Latino Pride

For all the 47 million (and counting) Latinos in America, this has been a historic week and one would be ignorant not to acknowledge the 17% (and growing) majority minority pride. Please hold all applause until I finish announcing all the awards.
First, Sonia Sotomayor becomes the first Latino Supreme Court Justice. Though her opposition is concerned with “her statements and rulings on hot-button issues such as gun control, affirmative action and property rights” and think she is “intent on reinterpreting the law to conform with her own liberal political beliefs,” her summa cum laude from Princeton, editor of the Yale Law Journal and managing editor of the Yale Studies in World while at Yale Law School, 11 years on the Court of Appeals (Second Circuit) and several other impressive lifetime accomplishments make those 31 naysayers feel pretty intellectually and professionally inferior.
Second, George Lopez, “one man, no water, no towel, no stool, one kidney sold out the AT&T Center” in San Antonio, Texas. He must be funny if, after ABC cancelled his show, Nick At Night picked up his reruns, Showtime gave him his first comedy special in 2005 called George Lopez Why You Crying? and his second (America’s Mexican) and third (Tall, Dark and Chicano) specials were live on HBO. I watched it to see what the hype was about and boy was I lost. I laughed half the time and the other half I was like “Huh?!?!” Even my girlfriend – acting as a translator for my brother and I – was perplexed at some of the Spanish. We even took his advice and Googled some of the phrases. Had I not taken Japanese instead of Spanish in high school, I probably would have been laughing as hard as the Latinos in the audience. HBO should have made it available in SAP for the non-Spanish speakers.
Third, CNN will show what it is like to be Latino in America. Technically, this did not happen this week, but I needed a third point to make all my English teachers happy and complete my three layers of a hamburger essay. After the success of Black in America and Black in America 2, Soledad O’Brien will host Latino in America when it debuts in October.
Knowing that the Black community has been the front-runner for Civil Rights and equal treatment of members of the United Colors of Brownetton – most times enduring high levels of punishment to enjoying the high levels of reward – it is encouraging to see Latinos use our slipstream to assume the lead and continue the race. The animosity between the Black community and the Latino community that has been erupting in recent years in LA is a step in the wrong direction. There needs to be more cases of Locke High School in Watts that show Black and Latino unity.
George Lopez is not the first and will not be the last person to foreshadow America in 5 years:

There are a lot of Latinos out there and the Republicans, I’d be a little afraid you know to not have our vote, you need our vote and yet you want to get rid of us out this country. When hotel rooms can clean themselves, when food can cook itself, when little white babies can raise themselves, then maybe we’ll leave this country. But until you start doing things for yourselves, the only question you need to ask yourself is: "What can Brown do for you?”

George Lopez

Tall, Dark and Chicano