La Razberry

by Michelle Malkin

"ONLY in America could critics of a group called "The Race" be labeled racists.Such is the triumph of left-wing identity chauvinists, who've succeeded in redefining all opposition as "hate."

Both Barack Obama and John McCain will speak this week in San Diego at the annual conference of the National Council of La Raza, the Latino group whose name is Spanish for "The Race."

Can you imagine Obama and McCain paying homage to a group of white people who called themselves that?"

"Here are 15 things you should know about 'The Race':"

* It supports driver's licenses for illegal aliens.

* It demands in-state tuition discounts for illegal-alien students that aren't available to US citizens and legal immigrants.

* It vehemently opposes cooperative immigration-enforcement efforts between local, state and federal authorities.

* It opposes a secure fence on the southern border.

* It joined the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee in a failed lawsuit to prevent the feds from entering immigration information into a key national crime database - and to prevent local police from accessing the data.

* It protested common-sense voter-ID provisions as an "absolute disgrace."

* It has opposed post-9/11 national-security measures at every turn.

* It opposed Oklahoma's tough immigration-enforcement-first laws, which cut off welfare to illegal aliens, put teeth in employer sanctions and strengthened local-federal cooperation.

* It joined other anti-assimilationists suing to prevent Proposition 227, California's bilingual-education reform, from becoming law.

* Former "Race" President Raul Yzaguirre said: "US English is to Hispanics as the Ku Klux Klan is to blacks." US English is the nation's oldest, largest citizens' group dedicated to preserving the unifying role of the English language in America.

"The Race" also advised the Mexican government on how to lobby for amnesty for illegal aliens while avoiding the terms "illegal" and "amnesty."

* It gives mainstream cover to a poisonous subset of ideological satellites, led by Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlan (Chicano Student Movement of Aztlan). The late GOP Rep. Charlie Norwood rightly characterized MEChA as "a radical racist group . . . one of the most anti-American groups in the country, which has permeated US campuses since the 1960s, and which continues its push to carve a racist nation out of the American West."

* It's leading a smear campaign against immigration-enforcement leaders and has called for TV and cable-news networks to keep immigration-enforcement proponents off the airwaves - in addition to pushing for "Fairness Doctrine" policies to shut up its foes.

The New York Times reported that "Race" President Janet Murguia believes "hate speech" should "not be tolerated, even if such censorship were a violation of First Amendment rights."

* It sponsors militant ethnic-nationalist charter schools subsidized by tax dollars (at least $8 million in federal education grants). These include Aztlan Academy in Tucson, Ariz., the Mexicayotl Academy in Nogales, Ariz., Academia Cesar Chavez Charter School in St. Paul, Minn., and La Academia Semillas del Pueblo in Los Angeles, whose principal inveighed:

"We don't want to drink from a White water fountain, we have our own wells and our natural reservoirs and our way of collecting rain in our aqueducts. . . The White way, the American way, the neoliberal, capitalist way of life will eventually lead to our own destruction."

* It has perfected the art of the PC shakedown at taxpayer expense, pushing to lower home-loan standards for Hispanic borrowers, reaping millions in federal "mortgage-counseling" grants, seeking special multimillion-dollar earmarks and partnering with banks that do business with illegals.

* It thrives on ethnic supremacy - and the elite's unwillingness to call it what it is. As historian Victor Davis Hanson observes: "[The] organization's very nomenclature 'The National Council of La Raza' is hate speech to the core. Despite all the contortions of the group, Raza (as its Latin cognate suggests) reflects the meaning of 'race' in Spanish, not 'the people' - and that's precisely why we don't hear of something like 'The National Council of the People,' which would not confer the buzz notion of ethnic, racial and tribal chauvinism."

Amazing how the ones considering themselves uber-liberal elites are usually the most profound bigots and racists in existence.

ANY group calling itself THE RACE is just another gussied-up, modern version of the KKK, and really now...

All this political ass-kissing of certifiable racists should be too disgusting, even for politicians.