Diversity Makes America Great

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This is Hispanic Heritage Month, and we are only days away from the first national election since the one in which we made President of the United States a guy running on a platform that branded Mexicans as rapists and called for the building of a wall in our southern border. And two years after that fateful presidential election, the guy we put in the White House still feeds his “base” the same kind of polarizing venom that got him there.

So how can we make sense of Hispanic Heritage month in this vicious environment? Maybe by simply emphasizing that it is Diversity that Makes America Great (DMAG). That should be the answer to the Make America Great Again (MAGA) slogan, and not just from the so called resistance to the “MAGAlomaniac in Chief”, or from the decadent Democratic Party (almost as decadent as the Republican Party), but from all Americans who have a clear understanding of what our nation has always been about.

This should not be a concern just for Hispanics. The vitriol been spewed by the guy at the White House spares few ethnic groups, and it is even aimed at religious affiliations. And don’t tell me he and his crew of aficionados is simply hoisting the flag of legal immigration: that is simply not true.

Again, it is clear that xenophobia never had anything to do with America’s greatness. The truth is exactly the opposite: openness to people of the most diverse origins made us great.

A case in point is that of the recently departed US ambassador to the United Nations, Nikki Haley. Mrs. Haley is the daughter of immigrants from India. She was born Nimrata Randhawa. During the past presidential election she openly opposed the guy (she subtly referred to him as an “angry voice”) who won it, especially when he proposed a ban on Muslims. This is what she said back then: “When you’ve got immigrants that are coming here legally, we’ve never in the history of this country passed any laws or done anything based on race or religion. Let’s not start now”.

Mrs. Haley is also a good foil for the guy in the White House when it comes to his mysoginism. She was the first female governor of South Carolina –she was the youngest governor in the country when she was sworn in- and boldly decided to remove the Confederate flag from the South Carolina Capitol grounds –the guy in the White House tweeted “the people of South Carolina are embarrassed by Nikki Haley” when she did that.

So why all the love, smiles and regrets when Mrs. Haley announced her desertion from an “administration” that just sat an openly partisan justice in our Supreme Court. Well, the guy in the White House thrives in chaos and all kinds of nonsensical confusions –“there’s a stench coming out of the Department of Justice”, “the Federal Reserve is out of control”, “I fell in love with little rocket-man because of his beautifully written letters”, etc., etc.

Due to that foggy state of confusion, you may think that we are no longer the same nation we were just a few years ago. That we should turn our back to a past where we fearlessly welcomed the diversity that made us great. That we are now, hopelessly, a nation of people who fret about most things around them, and therefore need an arsenal at home to feel safe. Or you may even count yourself among those Americans who think only those who look like themselves, who pray as they pray, and who are as clueless about the world at large as they are, have a right to be called Americans.

But if you feel otherwise, and whether you are Hispanic or not, make sure you vote in this next midterm election. I can think of no better way of celebrating a Hispanic Heritage that belongs to all Americans. DMAG