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February 18, 2009 11:57 PM UTC

I'm Not a Racist. I Eat Mexican Food

  • 47 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

We almost missed this gem from over the weekend, but we’re glad we had a chance to share. Check out this story from The Greeley Tribune:

A T-shirt Weld District Attorney Ken Buck is selling was imported from Mexico, just like many of the illegal immigrants Buck battles.

The T-shirts made by Gildan, a Montreal-based textile manufacturer, were purchased through a Windsor graphics shop that pressed Buck’s message poking fun at the American Civil Liberties Union’s lawsuit on the front and back of the shirts…

…Buck said he didn’t initially know where the shirts were made. Just because the shirts were made in Haiti and imported through Mexico, that doesn’t mean he should not support a product from there, he said.

He said the insinuation is that he’s racist. He is not, he said.

“I vacation in Mexico, I eat Mexican food,” Buck said. “I don’t dislike Mexicans.” [Pols emphasis]

Ah, yes, the oft-tried, seldom effective way to deflect racism ploy of saying “I’ve been to Mexico!” Former Republican Rep. Bob Beauprez tried using it to disastrous results back in 2005 (remember ‘Mexican Time?’), and many other Republicans throughout the years have used the fact that “they’ve been to Mexico” or “like Mexican food” as irrefutable proof that they aren’t, in fact, racist.

Buck is considered a top contender to challenge Betsy Markey in CD-4, but if his handling of this situation is any indication, she needn’t be too concerned. We don’t know if Buck is a racist or not, but given his ludicrous and insensitive attempts to dispel the charge, we’re starting to assume he might be. Either way, we can indisputably determine from these statements that Buck is, in fact, a moron.

To be fair, Buck isn’t the only moron to have used this form of “logic” to somehow prove that he isn’t a racist. But it’s still nonsense. It’s no different, for instance, than saying this:

“I can’t be a sexist. I have sex with women!”

“I don’t hate Jews. I eat kosher hot dogs all the time!”

Or, one of our all-time favorites, “I’m not a homophobe–I work with a lot of gay people.”

This logic is ridiculous on so many levels, but particularly if you look at it the other way around. If you don’t like Mexican food and have never been to Mexico, does that mean you are a racist?

What if you refuse to eat Rocky Mountain Oysters? Does that mean you hate Colorado?

If you don’t have any gay or lesbian co-workers, are you a homophobe? What if you have gay and lesbian co-workers who haven’t yet come out of the closet? Are you still okay, then? Or are you a homophobe?

If you’re looking for a microcosm of why the Republican Party is still lost in the wilderness, look no further than Ken Buck and “Swastika Guy,” both of whom hang out with fellow Republicans who seem completely oblivious to the damage they do to their own images.

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47 thoughts on “I’m Not a Racist. I Eat Mexican Food”

      1. The anti-illegal movement is definitely racist and definitely losing. Typical response to go on the offensive, but that’s fine. Most Americans see through the anti-illegal’s bullshit and call it for what it is.

        1. Just because most illegals are Mexicans and Central Americans does not mean that trying to keep them on the other side of the border is racist.  They happen to be of a different cultural and genetic pool, but that is not why some of us think that borders are OK.  

          Don’t forget, there is a portion of illegal aliens that are Canadian and Irish and smaller numbers from other countries.  Sadly, they can blend in a lot better and hence catching them is more difficult, but on occasion they get deported, too.

          Are you aware of how Mexicans treat THEIR illegal aliens from Central America? Murder, robbery, rape, no deportation proceedings often await the Central Americans entering Mexico.  Are the Mexicans racist in protecting their southern border?  

          1. That may be true, but I’ve followed this debate for the past three years and the self-appointed spokespeople for the movement always come off as hostile to brown skinned folks. Their failure to redress this and curb such sentiments doesn’t make them look like they view Hispanics as equals.

            Their obsession with our southern border belies their interest in preventing illegals from the rest of the world too.

            Hell, even you don’t have a good, reasoned argument to pose on the matter. I know, I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt because we agree on most other issues. But no rational person believes that “reconquista” is in any way a legitimate movement or threat, like you apparently do if I read your comments on the matter correctly.

            I call it as I see it.

            1. blue-collar, American Labor Defender, Democrat. This is the one issue I always chide him about, because I just don’t buy the logic: It’s okay too villify the greedy capitalists who organize in order to protect their disproportionate wealth (on the national scale) against the encroachments of labor, but it’s equally okay for American labor to similarly organize (or use its organization in part) to protect their disproportionate wealth (on the global scale) against the encroachments of foreign labor. Uh-uh. Doesn’t work.

              But we still love Paul, despite his faults. 🙂

          2. But I’m “out there.”

            Borders are products of historical militarism, either in the form of outright conquest and robbery, or of more equally matched contests over access to resources (mostly land). The political formations that have been thus consolidated have not generally, throughout the broad span of history, been associated with “nations,” which is a term closely related to “race” (a nation is a people with some shared identity, an ethnicity, some cultural-historically and ostensibly genetically defined subset of humanity). But part of the emergence of modernity was the creation and ideal of the “nation-state,” the then progressive notion that each “nation” should be politically autonomous. So, nation-states are divisions of people, imposed or arrived at by means of force, designed to advance the interests of the members of a “race” (nation), in opposition to those of all other “races” (nations). Sounds pretty racist to me.

            RE: our southern neighbors. Most economic analyses seem to arrive at this conclusion regarding ILLEGAL immigration: It yields a net economic BENEFIT to the United States, though unevenly distributed, such that the federal government benefits from tax dollars collected far in excess of the corresponding costs imposed (eg, illegals often pay into FICA, but will never collect social security), while local and state governments bear social service burdens in excess of the corresponding tax revenues they collect. Consumers benefit, and few workers are displaced, though the competition for work tends to impact those closest socio-economically to the undocumented workers, often the most recently legalized immigrants of similar backgrounds.

            More importantly, it benefits the global economy much more robustly (removing barriers to the free movement of the factors of production, including labor, something conservatives should favor, but, being the hypocrits they are, generally don’t). And, more importantly still, it increases the justness of the distribution of wealth in the world, by allowing those with least (well, actually not least) greater opportunity to access more.

            And it helps resolve our demographic crisis, by replenishing workers at a far faster rate than our own fertility is doing, thus paying for the retirement of a huge wave of baby boomers about to place a huge burden on our work force.

            Not to mention the cultural injection, which, despite the xenophobic nut-jobs out there, is really very healthy for the always evolving culture of our country.

          1. but that didn’t make them right.

            The beauty of the United States is that it is founded on the proposition that what most people believe or want is NOT the final word, but rather the protection of certain “inalienable rights” is. When we fulfil our ideal more perfectly, we will understand that to preserve that principle only vis-a-vis those who happen to be members of our club is an insult to its basic wisdom. The recent Supreme Court ruling on the necessity of extending constitutional protections to those held under American auspices, such as the prisoners at Guantanamo (all denied due process, and therefore not dismissable as “terrorists”), was a step, albeit a small one, in that direction.

            If all people are endowed with certain inalienable rights, then for the American government to deny anyone, born anywhere, of those rights by any affirmative act of its own is a slap in the face of humanity, and an act of hypocricy.

            How to implement this philosophy vis-a-vis immigration policy is not completely clear, but one thing is clear: We need to stop defining those born outside our borders as some sort of sub-human infestation, and start trying to reach some reasonable accomodation between our ideals and pragmatic necessity. We are nowhere near that point yet.

            1. Aristotle made a statement that was not factually accurate.  I countered that.

              Whether the 2/3rds of Americans who are fed up with illegal immigration are “wrong,” that’s another thread.  

              1. I noticed his factual mistake as well (that the American people are not, by and large, ready to hand out “welcome to America” sombreros at the southern border), but then attributed to you a different purpose in pointing it out. Another thread, then. At dawn, with pistols….   🙂

                    1. Hago errores con la gramatica por la flata de platicar.

                      De todos maneras, Espanol es un idioma muy bonito. Asi son los Campesinos tambien.

                    4. Don’t worry, we weren’t talking about you.

                      Where’s the Colorado Pols official English policy posted?

                      All I said is that I make grammatical errors in Spanish for the lack of chatting or practice.I also stated that Spanish is a beautiful language as are the people who come from the fields.

                      Then we get sxp151 saying what the fuck…..

                      true tolerance…

                      I’m used to people not liking what I have to say because it touches a part of themselves that they don’t like.

                      Not everyone loves Raymond……..

      2. we did beat them, remember?

        And we will continue to, in the sense that the world will inevitably evolve, those ideas that are more useful and more appealing gradually displacing those that are less so. It’s not that the right has gotten everything wrong (though it has come incredibly close to doing so), nor that the left gets everything right (far from it), but rather that the left is based on the concept of doing better, of refining social institutions in pursuit of an improved social (esp. political-economic) world, as measured by its fairness, its sustainability, and its provision to the populace of reasonable opportunity to access the things that people need and desire. It’s a very simple proposition, and not one confined to current methodologies. It attracts smart people, compassionate people, people with a sense of justice, people who believe in the human enterprise, people who recognize that we’re just a bunch of apes but strive to be the best darn apes that we can be. In contrast, the most vocal of those on the right, seemingly all but the most moderate of those on the right, have surrendered to the fact that we’re a bunch of apes by simply denying it, and as a result display the most ape-like behaviors of all human beings.

        You see? I’m not calling you a racist. I’m calling you a monkey. Now, don’t you feel better?

        1. .

          why do you save your best stuff for AS ?

          By the way, a bit of good news finally.

          I checked, and I didn’t make it tho the “Prosperity for America” protest,

          so I couldn’t be Swastika Guy after all.

          .

  2. His statement is about as stupid as assuming that a person who is against ILLEGAL immigration is a racist.

    Or that someone who doesn’t favor gay marriage is a homophobe.

    Where is Pol’s outrage about equally stupid trains of thought?

      1. You and your side constantly makes hypocritical judgements based on people’s beliefs.  You’re so full of it, I can barely stand it.

        Being against gay marriage is not homophobic.  If you think it is, you clearly don’t know the meaning of the word and have no justification of using it on anyone.  Democrats like you have nothing to rely on other then calling someone who doesn’t agree with you a homophobe or a racist.

        There are honest disagreements that exsist between good people.  Those disagreements or viewpoints do not always stem from hate.  I don’t understand why you lefties can’t understand that.  I don’t understand why your view of people is so low that you have to assume that someone is either too stupid or filled with hate if they don’t subscribe to every idea that you have.

        Where is your open mind to look at something through my eyes?  Where is your open mind that would let you see that people can have a disagreement without being a racist or a homophobe?  Somehow I don’t think it will come through for you this time….

        2. …for Best Emotional Breakdown in a Supporting Role.

          Yes, please everyone open your mind to the idea of closing the door on other peoples’ civil rights!!  Just breathe deeply, relax, and let your mind be open to the possibility that not everyone deserves civil rights as much as you do.  AH….yes….can you feel the gently breeze now gently blowing over your opened-up mind?  Go with it…soon you’ll be amazed at how open your mind can be to all injustice.

        3. I think Twitty nailed this one right on the head. Opposing gay marriage is “homophobic,” as the word is now commonly used, because of the nature of “the honest disagreement” that motivates it. If one believes that there is some fundamental imperative that requires discrediting the emotional and social bonds of two homosexuals who want to marry, such that those bonds must not be raised to parity with the bonds that heterosexual couples legally enjoy, then they have announced their belief that homosexuals, as homosexuals, don’t deserve the same respect and legal acknoweldgement that heterosexual couples deserve. I’d call that homophobia.

          Yes, yes, there are very “reasonable” arguments offered, none of which are in reality at all reasonable. Marriage is neither a requirement of legal procreation, nor is procreation a requirement of marriage. Human history has endured endless change, endless evolution of social institutions, without falling to pieces, and it’s reasonable to presume that it can endure one more (in fact, it’s reasonable to presume that it can less endure blind resistance to such inevitable change, in general, than it can endure the change itself). Most of the arguments about why gay marriage is a bad idea bear an uncanny, and uncomfortable, resemblance to the arguments against interracial marriage a generation or two ago. What a coinkidink.

          Back to the topic of illegal immigration, I argue above, it several installments (lest you folks not get enough of me), why attitudes toward “illegal immigrants” are, in fact, racist. Of course, the bottom line, and the one that few are likely to agree with, is that borders are racist, but, hey, I like to put the wild ideas out there.

        4. as he explains it more eloquently and accurately than I can.

          But I will reaffirm his point: That it doesn’t have to be hate to be homophobia or racism.

          And I’m not a Democrat. People keep forgetting that, and I keep reminding them…

          1. I should hasten to add that I don’t equate racism and homophobia with being evil or incorrigible or anything like that; most of it is just ignorance, and ignorance can be overcome. That’s why racism has faded to a fringe (who I guess are incorrigible) and that’s the way homophobia is heading too.

            Other people use these terms to express their own anger or even hatred; I use them as fitting adjectives, given that less loaded terms don’t exist to describe the phenomena I see. Sorry if that stings, Haners and parsing; you’re both good guys. But given the opinions that you express, what else can I call it?

      2. Homophobe, one who fears homosexuals.

        One can can find dislike, or religious reasons to not approve of homosexuality, but may not necessarily fear those individuals.

        You’re pretty free with the slur labels tonight.

        1. The literal meaning of the word is not how it is currently used. “Panache” (to revert to one I used recently) literally means a decorative plume on a helmet, but more commonly refers to a stylistic flair. The latter is at least as much its “real” meaning as the former. “Homophobia,” arguably, now refers to a bigoted opposition to gay rights.

        2. Like I said before, I call it like I see it.

          Regarding the “factual error” I made, I counter that the collapse of immigration as a ballot issue is real and can be attributed to the essentially racist nature of the anti-illegal movement.

          The desire for strong borders that you cite and the desire not to have the nation overrun by a bunch of Mexicans are two separate things; conflating them illustrates exactly where you are coming from.

  3. as everyone knows you are supposed to say: “I don’t hate Jews. I eat bagels and lox all the time.”

    The more important question is: Does Ken Buck eat Mexican food or Tex-Mex? One suspects he has never eaten authentic Mexican cuisine.

      1. It was pre-posthumous on a ski lift.  I refrained from talking to him much at all, I didn’t want him to think I knew who he was.    He told me it was hard to fry a hot dog with philosophy.

  5. Es una lastima que no pueda escribir por maquina en ingles tampoco.

    Debe ser una manera para hacer las teclas marcar los simbolos en Espanol, no?

    Yo creo que los Republicanos no les gustan a imigracion porque ellos quisieren que  pobres Americanos deben trabajar por menos de  siete dollares por hora.

  6. or wasn’t it Buck who told the “joke” about changing the name of the White House if Obama was elected? Or which other non-racist republican was that?

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