From today’s TFN News Clips:
“If you want to know why we can’t pass legislation in Texas, it’s because we have 37, no 36, Hispanics in the Legislature. All of the states that have passed legislation have a handful and I mean literally, some of them have NO Hispanic legislators, well, maybe 3 or 5 or something. So that’s, umm, part of our problem and we need to change those numbers. . . . So the problem is these Hispanic legislators . . . is that it’s too close to them and they, umm. . . simply cannot vote their conscience correctly.”
— Tea Party leader Rebecca Forest, complaining at a rally at the Texas Capitol about the difficulty in passing a bill barring so-called “sanctuary cities” (which don’t exist in Texas anyway). (Video available at the link.)
Stay informed with TFN News Clips, a daily digest of news on issues involving religious freedom, civil liberties and public education. Subscribe here.
There goes the Hispanic vote! Who’s next? Catholics?
I need education. Really. I do. This is serious. Why do some prejudiced Anglos refer to Hispanic people as “spics”? I intuitively understand where the term “wetback” comes from—I think.
A number of years ago, I was watching the Discovery Channel, and they had a documentary about this elderly Texas woman and her family members who were on an Odyssey to Huntsville to see them fry some Hispanic guy who had been convicted of killing one of their relatives. It was insane—like one of those race around the world reality shows on TV. “Aw dang!!! We just had a flat tire, and we only have 45 minutes ’til they pull the switch. My back hurts. Can granny change the tire this time?” Then they started making fun of how Hispanic people talk, “Hey senor, I no spica Englich!!!” They did that for several minutes, although it seemed like an eternity. “You reckon he can feel it when that juice starts a flowin’ through him? I sure as hell hope so.”
Well, some of that was made up because I could not remember the exact words that were said. That was just to give you all a realistic flavor for what it was like and the fact that this goofiness went on for a torturous hour as they came ever closer to the prison. In retrospect, by the end of the thing, I was concerned that this Hispanic guy might oughta be released because he had had popped a member of the family in question, perhaps performing a service for the State of Texas rather a crime.
Now, this is just a theory based on watching those loons. Is it possible that the pejorative term “spic” comes from the phrase “No spica Englich?”
If somewhere here has a better etymological background than me, please chime in and educate me—because I don’t live in Texas or anywhere else near the Rio Grande.
Charles – you’re pretty close, according to my ancient Webster’s Unabridged. “Spiggody” preceded “spick” which then became “spic.”
Well, what does “spiggody” mean? Do they have a definition for it? I looked it up on an Internet search and got nothing.
Well, anyway, back to TFN’s original post, what kind of fruitcake would stand up in public with amplifiers and say something like that? After all, a majority elected them somewhere in Texas. The far right has always been harping about “whatever the majority says should be what goes.” Well, what the majority said went in at least 36 areas of Texas. Then why can’t they live with that nicely American fact. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with hating spi……..now could it?
The important point of the gaffe is that the speaker had an expectation based on the level of bigot speech in the Tea Party that such usage is not a gaffe, but an honest descriiption of the prevalance of a Hispanic corrosive underclass bent of infiltrating more corrosiion, subterfuge, subversion, and “loss of the purity and essense of our precious bodily fluids” as cited by BG Ripper in Dr Strangelove.
Charles, “spiggody” is part of “no spiggody eengleesh”.
Ms. Forest’s lament would be hilarious if it weren’t so nearly tragic. I’ll bet a sixpack of beer from somewhere in Yankeeland that there are several of those (probably dusky and bilingual!! Maybe even Democrats!!) Hispanic legislators that had ancestors who called Texas home before Ms. Forest’s ancestors got on the boat to flee some European famine. Has she never heard of Lorenzo de Zavala? Of Juan Seguin?
spanish colonization of Texas didn’t amount to zip until the 1770’s. The Spanish/Mexican population was sparse until a few hundred here and there about 1800. After that, Yankees and Europeans came not because of any famines in Europe, but free land, no law save that of the gun … and other Yankees.
The geography of the Texas-Mexico border areas doesn’t support large scale colonization due to a big desert and some rugged countryside. The major route by land goes by way of Monterrey and San Antonio. The navigation by way of rivers flowing south and an open coast made Yankee immigration easier, particularly after Louisiana and Arkansas were part of the Union.
A large part of the current Hispanic population came after Texas independence, largely because the border was not even considered much more than a line on a map until Reagan started regulating migrants, which turned into an immigration issue by making return to Mexico a bother.