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An Afro-Cuban leading a white supremacist group, Enrique Tarrio is a classic petty Miami grifter. Credit: Stephanie Keith/Getty Images
If you stumbled into one of the protests that enflamed America last summer and came across Enrique Tarrio — a dark-skinned, Hispanic man, clearly a “person of colour” — you’d immediately assume he was on the side of Black Lives Matter. If you looked closer, at his attire and the guys he was holding court over, you’d realise, to your complete and utter surprise, that Tarrio is actually aligned with the Proud Boys — the white supremacist larping troupe that’s been battling Antifa and BLM for the better part of a year. Tarrio is, in fact, the Proud Boys’ leader.
Last week he was arrested (then released) in Washington DC, after burning a BLM flag stolen from a black church, once again confounding white Americans with his supposedly distorted racial identity. I found it hard, as I do every time he pops up in the news, not to roll my eyes at the media’s portrayal of Tarrio as some great instigator of racial discord. Because, like me, he’s a Cuban-American from Miami, which is to say that I’ve seen plenty of Tarrio-types in my day.
Tarrio is what I’ll call a petty Miami schemer — the kind known to anyone who lives in the city, which was built on schemes and grifts in its days as a swampland backwater. In Miami, guys like Tarrio, from the personal trainer who tries to sell you steroids after your first session to the sleazy foreign investors who buy up entire high-rises, are a dime a dozen. The Proud Boys leader was first convicted, of theft, at the age of 20; nine years later, in 2013, he was sentenced to 30 months in federal prison for rebranding and reselling stolen medical devices. Before that, he spent some time in North Florida and ran a poultry farm. And let us not forget Tarrio’s failed 2020 congressional run.
That Tarrio leads a white supremacist group can be explained not by national race relations, but by the fact that he grew up in Miami: a place where “whiteness”, as it’s defined by the woke media class, simply doesn’t exist – for the simple reason that there are basically no white people here. It’s the only American city where Hispanics completely dominate the political and cultural landscape, and the few white people who remain no longer feel themselves to be “culturally white”. Everything in Miami, including racial dynamics, is filtered through a Hispanic lens, not an American one. Miamians don’t even consider themselves Floridians, because the rest of the state resembles Miami as much as Zimbabwe does. Those who grew up here are unrestrained by traditional ideas of race.
As a Miami cliché, Tarrio isn’t remarkably interesting. He’s merely an opportunist with some street smarts, who, due to his urban look, cuts an imposing figure. What he represents to the media class — and how they frame him — is far more interesting. The conversation about race in America always revolves around the supposed animus between blacks and whites, with other POC automatically siding with African-Americans due to some assumed melanated kinship. The fact that Tarrio is even a member, not to mention the leader, of a white supremacist group is inconceivable to most liberals. Their paradigm, in which all POC are locked in an interminable struggle against their white oppressors, removes all possibility for the fluidity and nuance with which POC, and especially Hispanics, navigate ideas of race and colour.
In Miami, the main animus Hispanics have is with other Hispanics. The Puerto Ricans and the Dominicans have beef with one another. The Chileans and the Argentinians despise each other for reasons beyond just soccer. Hell, my people, the Cubans, have issues not only with other Hispanics, but with each other! The Cubans who immigrated shortly after Castro took power view themselves as entrepreneurial hard workers; they look down on the “newer Cubans” as lazy dope dealers and Medicare fraudsters.
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SubscribeWhat the author never seems to ask is why a so-called white-supremacist group would let a dark skinned person lead them? That is of course if the Proud Boys are indeed a white-supremacist group. Maybe, just maybe Tarrio’s leadership of the group is evidence that the Proud Boys are not white-supremacist in belief at all.
What do they believe?
They are their own selves, not Democrats, not Republicans, not black supremacists, not white, not right, not left. They don’t like BLM ruling the roost, or Antifa, and they are the only ones who take them on. The CJS isn’t going to..
They’re supporters of Western civilisation and the nation state. The leap to presenting that as “white supremacists” is absurd. A deliberate strategy to demonise the culture and it’s roots perhaps.
The essay would have been so much better if that aspect had, at least, been explored.
If anything, to begin with they were more about gender – hence proud boys – in contrast with idea that men should be ashamed. Not “proud whites”.
This, of course, set them in opposition to key tenets of wokeism.
Correct me if I’m wrong about the history, but I believe that antifa took against them for that reason and they then got drawn into the standard polarisation.
Ah , yeh that sounds about right. ‘White supremacism’ is more a ‘woke’ obsession than anything which actually objectively exists with a big social representation
accusing someone of ‘white supremacy’ means not needing evidence; the accusation stands on its own, gleefully parroted by Dem politicians and most of the mainstream left.
Yes, this is effectively a hit piece, whether the author knows it or not. It reads as though they’ve regurgitated Wikipedia and may end up being quoted by them at a later date as “authoritative” as is the way things go nowadays.
Enrique’s long interview with left-leaning Tim Pool on YouTube – “The Proud Boys May Have Noble Goals, HOW They Try To Achieve Them Can Be Critiqued” – was vastly more enlightening than this attempt at indoctrination.
There are MANY “left behind” people in the Proud Boys: what have the Democrats done to give them a feeling of purpose and belonging to the USA in the 2020s?
Excellent video… Thanks. https://www.youtube.com/wat…
I would not assume a POC would be on the side of BLM since it looked to me that most of the rioters and protesters were middle and upper income white people.
And most of the damage was of course in black majority areas (or government buildings)
Which will suffer from decades of underdevelopment, business flight and property price deflation.
While the pr***s playing BLM go on to nice safe government or academic jobs and a comfortable semiurban home away from those pesky “POCs”
Here in Europe meanwhile, you’d regard a (white) Spanish or Portuguese person as white anyway. Importing all these American neuroses is, apart from being corrosive to society as a whole, also utter nonsense.
Tarrio is Cuban, not Spanish. People from Spain or Portugal would be regarded as white in the US as well. As long as they were white. There are black Spaniards and Portuguese people. I know an Asian Italian, she would be regarded as Asian.
But these aren’t actually American neuroses, they are specific to a subset of Americans, progressives. You’ll find very few Americans who actually like separating people by race. But those who do like it are very, very loud.
As a result of being very loud, they carry outsized influence within the ranks. See how quickly all the talk about “allies” or ‘white fragility’ spread. My favorite part was the white apologists scrambling for lists of black-owned businesses to patronize, totally oblivious about how ridiculous this made them look and ignoring the obvious first question: why are you ignorant about local black owned enterprises?
“People from Spain or Portugal would be regarded as white in the US as well. As long as they were white.”
Not sure this is really true. Portuguese friends who have gone to America have come back with a very poor view of the country, because of the way they were treated. This is in marked contrast to people from the U.K.
Well don’t know what I can say other than that white people are regarded as white in the US. Some friends of yours not liking the US doesn’t really change that. Nor is it likely that they had long conversations with Americans about what those Americans considered their race to be. That would be an odd claim would it not? Is that your claim?
If not, how do you know they were not considered to be white? Is mistreatment of say, white Americans in France due to Frenchmen believing them to be non-white?
That’s all true of course, but it was surprisingly consistent, and in marked contrast to the experience of people from the U.K.
I should also add that while people in north Europe doubtless consider Southern Europeans white, they do often treat them differently – sometimes with a kind of veiled contempt. In my experience the Germans are the worst, but people from the U.K. too sometimes.
I’ll have to remind you that people from the UK are not all white. Do not mistake race with nationality.
Your anecdote has no way of being proven and I doubt that your friends discussed their race with Americans. Is it your contention that they did? Perhaps your friends displayed rude behavior and were subsequently treated a certain way. You really don’t know. Surely you’re aware that Europeans can act rudely at times.
In any case, your anecdote doesn’t change anything I said.
Here in Europe I don’t think I have ever heard referring to somebody as white. Whiteness, blackness and the like are not European categories, at least on the continent. I don’t know about the United Kingdom. Even in the past there were different categories, such as nordic, alpine, mediterreanean, etc.
Yes, it’s become a fashion in the UK to talk about ‘whiteness’.. Probably the anglo relationship.. Obviously the rhetoric is all complete nonsense
And only Kemi Badenoch dare take it on.
Because in Europe there is the larger sense of European identity (culture). That is why Southern/Eastern European migrants to Northern Europe have integrated so well. Lutheran Germans don’t see Italian Catholics or Eastern Orthodox as a “threat” to German culture. Slobodan the Serb will not kill his daughter because she is dating Johan the Lutheran.
“Lutheran Germans don’t see Italian Catholics or Eastern Orthodox as a “threat” to German culture.”
This seems to me to be a generalization that requires proof. We may not be hearing about other religious differences than the standard Islam vs everyone else, because the most vocal people now seem to consider religious belief to be irrelevant to human life, even though just about every atheist ‘social’ conviction they hold can be traced back to a Christian origin..
“This seems to me to be a generalization that requires proof. “
The proof is in your daily life. You are not hearing about religious differences because it doesn’t matter to the Germans or the Christian migrants. Would Serbs/Greeks/Russians refuse to go to Oktoberfest ?
Max Planck institute has studies about the performance of different ethnic groups in Germany (education, crime, home ownership, wealth, political/cultural leanings).
All Eastern and Southern Europeans (adjusted for how long they have been in Germany) perform on avg. just like the Germans. The Turks/Arabs (not Christian Arabs) perform below average.
Do you truly believe that one day the Orthodox Christians in Germany will rebel against the constitutional order?
P.S. Greeks in Germany perform on average better than any other group including the Germans. Spanish guest workers are hard to measure because of very high rate of intermarriage with Germans. Personally I have known 2 Spanish girls (born In German to Spanish parents) married to German men. The only issue was football (Spain vs Germany).
Err – northern Ireland anybody?
I consider this one of those vanishingly rare instances in which Jeremy is right.
Because it is the other way round – you are (almost) always wrong.
Being told that I am almost always wrong by Jeremy reassures me as to my correctness in most matters.
Hmm…there are plenty of derogatory names to call people of different European nationalities…spics, wops, wogs, frogs, boxheads etc…
As far as “wop”-it is from American immigration-without papers. You left off “limey”. I foresee the time when you cannot ask an Italian “how’d your day go?”
…and Paddy and Jock and Taff…
My English aquaintances still
call me Taff and some still use
“Sheep-ShaXXer just as ‘Stralians still the use the term
“Pommy BastXXX” very few of
either mean it in a nasty way –
Well maybe some of the “Wild
Colonials” do.
No worries – I’ve been called worse by Welsh ‘so called’
Liberals.
Folk etymologies for supposed acronyms are seldom true, without papers being one of them. See also, wharf, posh, and many others. The term wop was in use well before immigration papers were needed and would also apply to immigrants other than Italians were it true.
Noddies, cloggies, krauts.
Boxheads is new to me – who are they?
Except the ‘wokes’like Jon Snow. https://www.theguardian.com…
“Here in Europe I don’t think I have ever heard referring to somebody as white.”
That’s because being white was the norm. Colour was only referred to if you differed from it. Whether to do so is racist is an interesting question.
We didn’t used to have the concept “whiteness” in the U.K., but we definitely do now. It is a clear racial pejorative. I would consider anybody who used it to be an obvious racist.
Before anybody points it out, I do realise that in the paras above I am taking different sides in the debate. That’s because I believe there is sense on both sides and find the current polarisation stupid.
Though it’s hard not to feel that the left started it and is getting dafter, and more provocative, by the minute.
“American neurosis” (fixed your spelling error)? What a joke. The inherent racism in Europeans is where that originates.
There isn’t really any such thing as an American in as much as race or cultural backgrounds go. We are a stew comprised of people from all backgrounds and colors. So, please stop with that ridiculous BS.
Europe sure is in denial about both it’s past and present it seems. Look at you, pretending the entire history of conquest isn’t your legacy. Denial isn’t just a river in Egypt, as they say.
An alternative explanation suggests itself: namely that the Proud Boys aren’t white supremacists.
🙂
Far too reasonable.
All hail the Principle of Inference to the Simplest Explanation!
Drachir, such apostasy will get you Twitter-banned, careful.
I was briefly on Twitter about a year ago. Never again.
So it’s not just Supreme leader Trump who gets the treatment, eh?
The nasty innuendo, bad-mouthing, insinuating evil motives…..the standard works for anyone not keen on the “African-American racial project”
( Those not keen, funnily enough, includes plenty of actual recent immigrants from Africa – far more successful in tolerant America, hate the local “victims”)
You could far easily dig dirt on the thugs and racists driving BLM, but that doesn’t happen, just like no action was taken against the Demrats encouraging or organising bail for rioters.
Be very clear.
Regressives hate Trump not because of anything they accuse him of, usually falsely.
They hate him because they are fascists and he was in the way, and anyone who opposes them is their enemy.
The nasty innuendo, bad-mouthing, insinuating evil motives…..the standard works for anyone not keen on the “African-American racial project”
it works for anyone who is not in total lockstep with the left, even those who are nominally left but deviate on a couple of topics. These people are like the radical jihadis – anyone not like them is an infidel worthy for repercussions, sometimes violent and sometimes digital as with doxxing and attempts to get people fired.
Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio hails from a city where white supremacy barely exists
so what is the city where “white supremacy” exists in much larger form? This exercise in bad faith of targeting people of a certain pallor in the nastiest way possible has not helped anyone.
Pretty much any white minority, Demrat governed city or state has white supremacism: California, Detroit, Chicago..
Where non whites (unless you are upper class elite) have to suffer high crime rates, schooling and infrastructure, the state subsidises initiatives such as welfare benefits that destroy their families, and non whites are relentlessly brainwashed they are inferior victims who must rely on handouts from their white “saviours”
“nonwhites”
Don’t generalize. Asians are not victims.
they’re not victims until they try applying for college.
True,
The more elite schools, yes. But Asians can still get into most colleges.
Replace asians with blacks and see if this strikes you as okay.
I almost gave up on your hit piece after the first paragraph. “white supremacist …group”. Whatever else PB and Tarrio may be. That isn’t one of them. A shameful piece.
The article never really seemed to deal with that point very well, I believe techinally PB are against ‘racism’ but very nationalist. But there seems to be a number of white supremists in or close to their group? Also if they’re in favour of political violence and against democracy they’re bad.
Of course similar things can be said about many of the left affliated groups, including those with a lot of mainstream acceptance and promotion. They are riddled with extreme racists (see Sasha Johnson), authoritarians and people very happy to engage in political violence.
It’s not that PB and indeed Trump aren’t horrible people, it’s that many on the other side are equally as bad. The one sided narrative doesn’t help in anyway, it allowed the left to commit appalling crimes, and acts as a recruiter for the far right and gives them the thinest sliver of justification.
There are not nationalist but rather proponents of western civilization, which includes people of all races. Who are the white supremacists in or close to the PB?
That’s my understanding. They are pro western civilisation. Of course western civilisation was produced largely by white people, and it seems that having a positive attitude towards it is now enough to get you labelled white supremacist.
Indeed, and that makes me a white supremacist, and of course I support all those defending western civilization against the hordes and mobs of woke cretins and thugs, all their fellow scum and the morons backing the divisive, discriminatory and grossly insulting BLM racists.
All that is required to be labeled a white supremacist is to be white. It is a secular version of original sin, promulgated mainly by white urban liberals with a carapace of sanctimony hiding their anxiety.
“All that is required to be labeled a white supremacist is to be white.”
I think that’s true of racism in some circles. Racism is treated as inescapable for white people. I’m not sure it’s the same for white supremacy.
Robin di Angelo, for example seems to consider herself a racist. But does she really consider herself a white supremacist? That would be really odd.
What if it’s exactly, civilization (and not even, any particular one) – that’s the problem?
If Proud Boys were a white supremacist group, they would not have a non-white person as leader, full stop – whether black, Asian or “Afro-Cuban”.
I stand to be corrected here, but I don’t think the KKK ever had a leader who wasn’t white.
The KKK also never had a leader who wasn’t a Democrat (as in political party).
A white supremacist group??? WRONG! Of course some of their members have been found to be all kinds of things – this happens in any organization – but they are NOT white supremacists. They stand against BLM because that organization is founded by self proclaimed Marxists. Don’t get me wrong! I don’t support PB or any of these groups. But get your labels straight !!!
Good for you putting in the required bit of not supporting the PB, best safe than sorry.
Cubans are different. On average (aside from the new Cuban migrants) they are affluent/wealthy, politically active (Republican – Marco Rubio) and see themselves as white Catholics and are hostile to communism/socialism.
The definition of whiteness in America has expanded to include people that were not considered whites – Italians for example. Cubans are like Italians (without the high culture or the amazing food).
Self perception matters a lot – Cubans see themselves as white. They see their group interest as part of white America.
It was Asians (especially Chinese) in California that voted down Affirmative Action.
The democratic problem is that the base of their voters is the black community but the rest of migrants in America (Cubans, Asians, etc.) don’t feel any guilt about slavery/jim crow. The democratic coalition is highly unstable – but Republicans are too ham fisted to get other minorities on their side.
As an Italian immigrant to the US, I understand being Italian and I understand being an American. But what is it with this white thing? It appears to be constructed simply to create racial animosity. There is no white cuisine, white language, white religion, white customs. White exists only as a political construct that obscures the diversity and humanity of the people the politically correct want to classify.
It appears to be constructed simply to create racial animosity.
yup..and it works.
Indeed, but address your question to the racist BLM thugs.
If you do not understand ‘White’ I guess you do not understand Chinese, Inuit, Indian, Arab, Jew, Polynesian, and so on, other than geographic. Names used to describe the race or genetically similar group in contrast to the world’s other groups. You must live in a confusing world where you cannot understand humanity.
Cubans without amazing food?????
Admittedly, I know nothing about the Proud Boys but the entire article left me wondering if the author’s characterization of them as primarily White Supremacists is wrong. Why not include some quotes from Tarrio to support this cognitive dissonance narrative?
Tarrio has been quoted as saying, “I denounce white supremacy. I denounce anti-Semitism. I denounce racism. I denounce fascism. I denounce communism and any other -ism that is prejudiced towards people because of their race, religion, culture, tone of skin.” In regard to his own ethnicity, he has said, “I’m pretty brown, I’m Cuban. There’s nothing white supremacist about me.
Clearly this didn’t stop the author from writing his hit piece, facts eh…tuh, who needs ’em?
He looks down on “grifters,” as he is not one of “them.”
Do you ever see expat Americans with other Americans? No, they are not like “those” Americans, and so they do all they can to convince locals that they are “good” Americans. I have also seen this with other people, like the English. People who want no ethnic stereotype clinging to them, but happy to leave it on others.
This is why there is such classism and reverse racism amongst whites. The poor who look like them are scary. With the others they will, ironically, be the great White Saviours. In Germany, they will give a new thick Winter coat and a top of the line double stroller to a new arrival from Africa. I saw her…in the same view of the square where a European, probably German, lady had a thin coat, not fit for purpose, and one of her small children standing on the back of an old-fashioned stroller with a smaller child sitting in it. Germans didn’t see charity as a thing before the Africans came, and they quickly gave a boost to Hartz 4, or welfare recipients, only after they gave out money hand over fist in 2015. Previously, they spent two years pulling on pennies, so that recipients without children ended up only five cents per month better off.
What is likely is that the author is only another cultural elite who knows “better,” and finds a group of “deserving” folks that he can use to put him into relief from the bad “others” of those who share his background.
Those quotes would interfere with the narrative.
The quote in the other reply is from Wikipedia, which sources it to WSVN-TV Miami’s Marisela Burgos on Sept. 30. These asides came in response to a spokes for the Jewish Anti-Defamation League, which does view the Proud Boys as anti-Semitic but may just offer the obligatory platitudes regarding what the Boys think about blacks as it’s everyone for themselves in identity politics. And this year it’s all about Donald Trump. Burgos was showing Trump on the split-screen during this interview.
The group’s primary hobby in 2019 was bouts of fisticuffs with Antifa, the thing they were doing when Andy Ngo got creamed in Portland, Oregon by a milkshake thrown from Antifas protesting USICE immigration enforcement. Stuff changes pretty quickly. Trump was of course behind the immigration policies, and admittedly applying them in a rough manner, yet BLM, which in its latest incarnation in most cities has more whites and Hispanics than blacks, got no mention at all.
“BLM, which in its latest incarnation in most cities has more whites and Hispanics than blacks”
With black unemployment the lowest in US history, perhaps black people are too busy at work to attend.
I think BLM, diversity experts, and the like, have actually found a way to make their Grievance Studies” degrees marketable.
It is as if reality has become realitx.
Perfection!
If this writer let his agenda run free would ha call BLM Anti-White?
With a mention from Joe Biden, just like that they become white supremacists, the cultural power of the Liberal left on full display for all to see, scary stuff.
While “Antifa is just an idea”.
I think much hinges on how you define white supremacist. In the view of many, asserting the following to be true will pretty much get you labelled as a white supremacist.
1. Western civilisation is one of humanity’s greatest achievements
2. Western civilisation was largely the production of white people
Now if you are constantly asserting this aggressively and denying other people’s achievements, then you may well be a white supremacist.
But if you are only doing so in response to people (often white people) who are constantly disparaging western civilisation or claiming it owes everything to black people, then you really aren’t.
There really are a lot of perfectly nice, reasonable unracist people out there who value the truth, and who are frankly sick of hearing how cr-p white people are, how cr-p western civilisation is, and how we would lose nothing if we burnt it to the ground.
And they are particular sick of hearing it from rich and privileged white people at elite universities.
“Proud Boys leader Enrique Tarrio hails from a city where white supremacy barely exists”. Now I am curious, please name the cities where white supremacy does exist.
The inference is, every last single one, in all USA. Quite likely also in all of them in Aus, NZ, all Europe, and Russia and…….well, anywhere white people infest the cities.
With all the Covid dystopia, this article was a breathe of fresh with its take on common sense and race relations. Anyone who reads US history knows that Europeans segregated themselves between ethnic groups, religion, etc. When I was a kid in St. Louis I asked an uncle why there were so many different Catholic Churches near each other. He responded, all the different European groups hated each other and would never attend church together. So it was no surprise when my grandmother confessed that her German/Bohemian family looked down on the Irishman she married. This despite the fact they were so dirt poor she was the only one of 9 to go beyond middle school and their father so brutal most kids never married remaining with a darkness on their shoulder. I raise my mixed kid with these stories so he doesn’t assume he is superior to anyone and then comes along ‘white privilege.’ I don’t know how you accept this message with accepting the subtext that you are superior. It seems disgusting.
“with accepting the subtext that you are superior”
I think you probably meant to say “without”.
“…European groups hated each other…”
No they did not. They simply went to a new country and found comfort with their ethnic group. There are demographic studies that by 2nd generation the intermarriage rate between different European group was very high.
It doesn’t apply to NYC for very different reasons.
Very interesting. I was aware of Tarrio but I didn’t know that he’d been to jail etc. That said, the Proud Boys are not White Supremacists and one bunch of genuine white supremacists, led by Richard Wallace, supported Biden because he is allied with those who are more likely to bring about racial segregation. I believe libraries in Seattle now have separate spaces for different races due to the race grifters.
In recent months I have been watching podcasts from Adam Francisco, a Mexican Jew who lives in Florida. He is a Trump supporter but talks to everyone in a number of different places. I had noticed that the state does indeed seem to be leading the way towards a ‘post-racial’ future, which is something we all want. It also looks like a great place to live, at least on the surface.
There is no such thing as “post-racial” future. The reality is that all migrant groups in America look down on black people.
And as American grows more diverse (or not) there will be less good will from other ethnic groups toward blacks.
This is not true. I migrated to the States and do not look down on black people. I do, however, see a people that are still reeling from the trauma of slavery (it has only been three or four generations since Emancipation) and, since then, have been used as a political football by both Republicans and Democrats. One concern I have for black Americans is that well-intentioned white liberals seek to make them dependent on state aid (reparations, welfare, affirmative action). While I believe in state aid for the poorest and most vulnerable in society, it is a poor substitute for going out and earning your own money. It also doesn’t help that popular Critical Theory disavows resourceful blacks as race-traitors who’ve stepped out of their lane.
There is a peculiar kind of racism in the US that I’ve never encountered elsewhere. White liberals are scared of black people and hope that by giving them everything their own racist attitudes will not come under scrutiny.
It’s been more than 150 years since emancipation. There are neither slaves nor slaveowners left, and the majority of Americans trace their roots in this country to the time AFTER slavery. And why is it that black immigrants who actively lived under oppressive regimes can come here and succeed?
There comes a point when it is reasonable to start looking at a community’s self-inflicted wounds and stop providing excuses about how people are “still reeling” from anything. Policy today makes it far more likely that a minority will benefit from his/her skin color than be discriminated against for it. Sure, some discrimination still occurs; it occurs to Asians, too, in college admissions applications but that group doesn’t use it as an excuse for perpetual grievance.
You are right that white liberals have done enormous damage to the black community, yet the left takes the black vote for granted and with good reason. Why do black people continue to vote for people whose decisions cause harm?
Well I have watched countless Adam Francisco podcasts and I can clearly see a route towards a post-racial future. It is impossible to identify the race of many of the people he speaks to as they are the product of one or two generations of inter-racial ‘mingling’. Once can also see this in British society.
Nobody looks down on ‘black people’, except those white liberals who use them as pawns to gain power and virtue-signalling points.
The reality is that all migrant groups in America look down on black people.
Ironically, one group that looks askance at black Americans is immigrants from African nations, people far far less removed from oppression than any native-born individual. Why is that, do you suppose? It may not help that black culture here is the only one that actively celebrates its own denigration, be that in song that is misogynous or glorifies the gangbanger or something else. When a studious black child is accused of “acting white,” that’s not a good thing.
Proud of your country-you are painted as a violent white supremacist by 5th column “journalists”.
-but Perez, a nasty Miami leftist hit-piece writer through and through, will just move on to his next scheme.
Are BLM/Antifa Black Supremacists then?
Surely that would fit with the logic of the author?
It seems anytime someone disagrees with the left they get accused of being a white supremacist. It would be hilarious if it weren’t for the fact that, this type of sinister leftist propaganda is what is essentially driving a wedge through liberal democracies across the world and part of the reason America was subjected to Trump for 4 years. It wont be long until Perez and his cultural Marxist comrades will start accusing Martin Luther King of being a white supremacist. After all, he asked us not to judge people by the colour of their skin. Which Perez, you seem to have a problem with. Wake up you’re the problem.
This may be the single worst piece I’ve had the misfortune to read on this site. This is nothing but a fictional personal attack. How on earth was this even published? Total garbage.
No, there are others like this one. I think they try to get writers form differing views, so when you get a Liberal one they will display their anti Western credentials as it seemingly is required of them.
I found the authors ideas that the PB would be “possibly forcibly disbanded” interesting. Maybe in China but how exactly would this happen in the US? And how exactly are white Americans “confounded” by Tarrio?
Invariably, the left’s approach boils down to force.
As someone from the U.K., can I just point out that no one in Europe thinks of Spaniards or Italians as people of colour. I’ve never thought of them as anything other than white. Are people in the US aware of how odd their use of the category POC appears to the rest of us.
If we accept that Romans and Greeks were people of colour, and that they played a key role in founding western civilisation, can we drop the idea that being pro western culture is white supremacist?
Just in passing, presumably both Columbus and Amerigo Vespucii were POC too. Does that mean we can put the statues back up. Or does it mean POC are actually the bad guys?
Careful David, such a logical chain of thought might cause a Guardian reader’s head to implode.
If Spaniards or Italians are black then they would be considered black when they are in the UK. Hopefully you are not claiming that all Spaniards and Italians are white, but if you are, are you aware of how odd that appears to the rest of us? I know an Asian Italian. Would she be considered white in the UK? You confuse race with nationality.
In any case, Mr Tarrio, who is Cuban, not Spanish, would most certainly be considered black in the UK.
Do you personally know this man you wrote of? It must be nice to pretend to know his motives by reducing him to a stereotype. Some interesting points you raised, especially about how “”POC” (I hate that term!) view each other, but unfortunately, the whole thing smacks of apparent jealousy of Tarrio. I wish you had left out all the “judgey” stuff and maybe you’d have had a better article. Thanks though, I did enjoy reading it!
Good points. I wonder how much color one has to have to be considered a POC. And what if you don’t know your racial background? Can you just assume that somewhere along the line someone was racially diverse and therefore be counted? We have an epidemic of white liberals in the US passing or attempting to pass as POC these days. Perhaps we should all self identify as such and eliminate the stress. Then scholarships and jobs open only to POC would be open to all. Can’t be any objection to that?
Perhaps next you could consider why the English Football Association have punished a Uruguayan for the Spanish word he used in a social media post written in Spanish to another Uruguayan – all in the name of fighting English supremacy (aka racism).
it was at that point when the descent of the wokerati into self-parody began to reveal itself. Someone taking offense where none is intended and punishment stemming from it is a contender for peak stupid, if such a thing is attainable any longer.
Seems like more of an indication of English supremacy.
No…”peak stupid” works for me.
Exactly. That is the point that the Uruguayan FA have made.
My contempt and utter disdain for the FA and its backing of the discriminatory, divisive, fascist, racist and grossly insulting BLM, with oleaginous, sycophantic and hypocritical support by the cretinous multi-millionaire knee-bending ball kickers and Sky TV, was further deepened by its censure of Calvani for using the Spanish diminutive ‘negrito’ as a term of endearment. I note not one of the black players in the Premier League, extraordinarily over-represented in it – 33% or more when the general population figure is 3% – had the guts or balls to defend a fellow player for making an entirely innocent remark. I’m only disappointed that Calvani issued an apology when none was needed.
I’d like to add a couple of things that I don’t believe anyone else has said. First, polling of Hispanics in America has revealed that a majority of them describe themselves as white. So, Perez’s idea that there are so few whites in Miami is almost certainly wrong. (“Hispanic”, after all, is a linguistic category, not a racial one.)
Second, East Asians are not necessarily melanin-enhanced compared to Europeans. In northern parts of the region, there are many surprisingly light-skinned individuals. (Surprisingly for those who consider them all POCs, anyway.) In more southerly locales, they are darker, but that happens in Europe too, such as in going south from Stockholm to Palermo. What accounts for the difference in skin colors is that East Asian skin is relatively opaque compared to European and Middle Eastern epidermis, which is (surprise!) more translucent than East Asian. This results in E-ME skin being ruddier than its EA counterpart. Thus, the pinkish vs. amber tones of the skin colors.
Seems to me that attention to these groups who are really quite small does not help anyone. They are all as bad as one another. Odious though Trump was/is/ and will be some believe him and some hold their nose and vote for him in preference to the alternative. So retaliating to his bad behaviour and pandering to extremes will just generate several Timothy McVeigh type nutters. If Biden is to succeed as leader he will need to dial down the vitriol.
Biden doesn’t really know how to do that though. His first act was the make it racial. Plus is he really the leader of the Democratic Party? I’m not sure if asked if many democrats would say that he was.
So, race is a complicated issue with no clear cut answers. Who knew!
But…But…But…no it isn’t, and the author of the article must be racist…?
Thank you for a great article, very illuminating. Of course, I will have to take your word for it about the social and cultural specifics of Miami but it rang true about Tarrio. The gold however was your analysis of liberal ridiculousness and disingenuousness. This article helps me make further sense of it.
I hoped to find some input in the comments to further verify or debate your take on race consciousness in Miami, but all I see is conservative defensiveness and far right apologists.
I’m left-wing AND anti-COVID-hysteria AND against out-of-touch liberal smugness, looking for nuanced discussion about political developments. The absence of comments from leftists/progressives tells me not many of them are listening outside their echo chamber…
A Hispanic who hates other Hispanics isn’t that unusual from what i see constantly. And who dislikes the Hispanics more than the middle class white people? Black people! Let Hispanic folks move into a black neighborhood and watch the black flight.
Anyhow, the sooner they just declare Florida a third world country and ask it to secede from the rest of the country, the better. Funny how all those cultures from the Caribbean and South America are there hating and hurting each other while they blame white people for racism.
We can of course say that white supremacy doesn’t exist anywhere in the United States anymore, and the white supremacists who do exist are quite rare now, as they have been since the early 1970s, voices made louder when social media amplifies them. I don’t understand why we must up-label everything to get the attention we deem due, but it’s reached the point we’ll require new terms to denote what we used to mean by “terrorism,” “insurrection” or the KKK. Conflicts the Proud Boys, Boogaloo Bois, Three Percenters”and in my own home state, Utah Citizens’ Alert”are pursuing often concern the “woke” crowd that follows the intelligentsia, not so much blacks per se although Detroit served as a meme. That might explain why the Prouds accept Tarrio as a figurehead. These movements aren’t hierarchical in nature, leadership in them being more a matter of first among equals, I think.
Still, it’s not good for the country. Unlike the UK, semiautomatic handguns and rifles are easily accessible here, and many states have “open carry” laws permitting fellas to parade around downtown with their guns. This hasn’t led to shootouts as of yet, the one close approach I’m aware of a homicide in Kenosha, Wisconsin last summer, but it invites hard feelings turning into trouble real fast. The Utah Legislature is worried about them; they showed up at our state Capitol after the fracas around Mike Pence counting the votes in Washington. Lots of security, lots of hassle I’d rather not see on account of it all.
So perhaps the “Proud Boys” aren’t actually white supremacists. Although given I’m not American I’m not really that bothered
It would have been helpful if this otherwise interesting article had mentioned Gavin Mcinnes and the origins of the movement, and why Enrique Tarrio seems to have become its figurehead.
White supremacy is prevalent in Miami but understated. It’s the reason why shows from Univision highlight majority white Latinos and hardly any indigenous or Afro Latinos
One wonders what revolutionary groups like the Proud Boyz might have learned from ISIS? After all, one can compare their motivation – extreme masculinity, religiosity (Islam/nationalism) fascist heteronomy – and their preferred stated outcomes
Except that BLM are closer to ISIS in terms of ideology and behaviour.
I don’t think BLM wants to throw gay people out of buildings or ban music.
Let’s not get too far with comparisons about BLM/ISIS.
BLM reserves much of that sentiment for men which is why the What We Believe part of the website was taken down. Too many people could read the group’s thoughts for themselves. Too many noticed that “father” was not mentioned a single time and the only citation of ‘men’ was in regard to the potential danger they pose to women. And this from a group ostensibly founded on the premise that black men were being unfairly by law enforcement.
None of the above makes them ISIS
maybe not but it doesn’t make them worthy of admiration, either.
Give them time..they’ll get round to it when they run out of people/things to object to!!!
LOL
I agree, Rosie Mackenzie’s comparison with Maoism is much more apt.
They do however expect others to kneel or raise their hands on command. They also expect you to stop your car on demand and wake up in the middle of the night on demand. Which is strikingly similar to Isis.
BLM are closer to Maoism with its cultural revolution, its denunciation and humiliation, to say nothing of its violence, intimidation, black propaganda, corruption, and censorship.
On reflection, let’s include BLM in that list
In what way are the Proud Boys fascistic?
They question the BLM narrative. That’s all it takes these days.
La verdad.