I stopped at the local tienda, craving tres leches cake. Which alas they were out of. (Mañana they promise.) While there I noticed, lined up along a counter, a row of cookie jars, all alike, all in the shape of the stereotypical snoozing Mexican. You know the guy. Sombrero. Siesta. Posed as if sitting on the ground leaning against a handy wall. This particular version also featured a large red pepper on his hat, as if nobody would get the “Hey, here’s this clichéd Mexican!” message without that.
These were the Latino equivalent of a blackfaced lawn jockey. But in context it was also the equivalent of going into a soul-food restaurant and finding a line of blackfaced lawn jockeys.
I was kinda shocked.
Now, this place is as authentically Mexican as it gets. Go in early in the morning and you can watch the kitchen ladies patting tortillas into shape. The food? Ohhhhh, the food they make! Very simple. Only a few items. But fresh and genuine as can be. The coolers are filled with Mexican softdrinks, flan, and my beloved tres leches cake. Unless you speak Spanish, you have to communicate with the cooks via the store owner or his son. While the place has a huge and devoted clientele of gringos, it’s also the place for Mexican workers to enjoy lunch. Authentic.
Meaning … I guess if they want to display or sell images of Mexicans snoozing under giant stereotypical sombreros, they’re entitled.
Still, I’m not talking mere cliché. Mexican food and clichés together are hardly unusual. Who hasn’t dined in a restaurant whose walls feature a decor of striped serapes and velvet bullfighters? But those are neutral or heroic images. Siesta guy? Heck, the lawn jockey comparison might not be strong enough. He might be more akin to this character.
The tienda also gets a lot of tourist trade, and I’d love to know what the passing SJWs and/or crusading Latino-rights types would think.
OTOH, while I found it a little embarrassing, it’s also pleasant to be reminded that not every member of every “oppressed” group in the universe trades in taking perpetual offense at such things.
I never had tres leches cake before, so I consulted Mr Google. I saw photos and descriptions of it and it sounds delish. Upon entering a search for “tres leches cake Rochester NY”, I found out that it’s served up at El Latino Restaurant that’s at 1020 Chili Ave. at the edge of the Westside of the city. It turns out that location used to be a Kentucky Fried Chicken and when I was a kid, I’d finish my afternoon paper route on nearby Westfield St and on occasion walk up to the Kentucky Fried Chicken and treat myself to some fried chicken. I’ve got to amble on down to the El Latino and try some tres leches cake.
BTW, there was a local controversy concerning a panel on the historic Dentzel Menagerie Carousel that’s located in Ontario Beach Park. A blogger for the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle wrote a blog identifying a panel on the carousel that depicts “pickaninnies”. In all of the years that I’ve ridden it and took my kids to ride that carousel, I never noticed that panel, but once that blog was published in the newspaper, the local SJWs came out in force demanding that the panel be removed. They put up such a fuss that the panel was removed and at the cost of over $37,000, it has become a traveling racism exhibit. I hope that the same doesn’t happen to the tienda where they have the cookie jars in the shape of the snoozing Mexican. Some people take things way too seriously.
As we see so often, “oppressed” groups have license to depict themselves pretty much any way they want, hence the selective permission to employ the storied “N” word. Not being a member of such a now privileged class, for example commenting on another’s view of our past http://www.espn.com/nfl/story/_/id/19840805/colin-kaepernick-travels-ghana-independence would get me in great trouble in some circles. Never mind that he couldn’t have considered who sold his black ancestors (his biological mother is white and he was adopted by white parents) into slavery in the first place. He even wore a Castro T-shirt before an away game in Miami. That went over like a lead balloon.
Last I heard, northern Mexico is mostly desert. I’ve also heard that deserts tend to be rather warmish at mid-day.
I’ve read that mid-day siestas are commonplace, which to me show as a sign of common sense. Pedro Gonzales ain’t stupid. At mid-day he snoozes.
For a time, I worked at a place where we took naps after lunch. You don’t have to fight the post-prandial slump and you awaken refreshed. It was one heck of a hard habit to break.
These days I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that a bunch of black-masked college children trashed an obscure Pacific Northwest Mexican restaurant, beat up staff and clientele, and smashed a bunch of offensive cookie jars – in the name of tolerance.
Rochester Veteran, Scott Joplin (the most famous composer of ragtime music) wrote a song entitled “I am Thinking of my Pickaninny Days”. I have a copy; it’s rather sweet. I don’t think it gets played much these days, though. Just sayin’ . . . .
Laird, I commented to the author of the blog article that first brought this to everyone’s attention:
Andrea Raethka, where does the witch hunt for “racist” cleansing stop? I’ve ridden the Dentzel Carousel many times and I never even noticed the subject of your commentary. I’m sure most people wouldn’t have noticed it, but even now that I do know the history, isn’t eradicating that history akin to what was done in the Soviet Union and other Marxist countries? Let’s not go down that road! Most people will see it for what it is, a caricature of a bygone era, something we’ve thankfully moved past.
People make mountains out of mole hills and there are some who are perpetually offended.
BTW, I just listened to “I am Thinking of my Pickaninny Days” on youtube and it’s very Joplinesque. 😉
My daughter usually buys tres leches cake and I love it. To die for!
Probably not many Stephen Collins Foster songs heard these days.
These were the Latino equivalent of a blackfaced lawn jockey.
Really? I don’t think that’s true down here in Texas. Siesta figures are all over the place, in a wide array of media, on display, and for sale in mercados, on both sides of the border, in authentic as well as turisty contexts.
Our best Mexican restaurant has murals like this:
http://www.mamacitas.com/sites/3369a51ba318529dd5e8454d32025640/images/100_8284.JPG
(When Mamacita’s was built the owner had his employees pose for the figures, which I thought was kinda cool.)
The controversy at the time was that the building has a dome. Since the owner emigrated from Iran, some ignorami concluded it was “Muslim.” (Haji is Christian, one reason he came here, and about as patriotic an American as you see in these parts. And the dome is a major feature of Mexican architecture.) The complainers got corrected pretty quick.
Dang. Now I’m hungry for tamales and chili.
I don’t think it gets played much these days, though.
I know what you mean. Try singing “Dixie.”
I went back a few years ago to the public high school in Virginia I went to, they had replaced the flag pole and turned what is left of the school into a library.
That flag pole use to have a plague that said;
Donated by the Klu Klux Klan with date.
Erasing the past seems to be a big thing in Virginia now, there’s big fights in multiple cities over statues of southern civil war hero’s.
That is why I have made it my duty to make sure that my children and their children all know about the past as much as possible because that is the only way to make sure that the truth is never lost.
I had never heard of the Pickaninny Days song; I actually find it quite moving (I find Dixie moving, too). The Stephen Foster songs aren’t too common these days, I guess. I last heard one many years ago sung by nearby observers of a demonstration. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Old_Black_Joe It took a while before I could recognize it, as the people sang like cr*p.
I was too busy running around yesterday to respond in this thread. So very briefly …
Yeah, tres leches cake is sumptuously scrumptious.
The blue, blue PNW clearly ain’t Texas. 🙂 But I love that mural, larryarnold.
Here’s a recipe for Quatro Leches cake, if anyone’s interested: http://thepioneerwoman.com/cooking/tres-leches-cake/
(Warning: pic heavy!)
Haji immigrated back in the 1980s(?) and started a very successful hamburger restaurant. (Think Fuddruckers-style.) Then he built and opened Mamacita’s. It’s a very popular place to eat, and also a very popular place to work, particularly for our local college kids. After it was going he opened another in New Braunfels. Now he has six Mamacita’s around the Hill Country. Then he did a do-over, building a new restaurant here about twice as big. (Referenced above.)
Meanwhile he raised a family. He was out with his granddaughter one night, and she wanted ice cream. After that he added a Dryer’s Ice Cream Shop to the building.
Among other community things, he gave the city $15k to fund several years of Fourth of July fireworks.
Now, let’s talk about how immigration is so bad. 😉
If you ever get down around San Antonio, I’ll take you to see all the rest of the murals in Mamacita’s. And of course, buy you the best Mexican supper.
larryarnold, San Antonio was the place I was introduced to Mexican food in a little Mom and Pop place in 1974, when going through USAF Basic Training at Lackland AFB. Been hooked ever since!
“If you ever get down around San Antonio, I’ll take you to see all the rest of the murals in Mamacita’s. And of course, buy you the best Mexican supper.”
You’re on, Larry. Might be a while, but you’re definitely on.
And man, Haji must be some ball of fire.
I favor immigration by people who come here legally with the willingness to assimilate. 🙂
But I’ve met quite a few good-guy working-type wetbacks. Even worked a few, which makes for some interesting stories.
Comida Mexicana! Que bueno!
FYI: I have been duly informed by my progressive son that the term “SJW” is a derogatory slur. I told him that I thought that’s what they call themselves. He said, no. Who knew?
I’m no expert on Mexican food, but a friend of mine in St Louis who spent time in the West and Southwest claims that the best Mexican she has had north of Texas is in Appleton, Wisconsin, which I always thought was a bit odd in this white-Northern European enclave overflowing with Swedes, Germans, Poles, and Danes. It is true, we have many Mexican restaurants owned and staffed by Mexicans, many of whom came here to work in the dairy farms and never went home. I assume many of the staff are here illegally…I can’t prove it and I really don’t care.
My next door neighbors are from Central America, though I don’t know where because she doesn’t speak English and I don’t know squat about Spanish. But they keep their grass cut and are respectful to the other neighbors.
I like the yard sign in front of a house one block away “I don’t care where you come from, I’m just glad you’re here.” However, I didn’t much care for their “Hillary” sign last Fall.
“I favor immigration by people who come here legally with the willingness to assimilate.”
Well, since the US Constitution forbids the federal government to regulate immigration, the first part is easy 🙂
But assimilation? To the extent that America is a great country, it’s because immigrants brought the best parts of their culture here, not because they left those things behind and just went with whatever they found here.
San Antonio was the place I was introduced to Mexican food in a little Mom and Pop place in 1974, when going through USAF Basic Training at Lackland AFB. Been hooked ever since!
My FIL fell in love with SA the same way, only back then (he was there when Pearl Harbor was hit) it was Army Air Corps training. Thank God. I wouldn’t have met his daughter if she had been raised in Pittsburg, PA.
He spent the war flying out of Iceland in the nose of PBYs hunting submarines. They made bets on how many planes/day would slide off icy runways. In the 70s he was an usher at Travis Park Methodist, and he and Mom were taking trainees home for Sunday lunch.
There’s a difference between enriching the culture with immigrant traditions, and the folks campaigning to “Turn Texas Blue” because we don’t do things the way they did in California and New York.
Ron, if your progressive son will read it, I strongly suggest John Bagot Glubb’s essay “The Fate of Empires…” http://people.uncw.edu/kozloffm/glubb.pdf In it Glubb takes an objective look at the life cycles of civilizations from many angles, including discussions of welfare, immigration, lionization of entertainment and sports figures, the increased intensity of factional infighting, and even the political ascension of women. After you both read it, you might ask him how the progressive agenda improves our society’s prospects. I did once send it to a progressive “friend” who emailed back that Glubb hadn’t said what to do about the decline. Sometimes it’s comfortable, I think, to miss the obvious.
US Constitution
” Article I, Section 9
1: The Migration or Importation of such Persons as any of the States now existing shall think proper to admit, shall not be prohibited by the Congress prior to the Year one thousand eight hundred and eight, but a Tax or duty may be imposed on such Importation, not exceeding ten dollars for each Person.”
The way I read this is after 1808 the congress is allowed to regulate immigration as per the US Constitution and therefore any law passed by Congress doing such must be executed by the executive.
“The way I read this is after 1808 the congress is allowed to regulate immigration as per the US Constitution”
There is no power to regulate immigration in the Constitution.
After 1808 there COULD have been a power if the Constitution had been amended to create one.
It never was amended to create one, so that that defaults to the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.”
And that’s how it was until 1882. In 1875, in Chy Lung v. Freeman, an activist Supreme Court got down in a squat and defecated such a power, but Congress apparently didn’t trust the ruling. They waited another seven years to pass the first immigration law*, and when they did pass the Anti-Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, instead of referencing the Constitution or that ruling, they referenced provisions of a treaty with China (per the Constitution, treaties are also “the Supreme Law of the Land”).
It wasn’t until the 1890s that the feds established the Ellis Island facility and took over immigrant processing from the Port Authority of New York, and even then if you didn’t enter the US via New York, you just came and went without anyone’s permission.
It wasn’t until the 1920s that Congress started really getting into the idea of regulation. It wasn’t until 1947 that you needed a passport to enter or leave the United States. And it wasn’t until the 1950s that they started in on the idiocy we have now.
There’s no, zero, zip, zilch, nada constitutional basis for federal regulation of immigration.
*There were a few federal immigration laws prior to 1882. Those laws allowed federal port officials to enforce (and collect fees/fines attendant to enforcing) STATE immigration laws.
Side note: The matter of a federal power to regulate immigration was discussed. The reason there isn’t one is simple. If there had been such a power in the Constitution, it would not have been ratified.
Oddly, it was the anti-federalists who wanted such a power “to preserve the national character.” But Pennsylvania needed European immigrant labor for its burgeoning manufacturing sector and flatly said “no way.”
Likewise, the slave states weren’t going to ratify a Constitution that interfered with their ability to import slaves.
The compromise was “no such power in the Constitution, and make sure Article V forbids even amending the Constitution to create such a power for 20 years — we’ll deal with it then.”
After 1808, Congress used its Article I, Section 8 authority to regulate commerce with foreign nations to address the slave trade, but it had no such hook to hang an immigration power on.
I agree with Justice Antonin Scalia bench statement in defense of a state’s right to enforce immigration laws where he also explains the federal government right;
“For almost a century after the Constitution was ratified, there were no federal immigration laws except one of the infamous Alien and Sedition Acts that was discredited and allowed to expire. In that first century all regulation of immigration was by the States, which excluded various categories of would-be immigrants, including convicted criminals and indigents. Indeed, many questioned whether the federal government had any power to control immigration-that was Jefferson’s and Madison ‘s objection to the Alien Act.
The States’ power to control immigration, however, has always been accepted, and is indeed reflected in some provisions of the Constitution…..
…Of course the federal power to control immigration was ultimately accepted, and rightly so. But where does that power come from? Jefferson and Madison were correct that it is nowhere to be found in the Constitution’s enumeration of federal powers. The federal power over immigration cannot plausibly derive from the Naturalization Clause. Not only does the power to confer citizenship have nothing to do with the power to exclude immigrants, but, as I have described, the Naturalization Clause was a vindication of state rather than federal power over immigration.
Federal power over immigration comes from the same source as state power over immigration: it is an inherent attribute-perhaps the fundamental attribute of sovereignty. The States, of course, are sovereign, the United States being a Union of sovereign States. To be sovereign is necessarily to possess the power to exclude unwanted persons and things from the territory….
http://s3.documentcloud.org/documents/372493/scalia-statement.pdf
IMHO if a country is to be a sovereign state it must control it’s borders unless of course one was to just look at the whole world as one global community with no borders and no independent laws.
“IMHO if a country is to be a sovereign state it must control it’s border”
That may be true. If so, I’d consider it one more good argument against sovereign states. We’ve been trying that model for about 400 years now and it doesn’t seem to be working out very well.
Longer than 400 years methinks.
First; I wish our constitutional republic was working, the whole weak & limited federal government & God given rights thing concept was & is a good one IMHO.
But everything has to come to an end as all republics before us have, the problem lies in what follows which historically has been total tyranny, something as for me I am not ready to embrace ever whether it comes under the disguise of anarchy or democracy or something else.
The problem isn’t methinks only the type of government we are to have but also the “we the people” who control it, whether that be one person, 1,000 people or a 100 million or more. If “we the people” are rotten so will our government be.
There is no difference to me if a tyrant is one person or those who know (what ever amount of people that be) what is best for the rest.
Individual freedom is what I embrace and you know how the saying goes;
Liberty or death!
“Longer than 400 years methinks.”
Actually, 369 years. “National sovereignty” with “borders” dates from the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.
I reckon if one’s only was to look at geographical borders as a definition of sovereignty and not political, religious or other reasons of unity as historically the definition of what might bind a sovereign tribe or state in ancient times.
City states in Greece predate Christ for example and were sovereign states even if borders were ambiguous to a certain extent.
The argument we have today about border control is not an argument just of the last 400 years IMHO nor is it necessary a debate about borders but a discussion of whether or not a nation can control their sovereignty to thus exist as a nation.
Checking out for a while, but will check back in later, Thomas this has been a good conversation, it is not my intention to argue that my opinion is right, I respect your opinion, it is good for people to have different opinions, isn’t that’s what liberty is all about?
Oh, I’m having fun if you are having fun. But of course you’ve set a couple of my hobbyhorses to rocking — in my view, the age of the Westphalian nation-state, which codified the idea of border-delineated “national sovereignty” as the successor model to feudal “lords drag around portfolios of fiefdoms; this week Normandy may be English, next week it may be French” stuff, is on its last legs. I don’t dare predict what comes next … just that it will be something different.
BTW the only reason I even spend my time giving an opinion is because it gives me pleasure.
Here’s the rub, the different being better odds are slim & none, IMHO.