Latino News and Opinion

Two candidates in the March 2 Republican primary in Texas suggested their defeats implicated “ethnic bias,” “racial bias” and “ethnic angst.”

“Microaggression” might have better categorized their complaint.

After losing to little-known challenger David Porter, Republican incumbent Texas Railroad Commissioner Victor Carrillo scalded fellow Republicans in an e-mail. “Given the choice between “Porter” and “Carrillo,” he said, “the Hispanic-surname was a serious setback” with a “built-in bias.”

In post-election wrap-ups, some commentators responded that Carrillo lost valuable time when he underwent brain surgery for a benign tumor, his father and half-brother died, and his campaign was less than a well-oiled machine.

In the Harris County (Houston) Tax Assessor-Collector race, Leo Vásquez, who was considered good at the job after his appointment to succeed Hispanic Paul Bettencourt, lost to Don Sumners.

Vásquez evidently miffed social conservatives by cohabiting with a married woman. After the primary loss, his campaign manager and girlfriend, SuZanne Feather, fired off an e-mail saying there were “many similarities” in the result with that of Carrillo. Vásquez told the Houston Chronicle he was perplexed how Sumners could hardly spend any money nor mount much of a campaign and win handily.

One Houston news account stated that because some Hispanic candidates ran strong across Texas, the two sour grapes candidates were unfairly blaming “racially polarizing voting.” One reporter in Hispanic-predominant San Antonio, wrote that three local candidates would agree with Carrillo, in an interesting reversal, because they were NOT Spanish-surnamed and lost to Hispanic candidates.

Trying to make sense of the complaints and counter-complaints can make a straight line look like a pretzel.

There is, after all, only a nano-difference at the margins between bias and preference.  To trend one way or another is not necessarily ethnic or racial discernment or preference. But anti-social behavior (say against gender, religion, ethnic, race, etc.), as discriminatory acts, is a well-established legal wrong.

But, what about the indignities, offensive and coded language that send messages of intolerance and encourage ostracization? What does it mean when someone says something like I overheard the other day about a construction contractor, “He’s going to show up anytime now with his Mexicans.”

Is this bias? Racism? Incivility? Ignorance? Stupidity?

What does it mean when someone intentionally votes for someone else to avoid casting a ballot for someone with a Spanish surname? What is the message there? What kind of prejudice did Tom Tancredo mean to kindle at the recent Tea Party convention, when he referred to Barack Hussein Obama?

Fortunately, Derald Wing Sue, an expert on discrimination, enlightens on matters like this, in “Microaggressions in Everyday Life:  Race, Gender and Sexual Orientation.” He is no lightweight. Sue has served on the President's Advisory Board on Race, and was president of the Society for the Psychological Study of Ethnic Minority Issues. He co-founded the Asian American Psychological Association, and is a former president of the Society of Counseling Psychology of the American Psychological Association. 

Sue has developed the first categorization of conscious and intentional actions, slurs and racial epithets, even as unintended slights or social cues, when dominant groups attempt to subordinate minority groups, make them uncomfortable, marginalize and inflict a mental, emotional and even physical toll.

Sue claims studies indicate racial micro-aggressions have a devastating impact, “even more terrible than overt acts of conscious racism or hate crimes.”

When microagressions become actionable, like voting for or against someone, as Carrillo and Vásquez were evidently asserting as an element in their defeats, these macroaggressions could be seen as forerunners of electoral muggings. It’s something to watch and to apply the right term to describe what’s taking place.

Something that at first might sound like sour grapes could be the sound of the microaggression turning macro.