By JORGE MARISCAL
Counterpunch
In a 1958 CIA information report on
revolutionary activities in
Those of us engaged in anti-racist activism
and research are well aware that many racial stereotypes with origins in
earlier centuries persist in corporate boardrooms, universities, and shop
floors across
As has been widely reported in the media
over the last two years, the Pentagon's interest in young Latino men and women
peeked in the late 1990s when demographic indicators revealed that Latino youth
would be the largest pool of military age youth in coming decades. Because
Latino youth were (and continue to be) underrepresented in the military and
because their educational and economic opportunities are limited compared to
other groups, recruiting strategists have been busy concocting a series of
well-funded "Hispanic initiatives."
For almost a decade, the Pentagon has thrown
millions of dollars at Spanish-language recruitment campaigns and promoted
fast-track naturalization procedures for non-citizens. Even laudable proposals
that would provide provisional residency for non-citizen students so that they
could attend college (the DREAM Act) have been salted with covert military
options (see note below).
The Return of "Scientific"
Racism
One of the founding documents of modern
racism is Count Arthur de Gobineau's The Inequality
of Human Races (1853-1855). This remarkable manual of racist thinking found its
most enthusiastic audience in the German Reich but also exerted its influence
over all Western racisms, especially their North American mutations.
In the conclusion to his chapter on the
"Inequalities of languages," Gobineau
writes: "All the facts, however, mentioned in this chapter go to prove
that, originally, there is a perfect correspondence between the intellectual
virtues of a race and those of its native speech; that languages are, in
consequence, unequal in value and significance as races are also that their qualities
and merits, like a people's blood, disappear or become absorbed, when they are
swamped by too many heterogeneous elements Hence, though it is often difficult
to infer at once, in a particular case, the merits of a people from those of
its language, it is quite certain that in theory this can always be done."
Today, Gobineau's
name is known to only a handful of scholars. But the racist logic that informed
his writings lives on deep in the structures of
During a 2005 training session for employees
of the Department of Defense's Joint Advertising and Marketing Research and
Studies program (JAMRS), representatives of the New York-based Michael Saray Hispanic Marketing firm made a power point
presentation designed to upgrade the military's campaign to attract Latino
youth.
The mission of JAMRS, according to the
official website, is the following: "Our marketing communications programs
help broaden people's understanding of Military Service as a career option,
while our internal government market research and study programs help bolster
the effectiveness of all the Services' recruiting and retention efforts."
The presentation by the Saray group, whose clients
include major corporate players such as Allstate and Geico,
was designed to explain "Hispanics" to JAMRS employees in order to
facilitate the military's niche marketing efforts.
This kind of activity belies the Pentagon's
frequent contention that recruiters do not target by ethnicity. In fact,
reports such as the one prepared by the CNA Corporation in 2004 reveals that
the Marine Corps recruiting station in San Diego, California, collects detailed
information on "economic and race/ethnic distributions in its fifteen
substations and eleven contact areas." The report notes that "Hispanics"
make up 31% of the population in this station area that stretches from the
U.S.-Mexico border to southern
In the "Language and Cultural DNA"
section of the Saray group's presentation, we learn
three important assumptions: 1) "Latinos are culturally 'hard wired'
differently," 2) "Hispanics" are "right brain" and
thus "emotional, intuitive, creative, and visionary" (unlike
"left brain" groups who are "intellectual, sequential,
analytical, logical"), and 3) "America's system of education was
built on a strong cultural bias toward the left hemisphere of the brain."
Citing a study by the influential Yankelovich, Inc., public opinion research firm, presenters
showed audience members a typology of consumers composed of four basic types:
"Fervents, Indifferents,
Practicals, and Emotionals."
According to the study's authors, "Hispanics are twice as likely to be Emotionals."
Simply put, JAMRS trainees were taught
"the Spanish language has not favored intellect over emotion. It's [sic]
bias or thought process has not favored the left brain over the right brain.
This is a real cultural difference." Therefore, the Saray
group's advice to Pentagon ad men devising Hispanic campaigns for military
recruitment is to "avoid blatant overuse of numbers. You want to reach the
heart, not the left brain." To sum up, "the traditions of Hispanic
culture are not necessarily in-synch with the concept of 'mainstream society'
or the 'American Dream.' In general, Hispanics are right brain thinkers. The
marketer must 'acculturate' or risk losing relevancy by continued reliance on
left brain thinking."
The Fastest Growing Segment of the Population-Hispanic Right Brain Emotionals
What is not at all clear is the extent to
which Pentagon officials subscribe to the Saray's
group language-based system of racial types. One can only assume that the
consequences for diversifying the officer corps, to take one area where Latinos
are grossly underrepresented, would be quite negative since undoubtedly no one
wants "right brain" non-logical and emotional officers leading troops
into battle.
A cursory examination of recent recruiting
advertisements, however, suggests that the JAMRS audience, like other
government and corporate policymakers, was already in tune with the contents of
the Saray presentation. Ads featuring adoring
As journalists Tom Hamburger and Peter Wallsten, authors of One Party Country: The Republican Plan
for Dominance in the 21st Century, told Amy Goodman on a recent "Democracy
Now!" program, Republican planners in the 2004 election operated from a
set of stereotypes similar to those promoted by the Saray
and Yankelovich marketers: "George W. Bush won
40% of the Hispanic vote nationally, which is a pretty remarkable number for
Republicans and they did this with a strategy that some strategists call the
"I love you" strategy, where they manage to appeal to a sense of
emotion, rather than issues, in the case of Latinos."
According to this racializing
model, "right-brain" irrational Hispanics, unsuited for
"America's system of education," will vote their way into Karl Rove's
projected Republican majority, and for decades to come fill the ranks of the
lowest echelons of the service sector, the prison system, and the combat units
of America's imperial army. Were he alive today Che
Guevara, whom a CIA operative once described as "fairly intellectual for a
Latin," would undoubtedly be asking progressive Latinos what they plan to
do about it.
Jorge Mariscal is a