Unmasking MAGA Hispanic Man

As a liberal American who has never lived in a state where my presidential vote counted (thanks to our white, male, landowning founders having created a little system of disenfranchisement called the Electoral College), it’s long been hard for me to fathom why so many slices of the US electorate eagerly organize against themselves. There’s the Log Cabin Republicans, serving queer conservative interests (while sidestepping their party’s ingrained homo-and-trans-phobia) since 1977; and Black folks who subscribe to the jurisprudence of the only Black man on the Supreme Court, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, a far-right, anti-affirmative action zealot. (Whose philosophy, I might mention, is shockingly rooted in Black nationalism. But that’s a puzzle for another column – or rather book. Check out Corey Robin’s The Enigma of Clarence Thomas.) That said, ever since Trump descended his faux golden escalator onto the political scene, ranting incoherently about “Mexican rapists,” a new demographic head-scratcher emerged: the MAGA Hispanic (and specifically MAGA Hispanic Man). Which, of course, has sent the mainstream media into a frenzy for the past four years – especially in these days and weeks before US President-elect Biden’s victory (wow, it felt good to type that!) – trying to find and then figure out who the nearly 30 percent of Hispanic voters claiming to support Donald J. Trump really are.

And to read the rest of my op-ed on who he really is visit Global Comment.