Politics

Univision’s Jorge Ramos: U.S. is ‘our country, not theirs’

Ramos our country not theirs
What, exactly, did Jorge Ramos mean by this? Screengrab: MRC TV

While kicking off his participation in the 2017 edition of the Univision/Fusion annual entertainment awards show, Premios Lo Nuestro (“Our Awards”), Jorge Ramos told the Latino audience that the United States is “our country, not theirs,” apparently referring to non-Latino natives.

“I am an immigrant, just like many of you,” he said.  “I am a proud Latino immigrant here in the United States. My name is Jorge Ramos, and I work at Univision and at the Fusion network. And you know exactly what is going on here in the United States. There are many people who do not want us to be here, and who want to create a wall in order to separate us. But you know what? This is also our country. Let me repeat this: OUR country, not theirs. It is our country. And we are not going to leave. We are nearly 60 million Latinos in the United States. And thanks to US, the United States eats, grows and, as we’ve seen today, sings and dances. So when they attack us, we already know what we are going to do. We are not going to sit down. We will not shut up. And we will not leave. That is what we are going to do.”

Here’s video, courtesy of MRC TV:

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Newsbusters added:

Premios Lo Nuestro is usually just a nice bit of entertainment for fans of the many different genres of Latin music…not unlike the Billboards or the CMAs. However, as we saw during last year’s pre-election RiseUp concert and GOTV rally, Univision is increasingly mixing politics and entertainment – and that’s how we end up with Ramos as a presenter at a music awards show.

Ramos’ speech is amazingly strident, with an “us against them” tone that one would not expect from someone who incessantly promotes diversity from the other side of his mouth. When Ramos told the audience that “there are many who do not want us to be here”, he erases any distinction between legal and illegal immigration, and irresponsibly casts immigration as an exclusively Latino issue. This is not the first time Ramos has drawn on both deceptive and discredited rhetorical devices such as these.

What is astounding, though, is Ramos’ ferociously nationalistic rhetoric. On this score, Ramos would have been in the clear had he stopped at “this is also our country”. Such a statement hints at inclusion, patriotism, and a pro-forma desire to assimilate and function as an integral part of the nation as a whole. However, Ramos crossed a bright line when he decreed the United States to be “OUR country, not theirs”. One does not expect to hear such nationalistic rhetoric from a hardened critic of Donald Trump and Steve Bannon, and yet this isn’t the first time that a Univision anchor lets loose with a nationalist rant…

Moreover, Jorge Bonilla said, “Univision would like English-language audiences to think that Ramos didn’t actually say what he said. The network deceptively softened the most incendiary portion of Ramos’ ‘bold statement’ when it translated it for consumption by English-speaking audiences. ‘OUR country, not theirs’ magically became ‘OUR country, not just theirs’. Univision also disappeared that part of his statement from a related meme.”

So, Bonilla asked, just who, exactly, is this “our” that Ramos refers to?

“Is it U.S. Latinos regardless of birthplace? Legal immigrants? Illegal immigrants? Supporters of comprehensive immigration reform? Is it the multiracial and multicultural “rising American mainstream?” he wondered.

That’s not clear, he noted.  But what is clear, he said, “is that ‘Our’, within the context of Ramos’ statement, suggests a separate nationality to which U.S. Hispanics owe some sort of allegiance. Ramos, of all people, should know better than to approach the lines of racial and cultural supremacism – even if it is in furtherance of an amnesty cause that is near and dear to him.”

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Joe Newby

A 10-year veteran of the U.S. Marine Corps, Joe ran for a city council position in Riverside, Calif., in 1991 and managed successful campaigns for the Idaho state legislature. Co-author of "Banned: How Facebook enables militant Islamic jihad," Joe wrote for Examiner.com from 2010 until it closed in 2016 and his work has been published at Newsbusters, Spokane Faith and Values and other sites. He now runs the Conservative Firing Line.

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