The Ecphorizer

Hispanics
Wes Hight

Issue #53 (January 1986)


A controversial view of an American problem


Editor's Note: You may find that this article expresses a racist attitude; others have. If you don't like the idea of reading such material, please skip this page.

...the author was assaulted by one of the audience.

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[quoteright]The main reason we are printing this article is because of its history. The author read it at the regular meeting of a Mensa writers' Special Interest Group in Texas, in January 1986. After he finished there was a heated discussion, at the end of which the author was assaulted by one of the audience. He wound up in the hospital with abrasions on his neck and a cracked rib.

At the risk of inviting similar treatment from our subscribers, we feel that Mr. Hight has a right to express his views in peace. We feel that the problems he addresses are real and significant, particularly in areas of the US with large Hispanic populations. We feel that they merit discussion. We also feel that Mr Hight's views are a legitimate part of such discussion. Even if his views were proved utterly wrong, they would be of interest simply because some people appear to agree with him. Ignoring the other side never resolves an issue.

When we founded THE ECPHORIZER, we hoped it might engender controversy "by exposing the genuine differences of opinion among thinking people." If any of our readers care to rebut Mr Hight, in a way we can print, please let us hear from you.

THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT; it is the general and philosophical part, roughly one-half of the article Mr. Hight originally read. The other half was a specific comparison of the actions and attitudes of two local officials with respect to Hispanics in Texas, which we feel is of purely regional interest. The excerpt is printed here in its whole original form, not edited in any way.

In the U.S., Americanization (even of Emily) of immigrants has been a historic process: Poles, Czechs, Slovaks, French, German, Irish, Bulgarians, Russians, and scores more of ethnics have been Americanized. But Hispanics will not be Americanized. They must have the ballot printed in Spanish; calls to Federal Offices must be greeted with recordings in English and Spanish. No other of the more than one hundred American ethnics has the federal government busy speaking and writing their language. As an example of prejudice, this special treatment of Hispanics is the especial, unmatched paradigm. Such intrinsic prejudice, peculiar to Hispanics especialamente, is what makes Hispanics so overflowingly conscious of prejudice—about which they make the word "they" particularly meaningful in their ceaseless outcries about prejudice. They thereby, qua THEY, exhort the gods about the worst fate to befall any creature: to be born Hispanic.

Probably more than, and at least equal to, anyone in this room, or anyone who could possibly read this essay, I have an anthropologist's intimate knowledge of the Hispanic dilemma. I was raised around them, among them, had many friends (and still have) of Hispanic origin; I taught them in the public schools. The overriding desire of most Hispanics is to escape the Hispanic culture, its fatalistic machoism, its emphasis on irresponsible (church-feeding) pullulation via parturience, the sibling-glut that causes near-orphaning and a life- long anxiety and nervousness and often psychopathic self-interest. Most Hispanics are disgusted with themselves primarily, and with other Hispanics secondarily. Their hatred of nearly everything follows closely on that; crippled consequently: unable to adopt the ways of any other culture, they at last fall back upon the Hispanic "culture" in a frenzy and practice the most deleterious cultural anthropomorphism recorded in the annals of humankind.

Admirably—yet poignantly—many Hispanics direct their children out of the Hispanic fuddle. I know a school principal, Hispanic and very intelligent, who has prevented his children (now adults) from learning Spanish. Many Hispanics take this one small step for themselves—as a gigantic leap for their children. Yet the U.S. government promotes the writing and speaking of Spanish in its official procedures; an insult to hundreds of other ethnics.

Given power in the mainstream, many hispanics childishly regard their rise to office as an injunction to "Be Hispanic!" When they fall back upon their Hispanic experiences as a result, they quickly come up with conniving criminality, the consequence of the torpor of self-development in the tumult of a Hispanic childhood. Two members of the Strohling- Along-The-River (with Hispanic Arts Association connections) are now sentenced to 5 years in prison, each, simply because they received money in trust and immediately stole large sums of it. Anything coming your way in Hispanic childhood—take it! Fair or foul, it is survival. Less than five years ago a Hispanic female clerk of the local FBI was placed in charge of a slush fund. She immediately stole from it. Hispanic bank tellers have been in the news here: money came into their purview, so ....

Take it that the human condition overall is a horror. The Hispanic condition in that context is the horror of horrors. 


Poet and commentator WES HIGHT, whose interests include futurism and guitar playing, is an active Mensa member in San Antonio, TX.

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