Cartman is clearly disturbed and bemoans how there are too many “Mexicans” and other minority groups at “his” water park. In South Park fashion, Cartman breaks out into a song, “Not My Water Park.”

CensureLeo.com urges Texans to contact their State Representative, House Speaker Joe Straus, and House GOP Caucus Chair Larry Taylor, urging them to support a resolution of censure condemning Berman’s actions.

On Thursday, February 18, 2009, following a panel discussion sponsored by Texas Employers for Immigration Reform, Rep. Berman was engaged in a heated verbal conflict with Harry Joe, an immigration lawyer from Dallas of Chinese American descent.

The story made headlines across Texas after the Dallas Morning News first broke the story and was later picked up by the Associated Press, which reported the incident on newspaper websites across the nation.

Berman was invited to participate in a panel discussion to speak about HB254 – a bill, he authored requiring undocumented immigrants to relocate to “sanctuary cities.” After the session, he was approached by Mr. Joe to discuss the purpose of this xenophobic bill. The discussion soon turned angry.

Following their exchange, Berman told Harry Joe to “go home” (as in “back to China”) and “kiss my ass.” Mr. Joe issued an apology for his part in the incident; to date Rep. Berman has remained silent and issued no apology.

“Representative Berman’s conduct was inappropriate. We expect more from our elected officials, and his peers in the Texas House should do the right thing and pass a resolution of censure condemning his conduct,” said Vince Leibowitz, publisher of Capitol Annex and a netroots activist who helped create the website.

A list of Texas blogs that have joined the movement to censure Rep. Berman is included.

Blogs Sponsoring CensureLeo.com:
Bay Area Houston – Houston
BlueDaze - Wise County
Brains & Eggs – Houston
Capitol Annex – Mineola
Dos Centavos – Houston/Kingwood
An Examination of Free Will – Austin
Doing My Part For The Left – Austin
Job’s Anger – Amarillo
Marc’s Miscellany – Fort Worth
McBlogger – Austin
Musings – Sugar Land
North Texas Liberal – Denton
Texas Kaos – Austin
Texas Liberal – Houston
Whos Playin – Lewisville
¡Para Justica y Libertad! – Houston

Here is the background from blogamigo, Manny:

Isabel is one of the major driving forces behind the Coalición de Derechos Humanos, headquartered in Tucson, and that’s just when she’s wearing her organizer hat. She also serves as one of Pima County’s leading Legal Defenders, which has Sheriff Joe Arpaio’s pink underwear in a snit since apparently the First Amendment of the Constitution of the United States of America does not apply to those who serve in government.

You see, Sheriff Joe came to town recently to sign copies of his new book that blames all the ills of society on “illegals”. Well, that type of thing isn’t received the same way in Tucson as it is north of the Gila, so a protest was organized in conjunction with Sheriff Joe’s appearance. A piñata created in Arpaio’s likeness, wearing his trademark pink boxers, was…well, it was a piñata, so you can imagine.

In response to the whole thing, Arpaio and his friends in the racist right’s media empire took to the airwaves in the ironically named radio station 104.1 The Truth in an effort to get Isabel fired from Pima County. The station’s radio personalities spend a majority of their time and advertising money on equating undocumented workers with terrorists, drug dealers, disease carriers, and invaders of the Homeland™ – pretty standard fare for a radio channel that also features Bill “Falafel” O’Reilly, Laura Ingraham, Michael Savage, etc etc etc.

Normally I would be mad, but something inside me can no longer tolerate the pain that I get every time I report on the cruelty that has engulf this nation with xenophobia and nativism.

Following the June 25, immigration raid at Action Rags here in Houston, TX, my life is much different. The following week, I was in a meeting with the families of the raid. It was so heart breaking, to this day, I just cannot complete my post without shedding at tear.

Hearing the personal accounts is much different than hearing or reading about it. Sure, a blog post or a news article can tug at your heart strings, Lord knows I have done my best to it, but nothing beats the emotional impact when one personally hears their stories. I understand the frustration Marisa Treviño, of Latina Lista, expressed in a recent article in Rio Grande Guardian. While the current immigration is not so “uplifting,” there are people who do have the “luxury” to “drop thinking about immigration.” I can’t.

In a recent New York Times article, Father Ouderkirk quotes Sister Mary as saying: “Once you’ve cried for two straight weeks, you don’t have any more tears. But it doesn’t mean you stopped feeling.”

This is where I am at, I am still grieving for these families who have been divided, individuals uprooted from their homes, and communities that are destroyed. I can’t even look at the notes that I took that day without crying. While it is easy for Justice to feel excited at the deportation, the question is how can anybody cheer at the cruelty that these people faced at the hands of ICE throughout the US. How can anyone not shed a single tear when they hear these traumatic stories:

- they were not allowed to close the door whenever someone needed to use the restroom
- sexual harassment. women being touched in private areas in from of the men
- been told if they did not go through the voluntary deportation, the proceeding could take over a year, which would mean they are not allowed to work.
- no water was granted to them. One said when they asked for water, ICE dumped the water on the floor, saying “There is no water for you.”
- one woman fainted because she was thirsty and still no water was given to them
- before they were interviewed, they remained in a hot van with no running a/c for over an hour forced to share among 10-13 detainees one bottle water.
- when given something to drink, it was one of those frozen concentrated drink that was still unthawed.

While I share my rage and frustration with those who are justifiably so at Jon Justice, but at this point and its at this time, I don’t have the emotional energy to do it all over again.

No matter how carefully orchestrated, deportation dehumanizes people who come to this country to work hard to produce the many luxuries to which many like Jon Justice and Sheriff Joe Arpaio have grown accustomed – clean offices and classrooms, the food that is prepared for them at the restaurants they frequent, the food that is ready to buy at their local grocery stores, the homes they live in, and keeping this nation safe by serving the military.

This who blogged about this travesty:
Latino Politico
Citizen Orange
The Unapologetic Mexican
American Humanity
Zuky
Feathered Bastard (Phoenix New Times)
Alternet (call to action sent to their email list)
VivirLatino
Rum, Romanism, and Rebellion
WOC PhD
The Mahatma X Files
La Chola
Off Our Pedestals
Questioning Transphobia
Chicks Dig Me
The Strangest Alchemy

Within the Hispanic community, there are some who don’t feel they really need to be involve because they are viewed as “others” or if we really want to go with the demeaning labels, mojados, wetbacks.

Spring resident Martinez, 39 [and born in the U.S.], said that “when people think of Mexicans, they don’t think of people like me.” They think of the immigrant and the laborer, not someone who went to college and listens to pop radio.

Here in the US, Hispanics is not considered as a race, but an ethnicity. From the biological point of view, races simply do not exist. From the cultural and political point of view, however, the concept of “race” is extremely important. Mexican national identity has been constructed in terms of the idea that Mexicans are the product of a creative mixing of Indians and Europeans. In Miriam Jimenez Roman’s article entitled “Africa’s Legacy in Mexico: What is a Mexican?,” Roman writes:

in the interest of a national identity based on a mixture of indigenous and European cultural mestizaje. In practice, this ideology of “racial democracy” favors the European presence; too often the nation’s glorious indigenous past is reduced to folklore and ceremonial showcasing.

Mexican Americans were considered an ethnicity minority only after the end of the U.S.-Mexico War of 1848 and the signing of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, when Mexico ceded the territory that today is California, New Mexico, Nevada, and parts of Colorado, Utah, and Arizona, and also approved the prior annexation of Texas.

The treaty promised US citizenship to former Mexican citizens and all Native Americans -who were Mexican citizens – in the ceded territories.

Since 1848 Native Americans and Mexican Americans have struggled to achieve political and social equality within the United States, often citing the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo as a document that promised civil and property rights. Although the treaty promised U.S. citizenship to former Mexican citizens, the Native Americans in the ceded territories, who in fact were Mexican citizens, were not given full U.S. citizenship until the 1930s. Former Mexican citizens were almost universally considered foreigners by the U.S. settlers who moved into the new territories. In the first half century after ratification of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, hundreds of state, territorial, and federal legal bodies produced a complex tapestry of conflicting opinions and decisions bearing on the meaning of the treaty. The property rights seemingly guaranteed in Articles VIII and IX of the treaty (and in the Protocol of Queretaro) were not all they seemed. In U.S. courts, the property rights of former Mexican citizens in California, New Mexico, and Texas proved to be fragile. Within a generation the Mexican-Americans became a disenfranchised, poverty-stricken minority.

It must be noted, these events took place before the ratification of the 14th Amendment in 1868.

All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside. No state shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any state deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Shedding Indigenous Roots For “Whiteness”
Anglo-Americans never considered Mexicans their racial equals and, moreover, regarded them as mixed peoples. In 1897, a federal district court upheld the right of Mexicans to naturalize under the terms of the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. Ricardo Rodriguez, a native of Mexico who had lived in Texas for ten years, petitioned to become a naturalized U.S. citizen. Government attorneys argued against his eligibility on the grounds that Rodriguez was “not a white person, not an African, nor of African descent.” U.S. District Judge Thomas Maxey wrote:

“as to color, [Rodriguez] may be classed with the copper-colored or red men. He has dark eyes, straight black hair, and high cheek bones.”

Knowing that Mexicans were considered mestizos, the judge had a hard time making his ruling, however, Judge Maxey concluded that because Rodriguez knew “nothing of the Aztecs or Toltecs, [h]e is not an Indian” and therefore Rodriguez was given citizenship. Since then, many communities like their counterpart in Mexico have been trying to “deinidianised” after the Revolution of 1910 by ceasing to identify themselves as Indians. However, in the US, Mexicans were still considered a race as Mae Ngai notes:

by the late 1920s, a Mexican “race problem” had emerged in the Southwest, impelled by contradictions wrought by the burgeoning of commercial agriculture, an all-time high in Mexican immigration, and the formation of a migratory, landless agricultural proletariat and of segregated communities.

Even the 1930 Census Bureau, Mexicans were considered as a separate race, as persons born in Mexico or with parents born in Mexico and who were “not definitely white, Negro, Indian, Chinese, or Japanese.” It was not until the 1940, with the help of Mexico and the League of United Latin American Citizens (LULAC), the US finally gave in and reclassified persons of Mexican descent as “white.”

In 1929, during the height of a nativist movement, business leaders created the LULAC. It was during this time, the US was at the height of the nativist movement.

When the United States of North America annexed a third of Mexico’s territory following the Mexican War, nearly 77,000 Mexicans became U.S. citizens. For generations, these citizens were to be plagued by a prejudicial attitude which would result in overt acts of discrimination and segregation which in turn brought about the curtailment of many of their civil rights, privileges, and opportunities. The sign, “No Mexicans Allowed” was to be found everywhere.

Prejudicial attitude and discrimination acts in Texas had reached such extreme proportions that Mexican Americans started organizations as defensive measures against such un-American practices. Outstanding among these were three organizations: The Order of the Sons of America with councils in Sommerset, Pearsall, Corpus Christi, and San Antonio. The second was The Knights of America in San Antonio. And the third was The League of Latin American Citizens with councils in Harlingen, Brownsville, Laredo, Penitas, La Grulla, McAllen, and Gulf.

It was during this height in America’s darkest period, discrimination against Mexican Americans ran wild. According to LULAC:

Discrimination against Mexican Americans was awful. One of the best kept secret in American history is that in those years there were more Mexican Americans hung then the total number of blacks that had been hung during the civil war.

It was during this time, Mexican Americans were caught between being a “noble savage” and less than a second class, Hispanics had no other reason but to denounce their heritage just to survive.

In those days, Mexican Americans had to be real careful anytime they gathered. If they gathered in large numbers, they would cause suspicions and faced charges of communism. Yes, there were many that felt insulted and considered LULAC members as a bunch of “vendidos.” They could not understand why LULAC members would go out of their way to embrace an anglo society that had been so cruel to Mexican Americans. However, the founders of LULAC had seen many Mexican American organizations flourish and disappear within a couple of years, and without accomplishments. LULAC founders were determined not to let this occur to LULAC. Therefore, the founders of LULAC, in order to avoid suspicions of un-American activities and a safe haven for its members, forewent many of their convictions. Many of the official rites which LULAC adopted had never be adopted by any other Mexican American organization. Adopted was the American Flag as the official flag, America the Beautiful as the official song, and The George Washington Prayer as the official prayer. Also, adopted were Robert Rules of Order as the governing rules during meetings and conventions.

So why do some Mexican Americans look down on foreign born Hispanic? It’s no secret that many older Mexican Americans resent being lumped together in the “minority” status with immigrants who, they believe, have not suffered the degree of discrimination and exclusion they have. Perhaps some Mexican Americans remember the days when Mexican Americans insisted on their status as whites in the days before affirmative action. Or perhaps some Mexican Americans still have the old caste system ingrained for centuries where the more indigenous you are, the more backward and traditional they are seen. As more young Hispanics are beginning to accept their indigenous roots and as Mexico, Central and South American indigenous groups are excreting their rights, we have to wonder if Hispanics Americans and foreign born Hispanics can find common ground.