celebrate the values we share with Hispanics. …

The swelling Hispanic population here is a gift to conservatives and to the United States. Hispanic values are core American, and conservative, values, including pro life, traditional marriage, family and community minded, hard working, entrepreneurial, respectful of property rights, religious and deeply patriotic.

And a word to those who vilify illegal aliens. Consider America’s Illegal Alien #1: the pop cultural icon Superman.

As I long ago wrote at the long-lost Parcbench.com:

Illegal Alien #1 is one Kal-El, a/k/a Superman. He illegally entered American airspace, then territory, and has taken up residence. No visa. No documents. He was found, in his tiny rocket ship, and taken in by Ma and Pa Kent, who thereby themselves became guilty of a felony, subject to five years of imprisonment under 8 U.S. Code sec. 1324 .

What red-blooded American would wish to deport Mr. Truth-Justice-And-The-American Way? Who could wish to imprison Ma and Pa Kent for harboring the foundling?

Law without justice is hollow. One recalls Les Miserables’Jean Valjean imprisoned, ultimately for 19 years, for stealing a loaf of bread with which to feed his sister’s starving children. Law must serve justice.

We have pledged allegiance to “liberty and justice for all.” Delivering justice for all is a threshold requirement in making America great again. It is laudable to promise aggressively to deport alien rapists, murderers, drug dealers, and other thugs of whatever ethnicity. That said, it is insufficient to greatness to say, in effect, that some of my best friends are Hispanic, insufficient to promise “a big, fat beautiful door right in the middle of the wall” with Mexico.

The GOP has been weirdly tone deaf about courting people of color, engaging in lame “messaging.” An outstanding exception was former Texas GOP State Chairman Steve Munisteri . Munisteri gave full dignity to the Latinos, African-Americans, and Asians of Texas. He actively invited them to become party officials and candidates, not minions. He proved that he did not want just their votes. He offered them positions of real authority. As a result, they recruited themselves in droves into the Texas GOP.

The Republican National Committee would do brilliantly to groom Munisteri as the logical successor to the RNC Chairmanship after Reince Priebus decides to step down. And Donald Trump could do no better than to induce Munisteri to join his campaign at a most senior level.

If Donald Trump were to give a speech in the language of the Grito his crowds would go wild. The media would go nuts condemning him for incendiary language. And Latinos, at least the half of that demographic who are of Mexican extraction, would be touched, moved, and inspired.

Latinos are an available constituency for the conservative movement and the Republican Party. They are the United States of America's new El Dorado. All it takes: accord them their full dignity due. It is both right and necessary to celebrate the dignity of Hispanics.

Originating at Forbes.com