Unity

Next week, I will be speaking at a Hispanic Leadership Summit at the United Nations. I was asked to speak on the topic of Unity. The following is a preview of my speech. 

In 1966, Ronald Reagan made a statement that became known as the “11th commandment” in Republican politics: He said, “Thou shall not speak ill of thy fellow Republicans.”  Republicans loved it, and most would argue that it has served Republicans well over the years. 

Fast Forward to 2020; Joe Biden had just won the presidential election. In an interview on MSNBC, Eva Longoria credited Latinas for carrying the election for Joe Biden. For making that claim, Longoria took a beating on social media. Why? Because the narrative at that point was that it was Black people, particularly Black women, who deserved the credit for Biden’s victory. And by giving credit to Latinas, many believed that Longoria showed disrespect to Black women. 

Most of the criticism came from people on the left, including a good number of Latinos who willingly jumped on that bandwagon. A few days later, Eva was essentially forced to go back on TV to grovel and apologize. 

Later that month, I wrote a blog post inspired by Reagan's statement. It was titled “Thou Shall Not Publicly Criticize Other Latinos” and published in Hispanic Executive Magazine. 

In my blog, I mentioned the Longoria story and made my case for defending our own. While some people liked my article, I also received a fair share of criticism. Again, I received a lot of self-righteous comments from Latinos on the left. “What a stupid statement!” “Are you saying Latinos are infallible?” “If a Latino is out of line, I am going to call them out just like anyone else!” 

Two months ago, and we’re all familiar with this story, Donald Trump hosted a rally in NYC and had a comedian open for him.  As we all know, the comedian called Puerto Rico a floating pile of garbage. 

A few organizations, including NAHREP, posted statements denouncing the comedian’s comments on social media. We got positive remarks thanking us for making the statement. Still, there were also a good number of Latinos, this time from the right, who criticized NAHREP’s statement, making comments such as, “It was only a joke.”, “That’s our problem, we can’t take a joke.” or, “You’re trying to connect this to Donald Trump. How dare you… “Make America Great Again.” We received tons of comments like that. 

Let me ask you this question, and I want you to think about it: Instead of a Donald Trump rally, let’s say it was a Kamala Harris rally. Instead of calling Puerto Rico a floating pile of garbage, let’s say a comedian opened for her and said that Israel was a pile of garbage. 

Do you think the reaction would have been the same? Do you believe there would have been a division between conservative and liberal Jewish people about whether the joke was appropriate at a political rally? Just ask yourself that question. 

You probably know where I am going with this, but let me give you one big example of why the narrative about Latinos matters. 

A couple of years ago, I had the privilege of participating in raising $100M for L’ATTITUDE Ventures, a venture capital fund that invests exclusively in Latino-led companies and start-ups. I saw firsthand what these people think about Latinos from a business standpoint. 

Through that process, I learned that roughly 70 trillion dollars of investment capital are floating around the globe and that a relatively small number control it. These people are under pressure to make good investments - that will give them a good return. So, again