Little S.A. Singer proves he is a class act. René A. Guzman, Chron.com
A soft-spoken boy with a big voice isn't about to let obnoxious online remarks bring him down — especially when he has so many positive ones in his virtual corner.
Fans of Sebastien De La Cruz have rallied on social media to support the young mariachi, whose rendition of the national anthem Tuesday at the Spurs game against the Miami Heat set off a flurry of racist tweets criticizing the 11-year-old.
“On the positive remarks, I just want to thank everybody for their support,” Sebastien said at a hastily organized news conference Wednesday. “With the racism remarks, to be honest, it's just the people how they were raised. My father and my mother told me that you should never judge people by how they look. You should judge them on the inside. And the saying that I go by is never judge a book by its cover.”
On his Twitter account @selcharrodeoro, he said, “Please do not pay attention to the negative people. I am an American living the American dream. This is part of the American life.”
So what we know, is that the kid is way, way smarter than the morons who are tweeting racist drivel his way. Unfortunately, he's also much smarter than the "expert sources" that Guzman chose to quote for this story.
Several San Antonio civil rights activists and academics had their own take on the racist online comments spurred by Sebastien's emotional delivery of the national anthem.As I understand it, and as it was reported, there were several racist tweets directed at Mr. De La Cruz, and it has not been reported that all of them (or even most of them) came from Caucasians. While I don't deny that there are many Caucasians out there who are not fond of those of Hispanic descent, there are also many in the Black community, the Asian community and the Middle Eastern community who have been known to make anti-Hispanic statements as well. The statement "The Star-Spangled Banner doesn't just belong to white people" is as racist as the anti-Mexican tweets directed at Mr. De La Cruz. The difference is, those who made the offending tweets are portrayed as rubes, while Mr. Martinez is cast as an expert in the field of civil rights.
While proud of Sebastien, they said crude reactions to his appearance on national television Tuesday night — clad in a mariachi traje — reflected a wider anger aimed at Latinos and immigrants, and over immigration reform legislation in Congress.“I was very proud of him,” said Jaime Martinez, founder and chairman of the César E. Chávez Foundation. “But it shows we still have a long way to go. There's still a lot of bigotry in this country.”
“The Star-Spangled Banner doesn't just belong to white people,” he said. “It belongs to all of us.”
It doesn't stop there:
Irma Mireles, a civil rights activist since the 1960s Chicano Movement, said she was horrified by the tweets.
“At first, I got angry,” she said. “Then I realized these are ignorant people, and they're afraid of the future, and the future is brown.”
No Ms. Mireles, the future is not "brown" at all. The future, is multi-colored. As a matter-of-fact, the PAST was multi-colored as well. Now, by making that statement I'm not suggesting that some colors didn't have an advantage over others, only that the American cultural tapestry, especially in Texas, is an intricate weave of a multitude of cultures, all (in their own ways) trying to work, somewhat, together to achieve a better society. If "white privilege" is a bad thing, then it stands to reason that "brown privilege" (which is what Ms Mireles seems to be advocating) would be equally bad. The reason we have the past is to (hopefully) learn from it. If we continue to follow the narrow-minded down the paths of racial division then we're always going to be less of a Nation than we can be.
It's taken all of that to get to my point. Namely, that the media (especially bad media outlets such as ChronBlog) are incapable of reporting a story on race without enabling racists from one side or the other. Whether it's in the style-book or just a piece of outlook bias on the part of the reporter rearing its ugly head, racism is still racism, no matter how it's doctored up. This doesn't mean that, historically, racial tensions and attitudes were different, only that we shouldn't be held hostage to them (which many, especially white progressives with a huge yoke of white guilt think we should) when we attempt to move forward.
For some reason the MSM seems incapable of grasping this fact, and intent on promoting the worst in our society when it comes to race. Because it's important to note, that for all of the idiots on-line tweeting stupidity there were many more tweets of support from people of ALL colors. This is a big thing, a thing that reveals a truth: Yes, we still have some way to go on racism, but we are making progress each and every day. We'll never eradicate it fully from the world because you cannot fully control the mind and hearts of man, but you can minimize the effects, and remove them from public policy.
To accomplish these goals however we need to have an honest conversation on race, and stop relying on academic definitions and justifications for certain groups to continue practicing it with no negative connotations. Racism, in every form, is a disgusting world-view. Leave it to the ChronBlog to try and make value judgements on one group's racism vs. another. All in the name of page views (of course).
