It comes as a shock but shouldn’t be a surprise that three members of the Los Angeles City Council, Democrats all, got caught on tape trafficking in nasty, racist rhetoric. While the nation’s most powerful Republican turned blatant bias into an art form — proposing a ban on Muslim entry to America, trying to discredit a Latino federal judge by calling him “Mexican,” warning against admitting migrants from “shithole countries,” fearmongering with lies on race and crime, and so on — liberals and progressives have too long tolerated brands of bigotry in their midst, which manifests itself most often in urban power struggles.
Vile ideas run throughout the secretly recorded 80-minute conversation from last October between Councilwoman and then-Council president Nury Martinez (who resigned from public office Wednesday), Councilmembers Gil Cedillo and Kevin de León, and labor leader Ron Herrera. Martinez, who shoveled out the worst of it, called some recent migrants “short little dark people.” She accused a white councilmember of using his Black son as “an accessory” and said “this kid needs a beatdown,” then added that he “parece changuito,” which Google Translate tells us means “looks like a monkey.”
She said “The Judios” — that’s the Jews — “cut their deal with South L.A. That’s how I see it. And they are gonna screw everyone else.” Of L.A. District Attorney George Gascón, Martinez said, “F—k that guy, he’s with the Blacks.”
The recording is also a window on a fact frequently ignored in a country that distills many racial narratives to Black and white: Hispanic Americans and other groups often struggle with their own backward stereotypes. Virulent white nationalism may be America’s most serious domestic terror threat, but no ethnic group has a patent on prejudice.
We’re glad to see President Joe Biden, the nation’s most powerful Democrat, demand the implicated officials step down from their posts, and happy heads are rolling. Former President Donald Trump had no shame, nor do mini-Trumps like Alabama Sen. Tommy Tuberville. Those interested in leading with decency, whatever their party identification, should never simply accept behavior they deem unacceptable.
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