Latino Congressman Hits Back at Biden Over His 'Latinx' Pandering and Implying All Latinos Are Illegals
A Latino Republican congressman had two messages for President Joe Biden during an appearance on Fox News this weekend:
First, Latinos aren’t avoiding COVID-19 vaccinations because they’re afraid of being deported. Second, “Latinx” isn’t a real word, no matter how much liberals want to pretend it is.
GOP Rep. Carlos Giménez, the former mayor of Miami-Dade County, Florida, and current representative for Florida’s 26th Congressional District, said he thought the president was “out of touch with what’s really happening on the ground” for comments Biden made in North Carolina on Thursday, where Biden attributed vaccination hesitancy among Hispanics to their immigration status.
The president’s comments were blasted by many on social media for the assumption that Latinos in the U.S. are in the country illegally — as well as his clumsy use of the progressive neologism “Latinx” to refer to Hispanics.
“There’s a reason why it’s been harder to get African-Americans, initially, to get vaccinated: Because they’re used to be experimented on — the Tuskegee Airmen and others,” Biden said during the speech in Raleigh, North Carolina. “People have memories. People have long memories.
“It’s awful hard, as well, to get Latinx vaccinated as well,” he added. “Why? They’re worried that they’ll be vaccinated and deported.”
BIDEN: “It’s awful hard as well to get Latinx vaccinated… Why? They’re worried they’ll be vaccinated and deported.” pic.twitter.com/gt2mcuAGB2
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) June 24, 2021
Let’s first put aside the fact he was talking about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, not the Tuskegee Airmen.
The former was an unethical medical study using black subjects in Tuskegee, Alabama, that didn’t treat individuals who had syphilis in order to observe the progression of the disease — even long after curative treatments became available.
The latter, of course, was the U.S. Army Air Corps’ all-black fighter squadron that served with distinction during World War II. (Let’s also forget this isn’t the first time Biden’s made that mistake.)
Instead, the second part is what drew many users’ attention on Twitter.
This is insanely racist https://t.co/MlWpdAcs6o
— Comfortably Smug (@ComfortablySmug) June 25, 2021
Well except that most Hispanics or Latinos are not undocumented. https://t.co/nJsb4d5g9z
— Carlos Curbelo (@carloslcurbelo) June 25, 2021
During an appearance on “Fox & Friends Weekend” on Saturday, Giménez was asked by host Rachel Campos-Duffy for his thoughts “as a fellow Hispanic-American” about Biden’s “demeaning” comment that “all Hispanics are afraid of being deported.”
“I also don’t like the term ‘Latinx.’ I don’t know what the heck it means,” Campos-Duffy said.
“I didn’t even know what that meant either,” Giménez said. “I really don’t know.
“Look, I’m Hispanic. A legal immigrant of the United States. I’m a citizen of the United States. I’m a U.S. congressman. We are like everybody else. We came here looking for a better life. My father, my mother brought me here looking for a better life escaping socialism and communism in Cuba.”
He added that they were “really proud to be Americans. And so somehow that we are different than anybody else and that we are going — we are afraid we are going to be deported, uh, no, that’s not the case.”
“And so I think the president really is out of touch with what’s really happening on the ground,” Giménez continued. “Again, I urge everybody to be vaccinated. But again, that’s our American rights, to do as we want.”
Giménez also used a Twitter post on Saturday to blast the president’s woke language.
“Never mind the racist undertones in implying all Latinos are undocumented, using the term ‘Latinx’ is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard,” he wrote.
“It’s insulting to our culture to try and restructure an entire language to fit your politics. Keep your wokeness out of our language.”
Never mind the racist undertones in implying all Latinos are undocumented, using the term “Latinx” is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.
It’s insulting to our culture to try and restructure an entire language to fit your politics. Keep your wokeness out of our language. pic.twitter.com/xw0edPMp0A
— Congressman Carlos A. Gimenez (@RepCarlos) June 27, 2021
There’s a reason Biden’s use of that word has gotten so much focus, and it’s not just because it’s funny trying to hear old Uncle Joe trying to sound like the vice president of a democratic socialist organic vegan co-op in New York City. (Although, believe you me, there’s that too.)
The purpose of Biden’s visit was to reach out to communities that haven’t necessarily gotten vaccinated yet. According to the Latino organization Salud America, as of June 21, data showed every state which reports a demographic breakdown of vaccine distribution has reported Latinos are getting vaccinated at lower rates.
The imbalance in North Carolina, where Biden made his offensive comments, isn’t as significant as other states — 8 percent of vaccinated residents are Latinos, compared with its 9 percent Latino population — but there’s still a discrepancy.
Simple numbers don’t tell the whole story, of course, so how much of that is due to actual vaccine hesitancy is an open question. But judging by Biden’s speech, he clearly thinks that’s an issue.
Thus, he rallies the Latino population to get vaccinated … by slurring them all as illegal immigrants and using a term to describe them that almost no actual Latinos use to describe themselves.
Yes, despite the fact it’s an indispensable part of the new left’s lexicon, an August 2020 survey by the Pew Research Center found only 23 percent of Latino Americans had heard the term and only 3 percent actively used it on themselves.
In other words, “Latinx” appeals to the kind of Americans who have posters of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez on their dorm-room walls, not Americans with actual surnames like Ocasio-Cortez.
In just a few sentences, attempting to overcome that vaccine hesitancy, Biden managed to sound incredibly racist and insufferably woke. Neither quality will get vaccines into anyone’s arms — and it’ll arguably alienate far more “Latinx” people than ever thought were going to get deported over a Pfizer jab.
Good work, Mr. President.
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