Argo and the Big Lie about the Latino “Race”
Imagine a movie using a white actor to play an African-American hero in a stirring true story about a hostage rescue. Would that film ever win the Best Picture Oscar? The answer is an obvious “No!” but this year’s Best Picture, Argo, cast Ben Affleck, a white Anglo with no hint of Hispanic heritage, to play the Mexican-American CIA agent Tony Mendez.
The fact that no one protested exposes the common liberal lie that classifies Hispanics as a distinct race, irreducibly different from whites. Obviously, there’s no Latino “race” —the 2010 Census showed 53% of self-identified Hispanics reported their race as “white.” The Left’s attempt to treat Latinos differently from other immigrant groups—Italian-Americans, for instance—is a vile bid to block Americanization and foment a culture of perpetual grievance and separateness.