I think they don’t count because most Latino-Americans are of Mexican or Central American or Puerto Rican origin, and they don’t necessarily identify with Cubans as fellow Latinos to a degree sufficient to outweigh other factors. Latin America is really very diverse.
Most of you are illustrating the very thing I’m talking about - it’s not the candidates’ color that’s the issue, it’s their politics. Here you are feverishly trying to claim a guy named Cruz isn’t really brown because he doesn’t speak Spanish, etc., etc., despite the fact that his features plop him squarely in the middle of the group Republicans are supposed to hate - brown people. And Carson isn’t really black because he isn’t “Compton”?
It’s politics, not race or sex, when it comes to Republican support, and yet the deceit continues that Republicans hate brown and black people. And oh yeah, women…this despite that women make up a huge percentage of Republican voters. As a matter of fact, of the people I’m close to who are the most critical and contemptuous of liberalism, most are women.
Like I said, you want to knock their politics, then knock yourself out (although there’s plenty of dishonesty there too when it comes to Republican values and motivation), but you really need to stop with the Pubbies hate brown and black people and females. 'Cause reality shows over and over again that it just ain’t so.
Exactly. Herman Cain, Allen West and Clarence Thomas are likewise not really black enough, for if they were they wouldn’t be Republicans. :rolleyes:
I don’t think most Republicans consciously dislike/hate blacks, Hispanics, women etc. but its stated platform goes against the interest of most of those in the aforementioned demographics (as well as most Americans in general) which is why you see such lopsided margins for blacks and Hispanics in their voting patterns. Are there exceptions? Sure, but they are similarly Jews who think Zionism is a “racist, colonialist project” like Gilad Atzmon or Norman Finkelstein.
It’s pretty clear you’ve never seen a picture of him. That aside, you do know there’s more to being Latino than skin tone, right? Some of it is about the cultural values and practices associated with the ethnicity, and some of it is about how others deal with you based upon what race they perceive you to be. You see his surname and insist that he’s Latino, and that’s part of what makes him Latino. But everyone else in the universe sees his values, actions, and even skin color, and reads him as white. Latino, sure, but also privileged and pale of skin and not terribly in touch with the culture his father came from. So it’s a real stretch to call him “brown.”
That’s been said about Russell Wilson, the qb of the Seattle Seahawks.
Of course, he comes from money, so that makes him Republican instead of black to some people.
The problem is that each party has a different idea of what’s in a person’s best interest. But this fact somehow never finds its way into the Democratic narrative when it comes to Republicans.
Here’s an amusing little video that almost everyone here is sure to hate, and admittedly some of it is hooey (i.e., income distribution = theft), but at 2:37 it begins a classroom illustration which shows the real reason why Republicans are opposed to socialism/income redistribution. As this video shows, Republicans oppose such philosophies because we feel that ultimately they fail everyone and for the reasons the video describes. But according to Democrats, Republicans oppose them simply because we’re greedy, privileged assholes who hate the poor.
*Disclaimer - I readily acknowledge that “socialism” to a certain degree is necessary and good. Streets and highways, police and fire departments, schools, etc. It’s if and when government sets about to create equality of outcome rather than equality of opportunity that the problem begins, and it seems increasingly that the Democrats are all about that.
It’s going to be quite expensive to maintain the wealth equality of the gambling addicts and serial pyramid scheme victims.
“So, are the Democrats saying its time for cracking rich people’s skulls open, and feasting on the goo inside?”
“Yes they are, Kent.”
Believe me, that’s overrated. Og, the things rich people put in their brains . . . even redneck meth-heads are less disgusting . . .
What, Wall Street? [shrug] We’ll come to some accommodation* with them.
- Accommodation. n. See Guillotine.
You’re the expert.
Yes, this. It’s the same problem with public education. Parents who send their kids to private school always make the same argument: “we’re leaving more funding for the other kids!”. But that would only hold up if those same parents also continued to support every public school funding bond issue that comes down the pike. Some of the more liberal ones may do that, but I doubt it’s the majority.
So is Cuba, though. The majority of Cubans, AFAIK, are actually black. (Those of course were the poor ones in the pre-Communist days.)
Edgar Winter isn’t that white!
Au contraire! The very name Cruz is enough to identify him as a member of the dreaded “brown people” race, and therefore worthy of derision and contempt by us racist Republicans, except…we might elect him President! 
Yeah, Ted Cruz, pretty exotic name, after such white bread as Barrack Hussein Obama. You guys are really stretching the envelope.
Way to epically miss the point. The liberal snark there was based on the notion that liberals don’t mind “exotic” names, but we’re not so sure about conservatives on that front. And we *have *seen conservatives emphasize the “otherness” of President Obama’s name (in particular, when using the full version as you did there).
If it’s really no problem for Republicans, I have to say it is an interesting coincidence then that Cruz uses a folksly, shortened version of his middle name rather than his first name, Rafael.
The Republicans have always valued diversity. Remember James Watt, Reagan’s Secretary of the Interior? He had (and I quote) “a black, a woman, two Jews and a cripple” on one of his panels. You never hear the Democrats talking about something like that.
See? There ya go! 
Seriously though, not using officially PC-approved words or having not yet had them filter down to you is in no way evidence of bias. Yet time and again in my life I’ve seen, read or heard people being jumped all over, and in some cases lose careers they worked years to build, because they blurted out some PC-condemned word that they’d been hearing other people use and been using themselves for all their lives with no ill consequence.
This is why the claim that political correctness is only about being sensitive and treating people politely and with respect is largely hot air. What it’s really about is people of a certain ideology deciding for themselves which words are permissable and which aren’t and bullying the hell out of anyone who doesn’t fall in line, their actual behavior toward others notwithstanding.
You’re conflating two things.
I did not claim that Republicans are racist. I don’t actually think that the average Republican is more racist than the average democrat. I do think that avowed racists are more comfortable with the Republican party agenda, but that’s hardly the same thing.
I did not claim that identifying someone as “brown” makes them racist. Again, it’s arguable, because the very existence of the category is racist, but if I’m engaging in that discussion I have to accept the label too. Or we can be analytical and recognize that the social category exists, and talk about what it means.
You are claiming that Cruz is “brown.” You are making statements about his race, which so far rest solely on his surname, which is Spanish. I am pointing out that Cruz, while he has a Spanish surname and is Latino, is “white” rather than “brown” by all reasonable measures. He’s only half Cuban, for one thing; his mother is an American of Irish and Italian descent. On his Cuban side, his paternal grandfather was from Spain. Rather illogically (but we’re talking about race), we don’t usually consider people from Spain Latino or even Hispanic. His grandmother was a Cuban of Spanish descent.
So much of race is social. A light-skinned Cuban man with money who marries a white woman and lives in an English-speaking household is functionally white in America. A dark-skinned Cuban man with no money who marries a Dominican is functionally black in America. A habitually Spanish-speaking Cuban man with olive skin who marries a Mexican is functionally brown in America. I know this is confusing, but it’s the system we’ve got.