May 15, 2018--Midcoast: The Whites of Their Eyes

Let's call him Ralph. He's a retired ferryboat captain and whenever he shows up at the Bristol Diner we enjoy seeing him and catching up with what's on his mind. One thing we know, he's always full of surprises. 

Monday morning he was all excited, talking about a recent visit to one of South Carolina's Sea Islands. It's mainly populated by descendants of former slaves and the people there, the Gullahs, speak a language of their own that's a Creole amalgam of English and several West and Central African languages.

Not knowing much about them, Ralph spoke primarily about the quiet beauty of the place. "I love the sea," he said, "Made my livin' from what the sea, the ocean, and the bays gave up to people like me who never got much education. In my case . . ." he winked, and left the rest unsaid.

"I've never been to the Sea Islands," I said, "If I had a bucket list that would be on it."

"You know, one of the most interesting things there is that they speak Elizabethan English. Can hardly understand a word of it."

I didn't correct him. He was on a roll.

"Nice people, the Sea Islanders. And there's one thing you can say about them for sure"--he paused to see if I was paying attention--"after dark all you can see are their eyes and teeth." He chuckled at that.

Before I could think what to say, he was on to something else.

"Too bad we don't have Mexicans 'round here."

"What!" I said, still thinking about the eyes and teeth.

"I mean, they're looking for help here. A dishwasher, another cook. Too bad Deb can't make a couple of calls and find a Mexican to work for her."

"I assume you mean a legal one," I said.

He smiled. "An illegal would be alright with me."

"Really? That would be alright with you?"

"I just said that," Ralph said. "You got a problem with it?"

"Yes and no," I said.

"That's a surprise coming from you," Ralph said. "I thought all you liberals want to see us have open borders. So let's start with your problem with this."

I said, "But first I need to say I am not in favor of rounding up and deporting 10, 11 million people who are here without documents. That to me would not only be impossible to carry out but cruel. Many undocumented people have been here for decades, work hard, and don't make any trouble. A carefully crafted pathway to legal status--doesn't have to be citizenship--makes sense to me."

"So far I'm with you," Ralph said.

Surprised, I continued, "But then again to be here they broke the law and we should do all we can to make sure there isn't a new flood of illegal immigrants, seeing those already here on a pathway to legal status, entering the country seeking the same kind of deal. From history we know that in 1986 Ronald Reagan of all people signed an immigration reform bill that gave 3.0 million amnesty. It didn't stop people entering the country illegally. Probably did the opposite. I wouldn't want to repeat that."

"We pretty much agree," Ralph said, "Our economy would collapse if they weren't here or if we moved to send them back to where they came from. And it's not just washing dishes and picking lettuce that they do. There'd be a lot less homebuilding going on and lots of new businesses wouldn't exist. We need them here and need to figure out how to get all this fighting about them behind us. It's tearing us apart. Of course that's just what a lot of politicians on both sides want for their own purposes."

"We do agree," I said, admittedly surprised by that.

"Some of my people came here from Eastern Europe," Ralph said, "To tell you the truth maybe not all legally, and here I am to tell the tale. They made their contribution to America and I also tried to. I guess I'm a sort of like one of those Dreamers." At that he laughed, coughing as he did so.

Later that night, when I replayed the tape in my head of our conversation, I though again about how complicated this place is and how much I like that.

February 25, 2016--Jose the Fanatic

Of the many startling things about Donald TRUMP's decisive victory in Wednesday's Nevada caucuses, beyond the fact that there was an historic turnout and he garnered more votes that Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio combined, was the fact that he also won easily among Latinos.

So much of both parties' campaigns is challenging conventional wisdom--that to win one needs a powerful, big-data-directed ground game (TRUMP has won three of four primaries and caucuses with hardly any ground game at all); that it's all about who can raise the most money (Jeb Bush and Ted Cruz did and look what happened to them--TRUMP raised hardly any, spent even less, and look who's leading); that Americans won't vote for a socialist (Bernie Sanders take note); and Latino voters overwhelmingly vote for Latino candidates (ask Rubio and Cruz about that) the same way blacks tend to vote for blacks, Jews for Jews, and so on.

In Nevada, TRUMP ran away with 45 percent of the Hispanic vote. Note, in 2000, George W. Bush was elected largely as the result of appealing successfully to Latino voters--he got an historic 40 percent nationally.

So TRUMP, who pretty much everyone having access to a microphone said would be lucky to get 10 percent of the Hispanic-American vote considering how he castigated illegal immigrants (mainly, to him, Mexicans) defaming them by labeling them "murderers" and "rapists" and promising that he would deport 12 million, that Donald TRUMP thus far, especially with the Latino-rich voters of Nevada, has run the table. How it might translate to the general election is for the moment another matter.

But his "appeal" to Hispanic voters is worth some thought. Why would any vote for him?

For insight I am reminded of one of my favorite Philip Roth stories--"Eli the Fanatic."

It is also one of his most overlooked, perhaps because of the direct way in which it deals with and excoriates secularized, seemingly-assimilated Jews.

Set in suburban America, it concerns a non-observant Jew, lawyer Eli Peck, who is hired by his Jewish neighbors to convince a recently-arirved group of orthodox Jews to close the yeshiva they established in their midst. The other Jews in town are embarrassed by the visible presence of these Hasids, fearing they will call attention to them and thereby interfere with their desire to blend in among the largely gentile residents of Woodenton.

To make a short story short, Eli fails in his attempts to get the ultra-orthodox to back off, including abandoning their traditional ways of dressing, and, after an epiphany of his own, gives up his normal wardrobe and appears before his stunned and outraged Jewish neighbors in Hasid garb, thereby exposing the ethnic roots of all of them.

Could it be that TRUMP's appeal to a large and growing percentage of Latino voters is because increasing numbers counter-intuitively support his views about illegal immigrants--that many favor building the wall and deporting those here without proper documents?

As in Roth's Woodenton, those Hispanics in the United States for decades and for others in the Southwest for many centuries, from even before Europeans landed at Plymouth Rock, for Latino citizens, for Hispanics who are comfortably "Americanized," having so many other Hispanics here illegally threatens their sense of relatively unobtrusive assimilation.

For Roth's secularized, well-educated, and affluent Jews, having Hasids in their midst, they feared, exposed them to their Christian neighbors who would not distinguish between them and the ultra-orthodox. Seeing them both in the same light and thus out of step with American culture, still rooted in Eastern European beliefs and superstitions, and wanting to live and cling together in self-imposed ghettos.

Perhaps the United States' most successful and assimilated Latinos, who are not self-hating, have some of the same kinds of feelings and support TRUMP as one way of declaring loyalty to the great American immigrant narrative, not wanting their place in society to be confused and conflated with those who came here illegally and live insufficiently in the shadows.

Philip Roth