Will Beto Be America's First Latino President? The Same Way Bill Clinton Was America's First Black President?

Syndicated columnist and Fox News commentator Ruben Navarrette claims he's "the most widely read Latino columnist in the country, and the 16th most popular columnist in America." His perspective is distinctly right-of-center and over the weekend he was on the pretty massive anti-Beto bandwagon-- using political correctness against him (cultural appropriation-- which even liberals are starting to hate). The title of his USA Today column, For Latinos, 'Beto' O'Rourke Is Just Another Privileged White Guy Trying To Manipulate Them. Not as savage as Tim Russo's brutal and highly personal take-down (complete with musical critique), Navarrette wrote that "O'Rourke hasn't earned the familiarity he allegedly has with Latinos. He should know that life in America's largest racial minority isn't all fiestas... [T]hat’s basically the refrain I’ve heard from dozens of Latinos who-- unlike the media, which is run by white liberals who are fascinated by other white liberals-- refuse to go loco for Beto."

They’re concerned that Robert Francis O’Rourke, who this week joined an already-crowded field of 2020 Democratic presidential hopefuls, is trying to put one over on Latinos by tricking them into thinking he’s one of them. Or, at the very least, they think that his strategy, or that of his handlers, is to come across to Latinos as a simpatico who connects with them the way that Bill Clinton-- who writer Toni Morrison mischievously dubbed “our first black president”-- connected with African-Americans. At least until Barack Obama came along, and the Clinton machine tried, and failed, to destroy him.

So is that the deal? Is O’Rourke aiming to become America’s first Latino president?

Por favor. Please. Speaking as a Mexican-American, let me spare you the suspense: That zapato won’t fit. Sorry, Beto, you’re no Bill Clinton.

What actual Latinos tell me is that they resent the presumptuousness of this supposed familiarity that we’re told Beto feels with a community that he has done, at best, a mediocre job of representing when he had the chance.

For instance, at a time when Latinos feel under siege by ethnocentrism and anti-immigrant demagoguery, where was O’Rourke on the explosive immigration issue during his three terms in the House of Representatives? Judging from the comments by lawmakers who served with him, it appears he was in hiding.

But hey, let’s cut the guy some slack for going AWOL when Latinos needed him. O’Rourke hails from the border city of El Paso, Texas. Where would anyone encounter immigrants in a place like that?

The Democrat is also criticized for not reaching out to Latino voters in Texas during his Senate race last year against incumbent Ted Cruz, perhaps thinking he had them in the bag and so he could take them for granted.

One Mexican-American professor who teaches at a university in San Diego criticized that the politician called himself "Beto." He said it seems like O'Rourke is taking advantage of his nickname to pretend to be something he’s not.

Another professor and lawyer, who is Panamanian-American, said that O'Rourke hasn't lived the life of a Hispanic man. As a white male, his life was easier. And it still is.

A Mexican-American woman who works in public relations told me he seems condescending. Given his privilege, it is irritating that he seems to pretend that he knows and understands what bothers a demographic that he’s not part of.

The Beto backlash reminds of the idea of stolen valor, the righteous outrage felt by combat veterans when others who didn’t see action claim medals they don’t deserve.

You see, being a member of America’s largest minority-- especially in the Donald Trump era-- isn’t all fiestas and churros. And if you haven’t had your ticket punched, you don’t get to take the ride.

Now let’s deal with this business about the name. Who, or what, gave birth to the legend of Beto?

Robert Francis prefers to be called by that name, and he and his army of supporters-- the Beto bots-- swear it has nothing to do with politics. They even point to the fact that O’Rourke seems to have first gotten tagged with the moniker when he was a child, showing off a photo of him as a boy wearing a sweatshirt with the name “Beto” on it.

What they appear not as eager to talk about, however, is the fact that Patrick O’Rourke-- Robert Francis’ father-- once explained that he was the one who gave his son the nickname in the first place and the reason had a lot to do with politics, as well as geography.

According to the Dallas Morning News, the patriarch reasoned that if his son ever ran for office in El Paso, the odds of being elected in that largely Mexican-American city were far greater with a name like Beto.

When told of his father’s words, O’Rourke shrugged them off, calling his father “farsighted.”

I’d use different words, like cynical and dishonest and manipulative.

It's certainly not respectful to assume that people can be so easily fooled. And, as any real Latino can tell you, respect goes a long way in our community. O’Rourke should take the time to get to know us better. And, if he did, more Latinos might have a better impression of him. 

So, that'll be part of the Republican strategy if Beto makes it onto the national ticket. It's divisive... but not unsurmountable. I just love the idea of conservatives taking up the cultural appropriation cudgel for their own use though! It always seemed to me to be tailor-made for them anyway.




Alex Shephard, at the New Republic, also went to town on Beto over the weekend: The Profound Emptiness of Beto O’Rourke. Like many of us, Shephard is offended by Beto's "empty platitudes" and doesn't particularly like the comparisons to Obama, "with whom he shares a message of optimism and unity. But the comparisons end there. He has all of Obama’s self-assurance with none of his intellectual fortitude, inspirational biography, or oratory power. His rhetoric is as empty as his platform, his paeans to 'coming together' the stuff of Obama fanfic... [T]he biggest thing that O’Rourke has in common with Obama, the 2008 candidate, is the belief that they can transcend a broken political system with lofty rhetoric about bringing people together. But when Obama spoke about healing divisions, millions of people believed him. And it still didn’t work. Obama came to his senses while in office, as the Republican Party committed itself to bigotry and intransigence, and he now spends his political capital and energy on reforming our broken democracy. Many of the Democratic candidates for president have their own proposals for doing so. O’Rourke just has a blog, and a big beautiful smile that some folks can’t resist. It’s as if the last ten years of American political life never happened."

Sorry-- Some Political Correctness Stuff

When Dickinson Grammar School, in Carlisle, Pennsylvania, was charted as a college it was a week after the official formation of the United States in 1783. It's founders signed the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. The student newspaper, The Dickinsonian was founded in 1872. Last week the paper published an OpEd by Leda Fisher, Should White Boys Still Be Allowed to Talk? You can probably imagine Breitbart's reaction. But first Fisher's article:

When you ask a question at a lecture, is it secretly just your opinion ending with the phrase “do you agree?” If so, your name is something like Jake, or Chad, or Alex, and you were taught that your voice is the most important in every room. Somewhere along your academic journey, you decided your search for intellectual validation was more important than the actual exchange of information. Now how do you expect to actually learn anything?

American society tells men, but especially white men, that their opinions have merit and that their voice is valuable, but after four years of listening to white boys in college, I am not so convinced. In my time at Dickinson I have listened to probably hundreds of white boys talk. It feels incessant. From classes and lectures, to the news and politics, there is an endless line of white boys waiting to share their opinions on the state of feminism in America, whether the LGBTQ+ population finally has enough rights, the merits of capitalism, etc. The list of what white boys think they are qualified to talk about is endless. Something very few of them seem to understand is that their (ill-informed, uncritical) opinions do not constitute truth. In fact, most often their opinions aren’t even original. White boys spout the narrative of dominant ideologies and pretend they’re hot takes instead of the same misleading garbage shoved down our throats by American institutions from birth.

I am so g****mned tired of listening to white boys. I cannot describe to you how frustrating it is to be forced to listen to a white boy explain his take on the Black experience in the Obama-era. Hey Brian, I’m an actual Black woman alive right now with a brain. In what world would your understanding of my life carry more weight than my understanding? Unfortunately, it is this world, where white men debate the pain of other people for fun and then take away their rights. The second thing most white boys seem not to understand is that they do not exist separate from the rest of the world. You do not speak alone, you speak with the weight of every other white man who has spoken over a woman, erased the contributions of queer people from history, or denigrated “broken English” as unintelligent. You speak with the weight of policies and laws meant to forever define intelligence by how it measures up to the bros of America.

So, should white boys still be allowed to share their “opinions”? Should we be forced to listen? In honor of Black History Month, I’m gonna go with a hell no. Go find someone whose perspective has been buried or ignored and listen to them, raise up their voice. To all the Chrises, Ryans, Olivers, and Seans out there, I encourage you to critically examine where your viewpoints come from, read a text that challenges you without looking for reasons to dismiss it, and maybe try listening from now on.

And before heading over to Breitbart, the first response from a Dickinsonian, Scout Waverly:

It’s not often that racist and sexist thoughts are married so well on the page, so kudos to the writer for creating this perfect storm of hate. Who will get space next on the editorial pages of The Dickinsonian? A Klansman? A gleeful misogynist?

Is it meant to be a discussion piece? It’s not. Is it meant to be social commentary? It’s not. It’s a racially motivated attack, one that should be condemned widely across campus as if it were in fact written by a Klansman. And if we went through and replaced “white boys” with “black girls” and published it, there would be immediate protests on Britton Plaza and statements from the President’s Office condemning intolerance.

The piece is poorly thought out, full of presumptions cast as fact (clearly the writer hasn’t taken any logic classes), and raging with stereotypes. You say of white boys “most often their opinions aren’t even original.” None of your opinions here are original either. Ignorant people have held them forever.

Has the writer heard of the dangers of condemning all members of a group en masse? I’ll make an assumption of my own: She has probably been fighting that kind of thing her whole life. Now here she is embracing it in what can be only read as a racist rant that herds an entire group under an umbrella of hate.

I’m frankly disappointed in Dickinson that a senior would write this.

The second response was from a young woman, Erika Hvolbeck:

his article is inherently and horrifically racist. If I, a young white woman wrote the same article but changed “white” with “black”, I would probably have unmatched consequences. This article is horribly written, sounds appallingly uneducated, and has no merit. You are lumping a group of men together and racially stereotyping them. WHO has the right to judge ANYONE based on the color of their skin? White or black. It’s 2019, and we should respect everyone despite their race, ethnicity, class, or sexuality. To list “white names” like that was terribly racist. Imagine if I said people like Deshawn, Laquisha and Dayvon shouldn’t be listened to because they have “ghetto accents”, or because their opinions were “unoriginal”? Frankly, this article was horrible to read, and I’d feel like that if it was about Latino-Americans, African Americans, or Asian-Americans. No one’s voice can or should be silenced based on their skin color. You argue that these white college boys only want to search for intellectual validation rather than exchanging new information. This claim could not be more false. I must debunk your assertion that is is true, because the main reason why many people go to college in the first place is to have their views and ideas challenged and to expand their knowledge. I doubt a white boy who only wanted to have his belies reaffirmed would go to a liberal arts college. You also touch on the fact that American society tells only white men that their opinions are valid. First off, everyone in America is entitled to their own opinion. What makes America so great is our freedom of speech, whether that speech may go against common morals and values, we are all able to state our opinions in this country without persecution from the law. Overall, your article is absolutely one of the most ignorant, unscholarly, and remarkably racist articles I have ever had the displeasure of reading.

Followed by a little irony from Jonathan Murray, an alum: "This piece succeeded in its desired objective: as a 'white boy', it left me utterly speechless." Hundreds of comments, most negative, but not uniformly so. A couple of days after the OpEd was published comments were still coming in. Yesterday David Smith wrote that he's "an ‘82 Dickinson grad. As I see it, the opinion writer’s basic point is that, in her experience, white males at Dickinson tend not to understand or really listen to the opinions and perspectives of students from different racial backgrounds. Apparently that’s been her experience. Is it racist for her to say that? I don’t think so. Most of the comments here miss her basic point. Yes, she uses in your face language, which is clearly intended to provoke, and it goes overboard in a few places-- the title in particular. But at root she’s simply pointing a finger at white male privilege. You’d be hard pressed to say that doesn’t exist at Dickinson, as at many schools. Which isn’t to say that white male students at Dickinson are bad people or need to feel guilty about who they are. I was one. But there are societal and institutional structures in place that benefit white males. And it is incumbent on us to be conscious of those advantages and to seek to 'spread the wealth.' Not listening to and learning from people of other races/backgrounds/genders/sexual orientations, etc. is ignorant and inconsistent with Dickinson’s purpose. The bottom line is you may disagree with her opinion and the language she used, but you can’t take away her experience. Maybe that’s not your experience, but that’s how she sees it. The statement on this matter by D’son’s president hit the mark perfectly, I thought. She seems great."

Zadie Smith is an award-winning English author from London who currently teaches creative writing at NYU. Her parents are a mixed-race couple. Her younger brothers are rapper and stand up comedian Doc Brown and rapper Luc Skyz. She's a graduate of King's College, Cambridge. This is an interview she did last year:



Last week, at the Hay Cartegena festival in Colombia, Smith addressed the political correctness and identity politics plaguing the literary world. [That's right-- it isn't just fucking up electoral politics, Broadway and cooking shows.] Claire Armistead wrote that "Smith laid into identity politics in a headline session at the 14th Hay Cartagena festival, insisting novelists had not only a right, but a duty to be free.

Asked how she felt about cultural appropriation, she told an audience of nearly 2,000 at the festival in Colombia on Friday: “If someone says to me: ‘A black girl would never say that,’ I’m saying: ‘How can you possibly know?’ The problem with that argument is it assumes the possibility of total knowledge of humans. The only thing that identifies people in their entirety is their name: I’m a Zadie.”

She conceded that the assertion of a collective identity was sometimes necessary “to demand rights,” but cited the dismay of her husband-- the poet and novelist Nick Laird-- at finding himself increasingly categorised. “He turned to me and said: ‘I used to be myself and I’m now white guy, white guy.’ I said: ‘Finally, you understand.’ But the lesson of that is that identity is a huge pain in the arse. The strange thing to me is the assumption [of white people] that their identity is the right to freedom.”

She went on to question the role of social media in policing personal development. “We are being asked to be consistent as humans over great swathes of time. People are searching through social media. But everyone is changing all the time.”

In an essay in her collection, Feel Free, she investigated one such change in herself, when she fell in love with the music of Joni Mitchell, a singer she had despised when she was a mixed-race teenager growing up on a London housing estate. “The reason for hating Joni Mitchell was that I didn’t listen to classical or ‘white’ music,” said Smith. “Then I had an epiphany, and suddenly realised that her voice was beautiful. It’s a responsibility to be as open as you possibly can to the world as an aesthetic object.”

Returning to the issue of political correctness, she reflected on her debut novel White Teeth, which had depicted characters from many backgrounds but, she said, had been given an easy ride by the white critics because “[its characters] were mostly brown. It had all sorts of mistakes I’m sure but if I didn’t take a chance I’d only ever be able to write novels about mixed-race girls growing up in Willesden.”

Speaking in the home city of Gabriel García Márquez, Smith admitted that she was not a great fan of magic realism, preferring to deal in more concrete realities.

She ended by citing Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary as an example of the power of the reprobate imagination. “Women have felt very close to these fake, pretend women invented by men. It makes us feel uncomfortable in real life. This is not real life. It’s perverse, but it’s what’s possible in fiction. There’s no excuse for its irresponsibility, but fiction is fundamentally irresponsible.”

The urban dictionary-- I never knew it was so political!

Wikipedia is far more... timid:

Cultural appropriation, at times also phrased cultural misappropriation, is the adoption of elements of one culture by members of another culture. This can be controversial when members of a dominant culture appropriate from disadvantaged minority cultures. Because of the presence of power imbalances that are a byproduct of colonialism and oppression, cultural appropriation is distinct from equal cultural exchange.

Cultural appropriation is often considered harmful, and to be a violation of the collective intellectual property rights of the originating, minority cultures, notably indigenous cultures and those living under colonial rule. Often unavoidable when multiple cultures come together, cultural appropriation can include using other cultures' cultural and religious traditions, fashion, symbols, language, and music.

According to critics of the practice, cultural appropriation differs from acculturation, assimilation, or cultural exchange in that this appropriation is a form of colonialism: cultural elements are copied from a minority culture by members of a dominant culture, and these elements are used outside of their original cultural context-- sometimes even against the expressly stated wishes of members of the originating culture.

Often, the original meaning of these cultural elements is lost or distorted, and such displays are often viewed as disrespectful, or even as a form of desecration, by members of the originating culture. Cultural elements which may have deep meaning to the original culture may be reduced to "exotic" fashion or toys by those from the dominant culture. Kjerstin Johnson has written that, when this is done, the imitator, "who does not experience that oppression is able to 'play', temporarily, an 'exotic' other, without experiencing any of the daily discriminations faced by other cultures." The African-American academic, musician and journalist Greg Tate argues that appropriation and the "fetishizing" of cultures, in fact, alienates those whose culture is being appropriated.

The concept of cultural appropriation has also been widely criticised. Some writers on the topic note that the concept is often misunderstood or misapplied by the general public, and that charges of "cultural appropriation" are at times misapplied to situations such as eating food from a variety of cultures, or learning about different cultures. Commentators who criticize the concept believe that the act of cultural appropriation does not meaningfully constitute a social harm, or that the term lacks conceptual coherence. Some argue that the term sets arbitrary limits on intellectual freedom and artists' self-expression, reinforces group divisions, or itself promotes a feeling of enmity or grievance, rather than liberation.

And, yes, yes... I'll get to more about Virginia later this morning, I promise.

Political Correctness Strikes Again-- Literature

Sonia Levitin is a German American novelist, artist, producer, Holocaust survivor, and author of dozens of books. Her books Incident at Loring Groves” won the Edgar Allan Poe Award and The Return received the American Library Association's Best Book for Young Adults. Sonia was born in Nazi Germany. Being of Jewish descent her family managed to escape. Levitin wrote several novels as an immigrant in the U.S., including Journey to America and Silver Days, recounting the story of German Jewish refugees who fled the horrors of the Holocaust. Over the course of the last year, I spoke with her on and off about a book she was working on that involved two subjects I had some experience with-- Afghanistan and late 1970's San Francisco punk rock. Her book was about Afghan refugees living in the Bay Area at that time. But the book hasn't been published. She told me why and I asked her to write a guest post today because there's an important message in her experience.


Cultural Appropriation?
-by Sonia Levitin

Strange things, indecent things happen when boundaries become blurred and almost obliterated. Everyone is free to broadcast any criticism, however damning it might be, without providing any source, without reasoned argument or civil discourse.

Thus, the phrase “cultural appropriation” was hurled at me by an editor as she rejected my new novel, Comes The Morning. The main characters are refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq and Malaysia. The problem is, they are Muslims and I’m a Jew. Furthermore, I’m white. The editor liked the book very much. But she explained that she could not publish it because all hell would break loose. She and I would be accused of “cultural appropriation.”

I had to look it up. Cultural appropriation is the use of elements of a culture (ethnic or religious) different from one’s own. The implication is that I cannot possibly understand or portray the life experiences of a Muslim, an Asian or African person. Furthermore, how dare I enrich myself by telling their story, exploiting their misery?

Whereas in the past decade or two, editors and educators were soliciting books of cultural diversity, today’s requirement is different. Books of cultural diversity are fine, but they must be written by a member of that group, usually a minority in the Western world. Most assuredly, the author should not be white.

Somehow this notion has pervaded the political arena on both sides and reached the daily newspaper, albeit on the back pages like a recent op-ed piece in the New York Times, In Defense of Cultural Appropriation. (June 14, 2017; reprinted below)

When I read this piece it confirmed what my editor had told me. I was crushed and heartsick. My response in a letter to the editor was published the following week. It gave me some sense of satisfaction until several weeks later at a luncheon with friends, when someone asked what I am working on now. I spoke about my novel in progress, about refugees from the Middle East, their terrible journeys and the difficult adjustment to life in America.

A woman I had just met spoke up. “If you write that book,” she said, “of course you can’t make any money on it. It would have to be non-profit.”

Earlier she had told me that she was working for a non-profit group in support of the beleaguered Yazidis. I presume she was drawing a salary, just as the surgeon who operated on me for breast cancer was incidentally making money on “my misery.” I assured the woman that novelists don’t usually make much money, unless their novel becomes a popular movie. But it wasn’t really about money. It was about the idea that a white person cannot really understand the feelings of a person of color, or one who prays differently, one whose culture invites or prohibits different behaviors.

The key lies in that word, “different.” This new, encroaching pattern of censorship demands that each of us must remain in the tight cocoon of our own kind. If that were true, how many books would be lost to us, how many that changed our thinking and therefore changed the world? Harriet Beecher Stowe would not have dared to write Uncle Tom's Cabin, the novel that, according to President Lincoln, was instrumental in abolishing slavery. It is said that when Lincoln met Mrs. Stowe he bent down and gently asked, “Are you the little lady who caused this great war?”

I don’t think Mrs. Stowe planned to start a war. She just wanted to inform and sensitize people to the evils of slavery. Just so, hundreds, thousands of books have been written about social evils, and many have changed the world. Moreover, most of them are fiction, not text books with dates and statistics. Non-fiction books provide valuable information. But they do not touch the heart. And it is from the heart, the deep empathy that the novel provokes, that people are made to reflect, even to change.

If I cannot write a novel about modern day refugees from the Middle East, who will speak for them? “Let them write their own novels,” the detractors shout. I have read several wonderful books written by people born and raised in Afghanistan, Iran, Iran and parts of Africa. But they are few in number. Most, like the refugees I interviewed, couldn’t possibly write about their experiences. Having recently arrived in the U.S., they are overcome by grief and traumatic stress. They have to eke out a living. When would they have the time or the will to write about their experiences? Such novels usually appear at least a decade after the catastrophe, as after WWII and beyond, when desperation has been replaced by a kind of acceptance and broader understanding. Today’s refugees include engineers, doctors and attorneys from large cities, with university education. But they also include a vast number of people who were simple vendors or shop keepers or factory workers. Nearly half the women, as well as many of the men, are illiterate. How can they write a novel?

Beyond this, many of the refugees I interviewed were afraid of reprisals. All had relatives still living in the old country, under the harsh and dehumanizing conditions of powerful militias and dictators. As with any group of immigrants, they want to keep a low profile. Best not to advertise the abuses of our own culture. “They” will come after us all the more. “They” will conclude that we are all alike, especially in the ways that threaten the dominant the community.

For my novel I interviewed many recent refugees. Of course, all were alike is some ways, yet again, each was different. Two of the women wore the hijab. One mother urged her little girls to come out to greet me with kisses. One woman wore jeans and boots and drove a shining white Toyota. An older lady did not leave her home without her husband or a son. She spoke no English.

In some ways all my visits were alike. The entire family greeted me. The world refugee agencies made the initial contact and usually provided an interpreter. I was seated on the sofa, with everyone gathered around expectantly. Smiles and nods are a universal language. And I began with my own true story. “I was born in Germany during the Nazi time. We are Jews, and we were persecuted and driven out. Most of my family were murdered.”

I told them, “I want to tell your story, the real story, because most people only know what they see on television, soldiers armed with automatic rifles, bombed out houses, hundreds of people fleeing with bundles on their back. I want to make it personal. Because when it’s personal, people can feel the pain. They understand the loss. They know what it took for you to come here, and what it means for you to live in a land where you are a stranger.”

I promised them that I would not reveal their names. “I’ll create composite characters, weaving together the true stories that you tell me. I won’t put anybody in danger.”

Somehow, an exchange of glances among the family settled it. And they began to talk, usually the younger ones, already familiar with this new language. I heard more stories than I can possibly render in a single book, but they filled me with amazement at man’s inner strength and resilience. One woman’s brother had been publicly hanged with a wire cable. Another told of a cousin whose son’s severed head was delivered to his doorstep, a punishment and a warning for those who dare to work with the enemy. (The father went insane and never recovered.) One boy, age seventeen, who I’ll call Haji, had never revealed his story to his foster family, and they were told not to ask questions. Haji’s foster sister sat with us for several hours. And gradually the story came out. To repay his father’s gambling debt, the boy had been sold at the age of twelve as a “dancing boy,” a prostitute. He did not have to tell me the particulars. I had done research about this now illegal tradition, which is still being practiced. The boys are costumed to look like women, an invitation to rape. Haji finally escaped, returned home to look for his family. They had all vanished.

Could I possibly understand and convey such a narrative? Of course I could and I would do it now, not years from now, because it’s happening now and the story needs to be told.

Amid all the different stories there were similarities, a stoicism that did not allow tears. An in-bred sense of hospitality always included refreshment served on the best china by the woman of the house. I was given a lavish breakfast of eggs, cheese, olives and pita bread. One woman served both Turkish coffee and tea, along with home-made pistachio tarts. Another provided large hunks of cake infused with cherries.

We talked about the present and the future. Those who were able were working two or three jobs. Haji was enrolled in a special English class besides being tutored every day. He was elated that he had just gotten a job at Taco Bell, and he was on the soccer team, their “secret weapon.” I asked Haji how he time for all this. He said, “It is better to stay busy, not to think.”

After each interview, we parted with more than just smiles. Handshakes all around. Sometimes a hug. A non-verbal understanding. They asked to receive a copy of the book when it is published. Of course I would send them.

But the critics, who have not yet read a word of my book, and the agents and editors who are sorely afraid for their positions, won’t let it be published.

There is a recent case in point, a raging controversy over a book that hasn’t been published yet. I obtained a copy when I became aware of the sudden frenzy over the book, criticisms by people who had not even read it. The Young Adult book, American Heart, is written by Laura Moriarty, a prize winning author. The story is an action adventure set in a future time, with the U.S. rounding up and incarcerating all Muslims in detention camps in the Nevada desert. (Sounds familiar?) In the story a 15 year old girl, through personal circumstance, is moved to help a fugitive Muslim woman professor trying to escape and join her husband and child in Toronto. The Muslim woman, Sadaf, has a bounty on her head. As they travel through many obstacles, the reader gains some perspective on Muslim culture vs. the political scene, rendered without preaching but in the context of the story.

American Heart is due out in January 2018. Before publication, publishers customarily send out many bound galleys to review media, including the very prestigious Kirkus Review magazine. A starred review from Kirkus is cause for celebration. Kirkus gave American Heart a starred, glowing review written by a young Muslim woman. Almost immediately came the outcry. GOOD READS, an on-line review site, began to display comments and ratings from among its thousands of subscribers, condemning the book in vicious terms. Their rants are on line for everyone to savor.

“Fuck your white savior bullshit!”

“You’re profiting off people’s pain.”

“No, I haven’t read this, but I’m giving it one star…because the idea of a fiction where Muslims are in concentration camps and a couple are saved by a 15 year old white girl is completely revolting to me.”

“Fuck this book and fuck everyone who thought it would be a good fucking idea.”

So much for literary criticism.

Here’s an opposite reaction. “I haven’t read this book, but I’m giving it five stars to piss off the people who gave this book one star without having read it.”

Now, back to the glowing Kirkus review with the star. The objection and arguments about the book became so widespread and vicious that Kirkus decided to pull the review, to erase the star, and to prevail upon the reviewer to produce an alternate review, less favorable, problematic, perhaps a turn-off for the potential reader.

Editors took note. Agents shivered over their new, unsold manuscripts. For all concerned, it is easier, less problematic, to file them in a drawer, preferably in a locked cabinet. Because words matter. Indeed, they do. Let’s wait, they say, until the publishing world comes to its senses. It’s just a phase. It will blow over, you’ll see.

Blow over?

The assault on writers and publishers is an assault on our democracy, which can only flourish in an atmosphere of open debate. Every voice needs to be heard. Every experience needs to be shared. The task of the writer is to tell the truth as he sees it, to appraise the society and render the possible consequences of its present day excesses. But warnings of danger are uncomfortable and often unprofitable. So books with unpopular or controversial themes are banned. Or they are aborted. Story tellers are silenced, even when their protagonists cry out against injustice and blind hatred.

The message from the detractors is clear. If you are white, outside the Judeo-Christian faiths, don’t intervene. Don’t try to “save” anyone but your own. Even if your intentions are good, wait for them to tell their own stories. Wait until….?


New York Times, Letter to the Editor
June 24, 2017

As an author of numerous books that deal with people from cultures different from my own, I am appalled at the suggestion that one can write only from one’s own specific experience. This defies the idea that there is a basis for mutual understanding, that we can bridge our difference, that we can and must approach one another as possessing the same fears, desires and loves.

Isn’t my human perspective broad enough and compassionate enough to enable me to express the grief of a Sudanese slave? Do I have to be black to render the experience of a black African teenager who risks her life to return to her Jewish roots in Israel?

I have written about Chinese people, Danes, the French, Swiss and Russians, trying to tear down the walls between us. Now my heart aches at the realization that in this “cultural appropriation” phase we are once again building walls between peoples.

We are censoring all artistic works that derive from the creative mind and the soul of the artist, whose race and culture happen to be different from her subject, while the very impetus and purpose of art is to reveal, to be a bridge, to depict our common humanity.

As a writer, I urge other writers and artists not to go gentle into this abyss.

Sonia Levitin, Los Angeles