Ayala: Racists of color deserve to be called out for their comments, ideals – San Antonio Express-News

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U.S. rapper Kanye West, center, attends the Givenchy Spring-Summer 2023 fashion show during the Paris Womenswear Fashion Week, in Paris, on Oct. 2, 2022. (Julien De Rosa/AFP/Getty Images/TNS)
FILE PHOTO – Kanye West arrives at the Vanity Fair Oscar Party on Feb. 9, 2020, in Beverly Hills, Calif. West, who goes by Ye, is ending the contract between his company Yeezy and the struggling clothing retailer, confirmed his lawyer in an emailed statement to The Associated Press Thursday, Sept. 15, 2022. (Photo by Evan Agostini/Invision/AP, File)
SAN ANTONIO — This is where we are.
Kanye West, entertainer and mogul, spouts anti-Semitic hate and wears a shirt at Paris Fashion Week that says, “White Lives Matter.”
He showed up on Fox News to explain himself, receiving sympathy from the ultra-right Tucker Carlson, who assured him that his wide-ranging ramblings are totally understandable.
It was instead a chaotic mess of right-wing ideology desperately seeking coherence and relevancy.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, several council members can be heard on audiotape using racist tropes to describe a Black child and the city’s indigenous Mexican community.
It’s hard to see how any of them will get out of this with their political careers intact.
In a country that continues to suffer an unwillingness to reconcile a racist past and where state legislators bar the teaching of that history, both instances must be called out.
And they have to be called what they are: anti-Semitic and racist. That the mogul is Black and the council members Mexican American makes no matter. None get a pass because they’re members of groups most often on the other end of racist attacks.
They’re part of a long, ongoing pandemic, a national disease that’s indiscriminate, that’s expanding rather than contracting. Few are keeping track of infections and breakouts.
Let’s begin with West, who was locked out of Twitter and Instagram when he said he’d go “death con 3 on JEWISH PEOPLE,” an apparent reference to a military readiness system called Defcon.
West later defended himself by saying he couldn’t be called anti-Semitic “because black people are actually Jew also.”
It’s important to note that Black people have no immunity to racism, even against other Blacks.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) wasn’t alone in denouncing West’s comments, saying there’s no excuse for using a “white supremacist slogan and classic antisemitism about Jewish power.”
Then in Paris, West celebrated his new line by wearing his “White Lives Matter” T-shirt. It was a dog whistle, a signal to fellow racists while claiming ignorance.
The slogan, “White Lives Matter,” has been embraced by the Ku Klux Klan, neo-Nazis and white supremacists. The ADL and Southern Poverty Law Center consider it hate speech.
West attacked the legitimacy of the Black Lives Matter movement, perhaps worse than the “All Lives Matter” phrase did. Both suggest white people have been similar or equal targets of racism. It’s absurd on one level, callous on another.
West doesn’t get a pass because of his mental health struggles. He reportedly has a bipolar disorder. It’s no excuse for his ongoing comments that appear to be a part of his values, which have been described as Christian and evangelical.
In Los Angeles on Sunday, another example of racism was exposed in a leaked tape in which City Council President Nury Martinez, a Latina, called a White colleague’s Black toddler “ changito,” which means little monkey in English.
She also disparaged indigenous Mexican immigrants in Los Angeles’ Koreatown, describing them as “short little dark people.”
Though she resigned from her post as council president, she remained on council as of my deadline Monday as calls for several council resignations continued.
Racism is pervasive in the United States. It’s based on ignorance and fear and deep-seeded hate. Generations have not killed it.
In some cases, it also comes in handy to advance oneself politically, as it did for conspiracy-loving white supremacist Marjorie Taylor Greene, who allegedly serves Georgia in Congress and recently told an adoring crowd at a Trump rally that immigrants are a menace.
They’re “on the verge of replacing you, replacing your jobs and replacing your kids in school and coming from all over the world. They’re also replacing your culture, and that’s not great for America.”
She meant white America.
It’s hard to suggest an antidote for the train wreck involving the latest incidents of racism, especially in the silence of the conservative right.
I take my medicine in reading about those doing what they can. I Googled “Dolly Parton,” the musical genius who always finds a way to respond to hate with love.
Her most recent project was a bill in California that’ll provide children from birth to age 5 with a free book every month. The program will begin June 2023 and received bipartisan support.
In a world of racists that includes Kanye West and a few Latino L.A. council members, be a Dolly Parton.
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A newspaper journalist for almost 40 years, Elaine Ayala has held a variety of journalism jobs, including news reporter, features editor, blogger and editorial page editor. She covers San Antonio and Bexar County with special focus on communities of color, demographic change, Latino politics, migration, education and arts and culture.

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