How Democrats Discriminate Against Minorities: A Conversation with Esteban Hernandez

This conversation originally appeared, translated into Spanish, on Esteban Hernandez’s website Contrapoder News, in reference to an article I wrote regarding Democrats’ discrimination against Republican Cuban Americans, which appeared in Restoration News several weeks before. The conversation with Esteban is reprinted here, in English, with his generous permission.

Why were you interested in doing research on this topic?

As someone who used to be on the Left, working in universities and with people connected to think tanks and corporate media and other Democratic centers of power, I noticed how they talked about Trump voters. They called them uncivilized, backward, unsophisticated, ruled by passion not reason, animalistic. I also learned there was a history to this: beginning in the 1890s, people in big national institutions criticized different groups, especially ethnic groups like Irish and Italians, and Slavs and Jews, who wouldn’t bow to their authority. Living in Miami the past year and a half, I’ve noticed a lot of the same language as New York and Washington DC Democrats used about Trump voters being used by local media and Democrats to talk about Cuban Americans who vote Republican in large numbers. I started to collect examples to use to build a piece.

What are the key elements that you found when writing this article?

The language used about Cuban Americans who vote Republicans is really terrible: bigoted, offensive, inaccurate, stereotypical. And it’s never condemned by big institutions in the way racist language against other groups is. Here are a few examples from different sources that I quote in the article: “Miami is living proof Cubans wouldn’t know what to do with democracy if they had it." "There’s no IQ test to run for office; if there was there would just be nobody in office in Miami.” Miami politicians use "buffoonery and cheap demagoguery.” Right-wing Cubans have “this need for a sort of strict, father figure” who embodies “toxic masculinity.”   Miami Mayor Francis Suarez, the son of Miami’s first Cuban-American mayor, is a “mayor with a bullhorn screaming to a crowd of people”; is “not ready to be on the world stage with adults”; and is “just a little boy in his father’s suit.” Miami is “tribal,” and unfriendly to “mutual compassion and empathy.” It’s not a “free place where people are friendly and rational”; it’s one where leaders are “toying with people’s emotions,” fueling “fanatical passions” and “fanatical flames.” Republican Cuban-Americans are “zealous” and motivated by “bitter[ness]” to “punis[h]” politicians. They approach politics like a “real-life telenovela” “excrement hit[ting] the fan” and “a Miami Dolphins home game.” They engage in “raucous applause and loud whooping,” “personal attacks,” “salvo launch[ing],” and creating an “overheated political climate” thanks to their “emotional and psychological scars.”  They have “revanchist politics.” What other minority group gets cast in stereotypes, in this case conjuring the “irrationality” of the tropics, without broad-based media condemnation?

Do you think the Democrats will try to change their narrative to regain their support from Latinos or will they exclude those who already voted against them in past elections?

I don’t think Democrats will change their basic narrative—they’ll keep pushing illegal immigration and hope that illegal immigrants will see Democratic institutions as their protectors from evil Republicans. Given Democrats’ strategy, one line of argument Republicans should start using is that legal immigrants from our neighbors in Cuba and Latin America in general--traditional, religious, working and middle class people--are part of Making America Great Again!

Why do you think there's no tolerance for minorities who don't adapt to the democrats' vision of how they need to behave, or what they need to believe in?

Democrats have no tolerance for immigrants who won’t toe the party line because the whole result of immigration laws supported by the modern Democratic Party is to keep immigrants docile. Starting in the 1960s with President Johnson, Democrats imported immigrants from many countries in small numbers rather than allowing America to take big groups like it used to from 1800 to 1960—Irish, Italians, etc. The only exception to this rule, because of their importance in the Cold War struggle, were immigrants from Cuba and (to some extent) other Latin American countries. The sheer strength in numbers of these immigrants, particularly when operating out of Miami, is such that they can’t be broken into small groups and controlled. And Democratic administrators and managers hate that—it isn’t part of their vision of how immigrants should be.

What can you conclude after writing this this article?

The attacks on Cuban Americans who vote Republican are symptomatic of a bigger problem in American institutions Democrats run. People in our institutions have a blind spot when it comes to Latin America. They treat it as backward, unsophisticated, uncivilized. And this is extremely weird because, though there are political problems in some of these countries, Latin America is a huge part of western civilization! The origins of many Latin American countries are older than the United States! And that heritage lives today: look at these countries' incredible religious heritage, and their truly diverse, sophisticated cultures. But American institutionalists, mostly Democrats, were educated to look to Europe. Just on the level of American self-interest, the result of their obsession has been China superseding American trade in Latin America! Trump Republicans are beginning to address this problem by shifting the focus away from Eurasia—see, for example, the appointment of Marco Rubio, who makes Cuba and Venezuela major causes, as Secretary of State. This will help American security, and hopefully attract more votes for Republicans from immigrants from Latin America.