TAKE THE SLEEPING GIANT FOR GRANTED AT YOUR OWN PERIL

Every four years during the presidential election we hear the same thing to explain why Latinos didn’t vote the way many expected them to: “Latinos aren’t a monolith.”

Amusingly, it’s always stated as if a profound realization. One so profound that we realize it again and again every four years. And just as reliably, every four years the “Latino vote” eludes expectations and assumptions.

The 2020 presidential contest was different and not different. First, Latinos did live up to higher voter turnout expectations. The “sleeping giant” was awake. Early estimates suggest that millions more voted than in recent presidential elections.

But as far as how they voted, folks (especially Democrats) are again confused. Look at preliminary exit polling data, and the numbers are all over the map: NBC News projected 55% of Cuban Americans in Florida and 41% to 47% of Hispanic voters in some counties in Texas’ Rio Grande Valley voted for Trump. In fact, exit polls suggest Trump won a higher share of Latinos than any Republican has won since George W. Bush in 2004.

Wait, what?! How’s that possible? Trump is the guy who announced his 2016 presidential run with the nowinfamous “They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people” comments about Mexicans.

It’s a vexing question for many Latinos, including me, the son of Mexican immigrants who, together with my parents, roll our eyes whenever we see “Latinos for Trump” signs and the folks who carry them. “They must not have any self-respect,” we say. “Are they self-haters?”

Nah, they’re just Americans. You see, just like everybody else, Latinos stereotype Latinos too. The truth is that Latinos in America, just like all other Americans, are incredibly diverse and disagree with each other at every opportunity about everything imaginable, and politics is the rule, not the exception.

Perhaps the best way to think about the Latino vote is to stop thinking about the Latino vote, and instead think about the Mexican American vote, the Cuban American vote, the Puerto Rican vote, the Guatemalan American vote, and so forth and so on.

And in addition to the various ethnic groups that make up Latinos, their members need to be further considered by race, gender, class, age and length of time living in the U.S., as just a few of the various qualities that not only comprise Latinos, but all Americans.

But there are things that Latinos in America hold in common that very much help explain how they vote. Latinos are primarily a recent immigrant community (within the last 100 years) consisting of people who left behind countries with failed institutions and economies, a lack of opportunity and safety, and little or no rule of