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In a 1958 CIA information report on
revolutionary activities in Cuba, the agent in charge wrote "Che
[Guevara] is fairly intellectual for a Latin." A racist
assertion such as this was not uncommon in government documents.
Throughout the Cold War, official bureaucratic language and
content continued to be influenced by long-standing"scientific"
theories about national character and racial psychology.
Those of us engaged in anti-racist
activism and research are well aware that many racial stereotypes
with origins in earlier centuries persist in corporate boardrooms,
universities, and shop floors across America. But although we
know the conservatives' claims about "level playing fields,"
"the end of racism," and "post-civil rights society"
are hollow rhetoric, we can still be stunned to find 19th century
images and assumptions being reproduced in public spaces at the
beginning of the 21st century.
As has been widely reported
in the media over the last two years, the Pentagon's interest
in young Latino men and women peeked in the late 1990s when demographic
indicators revealed that Latino youth would be the largest pool
of military age youth in coming decades. Because Latino youth
were (and continue to be) underrepresented in the military and
because their educational and economic opportunities are limited
compared to other groups, recruiting strategists have been busy
concocting a series of well-funded "Hispanic initiatives."
For almost a decade, the Pentagon
has thrown millions of dollars at Spanish-language recruitment
campaigns and promoted fast-track naturalization procedures for
non-citizens. Even laudable proposals that would provide provisional
residency for non-citizen students so that they could attend
college (the DREAM Act) have been salted with covert military
options (see note below).
The Return
of "Scientific" Racism
One of the founding documents
of modern racism is Count Arthur de Gobineau's The Inequality
of Human Races (1853-1855). This remarkable manual of racist
thinking found its most enthusiastic audience in the German Reich
but also exerted its influence over all Western racisms, especially
their North American mutations.
In the conclusion to his chapter
on the "Inequalities of languages," Gobineau writes:
"All the facts, however, mentioned in this chapter go to
prove that, originally, there is a perfect correspondence between
the intellectual virtues of a race and those of its native speech;
that languages are, in consequence, unequal in value and significance
as races are also that their qualities and merits, like a people's
blood, disappear or become absorbed, when they are swamped by
too many heterogeneous elements Hence, though it is often difficult
to infer at once, in a particular case, the merits of a people
from those of its language, it is quite certain that in theory
this can always be done."
Today, Gobineau's name is known
to only a handful of scholars. But the racist logic that informed
his writings lives on deep in the structures of U.S. society.
During a 2005 training session
for employees of the Department of Defense's Joint Advertising
and Marketing Research and Studies program (JAMRS), representatives
of the New York-based Michael Saray Hispanic Marketing firm made
a power point presentation designed to upgrade the military's
campaign to attract Latino youth.
The mission of JAMRS, according
to the official website, is the following: "Our marketing
communications programs help broaden people's understanding of
Military Service as a career option, while our internal government
market research and study programs help bolster the effectiveness
of all the Services' recruiting and retention efforts."
The presentation by the Saray group, whose clients include major
corporate players such as Allstate and Geico, was designed to
explain "Hispanics" to JAMRS employees in order to
facilitate the military's niche marketing efforts.
This kind of activity belies
the Pentagon's frequent contention that recruiters do not target
by ethnicity. In fact, reports such as the one prepared by the
CNA Corporation in 2004 reveals that the Marine Corps recruiting
station in San Diego, California, collects detailed information
on "economic and race/ethnic distributions in its fifteen
substations and eleven contact areas." The report notes
that "Hispanics" make up 31% of the population in this
station area that stretches from the U.S.-Mexico border to southern
Utah.
In the "Language and Cultural
DNA" section of the Saray group's presentation, we learn
three important assumptions: 1) "Latinos are culturally
'hard wired' differently," 2) "Hispanics" are
"right brain" and thus "emotional, intuitive,
creative, and visionary" (unlike "left brain"
groups who are "intellectual, sequential, analytical, logical"),
and 3) "America's system of education was built on a strong
cultural bias toward the left hemisphere of the brain."
Citing a study by the influential
Yankelovich, Inc., public opinion research firm, presenters showed
audience members a typology of consumers composed of four basic
types: "Fervents, Indifferents, Practicals, and Emotionals."
According to the study's authors, "Hispanics are twice
as likely to be Emotionals."
Simply put, JAMRS trainees
were taught "the Spanish language has not favored intellect
over emotion. It's [sic] bias or thought process has not favored
the left brain over the right brain. This is a real cultural
difference." Therefore, the Saray group's advice to Pentagon
ad men devising Hispanic campaigns for military recruitment is
to "avoid blatant overuse of numbers. You want to reach
the heart, not the left brain." To sum up, "the traditions
of Hispanic culture are not necessarily in-synch with the concept
of 'mainstream society' or the 'American Dream.' In general,
Hispanics are right brain thinkers. The marketer must 'acculturate'
or risk losing relevancy by continued reliance on left brain
thinking."
The Fastest Growing Segment of the Population-Hispanic Right
Brain Emotionals
What is not at all clear is
the extent to which Pentagon officials subscribe to the Saray's
group language-based system of racial types. One can only assume
that the consequences for diversifying the officer corps, to
take one area where Latinos are grossly underrepresented, would
be quite negative since undoubtedly no one wants "right
brain" non-logical and emotional officers leading troops
into battle.
A cursory examination of recent
recruiting advertisements, however, suggests that the JAMRS audience,
like other government and corporate policymakers, was already
in tune with the contents of the Saray presentation. Ads featuring
adoring Latina mothers and slogans like "¿Estás
listo para lo que te espera?" ("Are you ready for wait
awaits you?"-emotional and painfully ironic given the war
in Iraq) have proliferated since the "war on terror"
began.
As journalists Tom Hamburger
and Peter Wallsten, authors of One Party Country: The Republican
Plan for Dominance in the 21st Century, told Amy Goodman on a
recent "Democracy Now!" program, Republican planners
in the 2004 election operated from a set of stereotypes similar
to those promoted by the Saray and Yankelovich marketers: "George
W. Bush won 40% of the Hispanic vote nationally, which is a pretty
remarkable number for Republicans and they did this with a strategy
that some strategists call the "I love you" strategy,
where they manage to appeal to a sense of emotion, rather than
issues, in the case of Latinos."
According to this racializing
model, "right-brain" irrational Hispanics, unsuited
for "America's system of education," will vote their
way into Karl Rove's projected Republican majority, and for decades
to come fill the ranks of the lowest echelons of the service
sector, the prison system, and the combat units of America's
imperial army. Were he alive today Che Guevara, whom a CIA operative
once described as "fairly intellectual for a Latin,"
would undoubtedly be asking progressive Latinos what they plan
to do about it.
Jorge Mariscal is a Vietnam veteran and director
of the Chicano-Latino Arts and Humanities Program at the University
of California, San Diego. He is a member of Project YANO (San
Diego). Visit his blog at: jorgemariscal.blogspot.com/He can be reached at: gmariscal@ucsd.edu
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