09/12/17

From An Angry Reader:

Angry Reader Bob McCarthy

For one who loves to cast aspersions on political incorrectness in the use of words, maybe you should ‘splain to your readers your use of the term “Mexifornia” in decrying the Mexican “takeover” of California, as racist a piece as I’ve ever read. I find it shameful that The Bee chooses to run your right-wing screeds every Sunday. Jim Boren once defended you to me for being “local” as in Selma, as if that gives you special cred. It certainly doesn’t.

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Victor Davis Hanson’s Reply:

Dear Quite Angry Reader Bob McCarthy,

Why the unhinged anger?

I do not have to “splain” anything to you, given that you clearly have never read the book Mexifornia. It was a call for legal, measured, and diverse immigration, a return to the melting pot of integration, assimilation, and intermarriage, and an immigration solution that would allow those who broke the law but who are employed, have not committed a crime, and have lengthy U.S. residence to apply for a green card and legal residence in exchange for a national policy of enforcing existing immigration law—in other words, the policies embraced by Bill and Hillary Clinton in the 1990s. It championed a unifying multiracialism rather than a separatist multiculturalism. You have no idea of the origins of the word Mexifornia, which is not my own, but one borrowed from a preexisting and common Latino gang reference that was apparently meant to highlight ethnic tribalism.

If you find it “shameful” to read a screed, then simply do not. And I take it that your efforts to contact the editor of the Fresno Bee, who appreciates diverse views, are evidence that you seek to silence a dissenting voice that you find irritating or perhaps even hard to refute.

I do not seek “cred” as you allege by living in Selma, but rather simply stayed in the community in which I was raised. Yet I find it ironic that, both in my immediate family and in the town I live, I am likely to live a much more integrated and multiethnic existence than you do, who are so eager to call others “racist”—a cry-wolf word that has now lost much of its resonance, precisely because of the demagogic usage such as yours.

Again, calm down. I do not know the source of your quite unsteady bitterness and spite but I suggest you a get a grip on yourself to avoid writing any more embarrassing “screeds” like this one. Otherwise you will continue to sound like one of the proverbial retired territorial grouches who from his porch screams incoherence at young strollers who, he alleges, get too close to his manicured turf.

Sincerely,

Victor Davis Hanson