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Bustamante and the N word

6 comments on Bustamante and the N word

Bustamante and the N word
: Pacific News Service says Bustamante makes California blacks “nervous.”

The moment California Lieutenant Governor Cruz Bustamante said he was tossing his hat in as a replacement candidate in the recall race, the buzz among blacks was that he was the guy who used the “N” word….

In a February 2001 speech to a group of black trade unionists, Bustamante purportedly slipped and uttered the dreaded “N” word. When a handful of blacks in the audience stormed out in protest, Bustamante backpedaled fast and swore it was a slip of the tongue. He did profuse mea culpas and furiously waved his credentials as a staunch defender of immigrant rights, affirmative action and multiculturalism….

But the anxiety among blacks about Bustamante is less about his careless slip than about the resurfacing of political tensions between many blacks and Latinos….

If Davis continues his downward plunge in the polls, Bustamante’s stock will rise even higher among Democrats. That would include black Democrats too, if only it weren’t for that “N” word.

6 responses to “Bustamante and the N word”

  1. John Avatar
    John

    This could produce the interesting phenomenon of voters in predominently black precincts in California going heavily for “no” on the recall vote on Davis, and then turning around and voting for Arnold over Cruz on the recall ballot itself.

  2. weimdog Avatar
    weimdog

    Let’s not forget his other racist ties –
    As a student at Fresno State University in the 1970s, Bustamante was an active member of the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan, or MEChA, which stands for the Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan. Bustamante repeatedly denies having a “radical ethnic agenda,” but has refused to disassociate himself from his Mechista roots. In fact, Bustamante recently returned to Fresno State for a separate Latino commencement ceremony founded by two of his Chicano activist classmates.
    MEChA has been dismissed by some as a harmless social club, but it operates an identity politics indoctrination machine on publicly subsidized college and high school campuses nationwide that would make David Duke and the KKK turn green with envy. MEChA members in the University of California system have rioted in Los Angeles, editorialized that federal immigration “pigs should be killed, every single one” in San Diego, and are suspected of breaking into a conservative student publication’s offices and stealing its entire print run in Berkeley.
    MEChA’s symbol is an eagle clutching a dynamite stick and machete-like weapon in its claws; its motto is ” Por La Raza todo. Fuera de La Raza nada (For the Race, everything. For those outside the Race, nothing).” The MEChA Constitution calls on members to “promote Chicanismo within the community, politicizing our Raza (race) with an emphasis on indigenous consciousness to continue the struggle for the self-determination of the Chicano people for the purpose of liberating Aztlan.” “Aztlan” is the group’s term for the vast southwestern U.S. expanse, from parts of Washington and Oregon down to California and Arizona and over to Texas, which MEChA claims to be a mythical homeland and seeks to reconquer for Mexico ( reconquista ).
    MEChA’s liberation agenda, outlined in El Plan de Aztlan, states defiantly:
    “We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent. Brotherhood unites us, and love for our brothers makes us a people whose time has come and who struggles against the foreigner ‘gabacho’ who exploits our riches and destroys our culture. With our heart in our hands and our hands in the soil, we declare the independence of our mestizo nation. We are a bronze people with a bronze culture.”
    Substitute “Aryan” for “mestizo” and “white” for “bronze.” Not much difference between the nutty philosophy of Bustamante’s MEChA and Papa Schwarzenegger’s evil Nazi Party. To date, however, the only exposure Bustamante’s MEChA history has received has been on the Internet.
    In a critical article on Bustamante published by David Horowitz’s FrontPage Magazine.com last week, Lowell Ponte notes that “Like Nazism, MEChA has acquired more than a tinge of racism. In their tactics to advance Latinos and ‘La Raza,’ many of its activists have directed racist attacks against not only white-skinned Anglos but also against blacks, Asian-Americans and Jews — in fact, against every non-Latino group.”
    Popular Internet blogger Tacitus points out: “It’s tempting to dismiss this as a youthful affiliation that means nothing today — but that temptation would be wrong. There are certain associations that are socially tainting (and justly so) in the modern day, and they don’t have statutes of limitations. Former Klansmen and former Nazis don’t get a pass unless they spend a great deal of time and energy apologizing for and explaining themselves in a convincing manner.”
    Why should Bustamante, a public figure already known to have used a racial epithet in the past (he infamously used the word “nigger” while addressing a Black History Month event two years ago) get a pass? Or, for that matter, former California State Assembly Speaker and Los Angeles mayoral candidate Antonio Villaraigosa, State Assemblyman Gil Cadillo, State Sen. Joe Baca, and Arizona Congressman Raul Grijalva — all unapologetic Mechistas?
    http://www.townhall.com/columnists/michellemalkin/mm20030820.shtml

  3. Steve Avatar
    Steve

    Who you callin’ enigma?!!!!!

  4. Dark Avenger Avatar
    Dark Avenger

    If you’ve followed how the Chicano political organizations actually act in California, you could see the stuff that weimdog quotes as pipe dreams, nothing more. The South Gate debacle, along with the past and present conduct of Mexican-American political organizations, especially in the Central Valley, means that to worry about “Reconquesta de Atzlan” is to worry about what will never, ever, happen.

  5. weimdog Avatar
    weimdog

    I don’t believe the La Raza crap could ever happen either, but the failure of Bustamante to distance himself from these groups is, at the very least, troubling.
    As for what you call “The South Gate Debacle”, I can’t imagine EVER using the term nigger in front of hundreds of black people. Mr. Bustamante should have resigned, period.

  6. Dark Avenger Avatar
    Dark Avenger

    I’m afraid you’ve made a mistake about my reference to the “South Gate Debacle.”
    I’m talking about the city of South Gate, where a majority of the city council became Hispanic, and like other ethnic groups in political history,
    they started looting the city treasury for fun and profit. It became so bad that despite a recall election, South Gate is still suffering from the effects of this “triumph”, and attempts to “empower” Hispanics have probably been set back by 25 years.
    To paraphrase a famous politician, “Watch what they do, not what they say.”