Racism one thing both parties have in common

SAN DIEGO — I’ll often hear other Hispanic journalists talk about being attacked, criticized and picked on by racist conservative Republicans — usually over immigration, and the assumption that anyone with a Spanish surname is soft on border security.

Amateurs. You haven’t lived until you’ve had to put up with all that noise — while also getting attacked, criticized and picked on by racist liberal

Democrats because you challenge their nonsense.

It happens to me all the time. In fact, I can’t figure out who despises me more — conservatives who believe I hate

America, or liberals who resent that I think for myself.

I recently wrote that Senate Democrats owed an apology to newly confirmed Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh for their insulting treatment of him. That fired up an opinionated woman from San Francisco who believes Kavanaugh is a rapist, Hispanics are inferior, and Catholics are degenerates. She responded:

“I smell a sexual predator sympathy in your op-ed. A Hispanic male, probably raised in the pedophile Catholic Church, should NOT take on women’s civil rights. You have been raised in a culture of hatred toward women and help disempower them. I hope your misogynist views send you to the nearest unemployment line.”

Apparently, dog whistles are not just for conservatives anymore. The reader goes after Hispanic men, and a Hispanic culture that she claims hates women.

Dios mio. Another clueless reader whose understanding of Hispanics is a taco short of a combination plate. Sure, Hispanics hate women — so much so that Mother’s Day is the most important holiday on the calendar.

Over 30 years of writing for newspapers, I’ve encountered more than my share of closed-minded lefties. Consider the white liberal in Phoenix who — after I criticized U.S. Attorney Janet Napolitano, the future Democratic governor of the state and Homeland Security Secretary — told me that I ought to be more grateful to the Democratic Party for delivering the affirmative action that took me to the Ivy League. Then there was the white liberal in San Antonio who insisted on calling me “senor” and claimed my admiration for George W. Bush made me a traitor to the Hispanic community. And who could forget the delightful woman who, after I criticized Hillary Clinton during the 2016 election, told me to “go back to Mexico — and take Donald Trump with you.”

I understand that the mainstream media — which is still largely run by liberal white people — only has one frequency when it comes to covering racism and ethnocentrism in America. They will talk our ears off about intolerance on the right. It makes them feel morally superior, and gives them a shot at winning Latino votes without actually having to break a sweat and work for them.

Luckily for the media, racist Republicans play into that narrative by saying or doing the wrong thing.

In fact, the modern GOP — which has really descended down a rat hole since Ronald Reagan won 35 percent of the Latino vote in 1984 and George W. Bush won 40 percent in 2004 — now approaches Latinos not with hope and optimism but with fear and loathing. The cultural right portrays Latinos as dumb, dangerous, diseased and determined to change the complexion of the United States.

That line of attack used to be offensive and hurtful. Now it’s boring and predictable.

Still, as a Hispanic who votes — and writes — the liberal media made sure I heard about the interview that Rep. Steve King, R-Iowa, gave to a far-right publication in Austria. It was filled with white nationalist racism.

The interview, which was published in September but only last week came to light in the United States, makes clear that King is obsessed with the birthrates of Muslim and Latino immigrants. He thinks demographics point to a “slow-motion cultural suicide” for Western Civilization, which will soon be “subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice.” It all comes down to nativist math.

“The U.S. subtracts from its population a million of our babies in the form of abortion,” King said in the interview. “We add to our population approximately 1.8 million of somebody else’s babies who are raised in another culture before they get to us.”

Get the picture? Whether they’re conservatives or liberals, racists are like cars. To see what you’re dealing with, you have to look under the hood.