Subscribe
NewsOne Featured Video
CLOSE

As much as I’m offended by the term “illegal alien” and as much as I’m an advocate of people from any part of this hemisphere running amok throughout the United States freely, I must admit that I was amazed by not amused that there was an outcry among Latinos about a mural painted in Arizona that depicted them in a way that was, in their words, “too dark”.

Too dark?

Even the most casual student of history knows that of all the western European nations, the country that has the least claim to “whiteness” is Spain.

Literally a stone’s throw from North Africa, conquered by the Moors in 711AD and then held all the way up until the 18th century, it wouldn’t be too much of a stretch to consider Spain an almost biracial European state.

Add to that the fact that most of what we consider to be Latinos are this hemisphere’s descendants of Spanish conquerors mixed with, in most cases, Native America and African bloodlines and one begins to wonder where the “white” comes in.

And don’t get me wrong; I get it. Even now, with a Black president and all, Black people still ain’t the group that other groups want to be lumped in and associated with—unless of course, they need something.

Then they copy all of their strategies right out of our civil rights playbook.

Gays seek the right to marry using us as an example and former Mexican President Vincente Fox tried to get away with the biggest backhanded compliment of all time when he suggested that illegal immigrants from his country were doing the jobs that “not even Blacks want to do.”

Meanwhile, we’ve taken these slights and insults and still (usually) found a way to support the causes of any people we’ve considered to be oppressed just because we know the feeling and we wouldn’t wish it on anybody else.

But a mural depicting you guys is too dark?

C’mon, y’all…

Don’t make me stop parading against those ridiculous illegal immigration laws just because a misinformed few don’t know who their friends are.