Could Obama be the first Latino president?

The Latinization of racial identity

Ten years ago, writer Toni Morrison called Bill Clinton the nation’s first black president. The winner of the Pulitzer Prize for her book “Beloved”, Morrison never meant it as an accolade, but as a characterization of the former President’s background and how he was treated around here in Washington.

That was ten years ago. A decade later an African-American may win the presidency.

I’m no Pulitzer-prize winner, but I’d like to proffer this: no matter on what side of the aisle you sit, if elected, Barack Obama.will be the first Latino president of the United States.

Let me say that again. Obama could be the first Latino president of the United States.

Ok, let me give you a moment to digest this.

Let me explain.

The press may call Obama black, but he is equally white. In that, he has more in common with Latinos than either European or African-Americans.

Let me explain further.

Unbeknownst to most people in the states, even to Latinos themselves, Hispanics belong to no one race.

To many of you, this may be befuddling. Well as a Latino myself, I didn’t fully grasp it until I went to Spain first hand.

Fifteen years ago, I was on a train traveling to Granada to see the Alhambra, the Moorish palace in southern Spain. On the train with me was a young Anglo woman from Alhambra, California who grew up with Mexican-Americans. We struck up a conversation.

At one point, she said with a bit of astonishment: “The Spanish are so white. They really don’t look like Mexicans.”

I concurred and thought a while to myself. Cesar Chavez doesn’t look Spanish; he looks native American. I don’t look Spanish, I look native American.

Despite that revelation, it didn’t really sink in until three years ago. I was at a reception for minority journalists at the Gannett headquarters, the nation’s largest newspaper publisher where I worked at the time.

I struck up a conversation with a man who I thought for sure was Mexican-American from the Southwest. He indeed was from the Southwest, but he was no Latino – but Navaho. Derrick Henry works as a producer on the web site of the New York Times. He explained to me that people often come up to him speaking Spanish and asking him what country’s he’s from.

He’s not the first Latino or native American to be confused for one or the other. An activist in Austin named Gavino told me once on a trip to Georgia that he was confused for being a member of the eastern band of Cherokees. Another indigenous woman I knew said Spanish-speakers often stopped her on the streets of L.A.

All of this points to one thing – a fundamental difference in the way English-speaking and Spanish-speaking Europeans colonized the world.

Everywhere the English went to colonize, they brought racist segregation – in New Zealand with the Maori, in Australian with the Aborigines, in India with every Indian, in the Americans with the native Americans and of course in South Africa with the Africans.

In contrast, everywhere the Spanish and Portuguese went they brought racist assimilation. The missions in California, Texas and southwest were not churches for Spanish immigrants, but rather camps to forcibly Latinize the native Americans.

In the early 1500s, Spanish priests urged their European colonies to inter-marry with the native Americans in an effort to Latinize and Christianize the natives.

Many Mexicans point to Martin Cortez – the son of the conqueror of Mexico Hernan Cortes and his native American guide Malintzin –as the first true Mexican.

A century later, the English-speaking state founded by Catholics - Maryland - enacted the first U.S. law criminalizing interracial marriage in 1664.

Can you image the child of John Smith and Pocahontas described as the first true American?

The result has been a more fluid idea of race wherever the Spanish and Portuguese colonized.

Today someone would not hesitate to call Sammy Sosa from the Dominican Republic “Spanish” but wouldn’t think of calling Bob Marley from nearby Jamaica “English” even though Marley’s father hailed from the British Isles. Mayan activist Rigoberto Menchu is routinely called “Spanish” but no one would think to call native American activist Russell Means “English.”

No one questions whether the Latin identify of Salma Hayek – the Mexican bombshell actress - or Shakira Meberak – the Colombia rock superstar, though both have “funny names” like Barack Obama. .

Salma and Shakira both have Arabic names and Arab ancestry.

Don Francisco – the host of one of the most popular Spanish-language television shows Sabado Gigante – is one of the world’s most recognizable Latinos. His ancestry is German and Jewish. His family escaped the Holocaust.

We think of ourselves as Latinos no matter what our background. As a whole, that obscures the pigeonholes that English-speaking Europeans would have us fall into.

In that, we are like Barack Obama. He may be called African, but he is also European. He may be treated as an other, but he is also the same.

I leave you with the words of the Jose Maria Morelos – the leader of Mexican independence from Spain in 1812.

“Let that mouthful of conditions (native Americans, mulattos, mestizos etc) be abolished by calling them one and all Americans.”

By the way, Mr. Morelos’ ancestry was European from Spain, native American from Mexico and African.

Barack Obama’s candidacy shows we in the United States have moved one step away from the English idea of race and one step closer to the more inclusive Latino one.