We know why the media is spending so much time trying to figure out if comedian Katt Williams hates and disrespects Mexicans. That battle of words and race baiting is so much easier to figure out then the other hate battle between Obama and Boehner and Congressional Republicans.
Do we really want to explore why Obama is the first President to be told not to deliver an address to Congress on a date of his choice? Easier to blame politics than race, it would show how little we’ve evolved as human beings.
But why should anyone else care about William’s comments, especially Latinos?
There has been a surprising outcry from Latino advocacy organizations and the general Hispanic population demanding an apology from Williams. Possibly everyone forgot he is a barely literate thug, a marginal talent and someone who sells according to him “uncensored” thoughts. And if we are in a generous mood we could simply say he is an entertainer who is there to entertain with his outbursts.
Please, please save your outrage, social media campaigns and fight for the real racial offenders, the ones that have done the most damage to Mexican-Americans and Latinos in general.
This whole mess started when a video tape of Williams surfaced from his Arizona comic performance from several weeks ago. In it he assails a Mexican audience member who says he loves Mexico. As Williams explains it, he took this opportunity to assert his pro-American stance and showed that patriotism by going into a tirade against Mexicans. Williams urged the Mexican man to go the ‘f**k back to Mexico’. Once again who cares, let’s put his put down in context of the man Williams is or better said the one he isn’t.
Rising from his homeless roots and days as a car thief, Williams has succeeded as an entertainer and comedienne all the while getting in trouble with the law as much as possible. From arrests for burglary, false imprisonment and getting kicked out of his own show for fighting with a paying audience member this is a class ass act.
So why should Latinos care when he gives his version of U.S.-Mexico history: “No this ain’t Mexico. It used to be Mexico asshole and now it’s Phoenix.” “We were slaves. You just work like that as landscapers.” It’s like caring when Glenn Beck tells us to start referring to African-Americans as ‘coloreds’. In defending his anti-Mexican rants to CNN he noted if “I really disrespected Mexicans, I wouldn’t [of] gotten out of there alive.” Wait isn’t that another insult, another sign of disrespect insinuating that Mexicans are thuggish and violence prone. Takes one to know one, I suppose.
As a side bar, I find it amusing when certain factions of the American public demand that everyone who comes to this country or lives here speak English and want legislation to that end. Well what about all the people like Williams who are from this country and still don’t speak English at least not understandable, literate, phonetically correct English – where’s that piece of legislative mandate. I digress.
Where is the outrage and social media campaigns by Latinos against all the efforts to limit minority’s access to the voting booth from voter ID laws to English only ballots to redistricting around minority communities? Where is the outrage when Republican elected officials offer to solve the immigration problem by ‘shooting them dead’ or ‘hunt them with a periscope from a helicopter’? Where is the outrage when banking institutions have done little to keep Latinos into their homes and have caused the greatest devaluation of Hispanic wealth in U.S. history? Where is the outrage that 10 years after being authored the DREAM Act remains just a dream?
Let’s not waste our time and energy on the Katt William’s of the world. Get the battle cry ready to make sure every single eligible Latino voter has no impediment to vote in 2012 and every tool disposable to overcome the economic recession including advocating for certain social programs during the debt ceiling discussions.
katt william, racism, hispanic hate, estelle gonzales walgreen