For Latinos, the 2020 presidential election created fog

For Latinos — that mercurial group of swing voters that both parties supposedly want in their camp yet don’t take the time to understand — the aftermath of this election has been marked by frustration and confusion.

Let’s start with the fact that the 2020 presidential election wrapped up with equal measures of good and bad. The silver lining is that President Donald Trump was defeated for re-election. The cloud is that 73 million of our fellow Americans — including many of our friends and neighbors — tried to prevent that from happening. And they voted for Trump even though it was well known by Election Day just how dangerous, divisive and damaging his presidency has been to our country.

What are we supposed to do with that, the next time we bump into them at the grocery store or even on a Zoom call?

Meanwhile, in this era of social distancing, it seems some people still can’t stop encroaching on the touchy subject of ethnic identity. As a Mexican American navigating through 2020, I’m accustomed to white people trying to tell me what to do, what to think, and how to behave. It’s been that way my whole life. Now I have to put up with their sermons on the virtues of blending into the mainstream.

Let’s get something straight. The nation’s 60 million Latinos are really good at blending. More than 80 percent of us speak English. About 40 percent of us marry outside our ethnic group. And, if we’re forced by flawed metrics such as U.S. Census forms to make the binary choice between “White” and “Black,” about 60 percent of us choose “White.”

If there were a blending Olympics, Latinos would win all the medals.

Maybe that’s why some proTrump media commentators couldn’t wait to gleefully insist that the roughly 36 percent of Latinos who voted for the president had stopped being “Latino” and started being “American.”

It’s a false choice. You can be both. The Irish in Boston pulled it off. Ditto for the Italians in New York, the Germans in Milwaukee, the Armenians in Los Angeles and the Chinese in San Francisco. Americans of all ethnic and racial backgrounds figured out long ago how to love both their country and their culture. Latinos accomplish that every day.

Still, I’m curious. Is that the goal now — to rapidly fold Latinos into the mainstream? If so, does that have anything to do with fear, and the fact that this group is projected to make up 25 percent of the U.S. population in a decade?

That’s unexpected. Because, here in the Southwest — where the vast majority of Latinos live and identify as Mexican or Mexican American — the 20th century was all about “otherizing” those folks to make it easier for them to be abused, oppressed and discriminated against.

Given all that this group endured, you can understand if we’re a bit surprised that you now want to welcome us into the American family. The long list of injustices includes everything from the murder of Mexicans by Texas Rangers, such as the infamous massacre in the small west Texas town of Porvenir in 1918; to the Zoot Suit Riots in 1943; to the countless cases of police brutality afflicted over decades upon the brownskinned residents of cities like Albuquerque, Phoenix, Las Vegas and Los Angeles.

First, you want us far away from you. Now you want us close? Make up your minds.

And mind your manners. In an interview after the election, a conservative radio host in Texas told me that he is tired of hearing about race and ethnicity, and he was just as fed up with seeing people separate themselves into groups.

That’s a legitimate beef. Many folks would agree with him.

But here’s the punchline: The host had actually invited me on his show — as one of the few national Latino columnists in the country — to talk not about climate change or international trade but about the Latino vote. He wanted me to explain why President Donald Trump had done so well with Latino voters, and to break down why so many Latinos didn’t vote for Joe Biden.

Once I caught the contradiction, I told him: “You can’t have it both ways.” Either we think of people as being part of a group, or we don’t. It just can’t be based on what’s convenient at any given moment.

Now you see why, like many Latinos in this post-election period, I’m frustrated and confused.