Posts Tagged ‘Latinos’

The Phoenix Suns become Los Suns for a day to support Arizona’s Latino community

May 9, 2010

If you’re in business you don’t want to offend your customers. Not even half of them. That’s why you avoid taking a public position on controversial issues. If asked you just say, “I don’t know about that,” or That’s politics, my game is basketball,” or whatever.

So what do you do when you think your state has acted against “our basic principles of equal rights and protection”? If you’re in business in Arizona you keep your mouth shut. Why alienate the 70 percent of Arizonans who favor the state’s new legislation to crack down on illegal immigrants and those who help them or hire them? Or else why alienate the majority of Latinos who despise the new law?

Why? Because you believe in something and you believe it’s your duty to speak up. Robert Sarver, owner of the National Basketball Association’s Phoenix Suns, had his team wear special jerseys emblazoned with Los Suns for the playoff game on May 5, Cinco De Mayo, the day that Mexican Americans celebrate their Mexican heritage.

Amid the rancor over the new law, Sarver said he was taking the controversial action “to honor our Latino community and the diversity of our league, the state of Arizona, and our nation.”

Hooray for Sarver and Los Suns.

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Posted in Ethics-general, Politics, Sports, Tolerance, Uncategorized | 4 Comments »

Palin was the best part of the Tea Party convention, the audience the worst

February 14, 2010

Sarah Palin gave a rousing speech at the Tea Party convention, raking and mocking President Obama with zingers like “How’s that hope-y, change-y stuff workin’ out for ya?” The crowd enthused, having paid $350 to hear the speech live, and the left’s commentators tut-tutted over Palin’s writing notes on her hand to help her remember her key points. All in good fun.

But there was a truly ugly side of the convention. Tea Partiers can no longer pass off the birthers as a tiny group of nuts that aren’t representative of true Tea Partiers. Not after the crowd’s wild enthusiasm for Tom Tancredo’s keynote speech. Ex-congressman Tancredo (R-CO) explained that “Barack Hussein Obama” was only elected because “we do not have a civics, literacy test before people can vote.” [Wild cheers]

“People who could not even spell the word ‘vote’ or say it in English put a committed socialist ideologue in the White House.” [More wild cheers]

I’m not sure who he was referring to. Perhaps it was Latinos and African-Americans who couldn’t have voted had there been a literacy test—like in the good old days when blacks were turned away from polls all over the South, no matter how literate they were, because the point of the tests was to turn them away.

I’m pretty sure, however, what the crowd was cheering. It was that Obama voters were others, a different species, not even entitled to be part of the American system. The crowd responded to hate speech with cheers.

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Posted in Politics | 1 Comment »