Latinos, Rockets, and Ava

Los Angeles–Back from Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, which has ushered into this veil of whatever it is a veil of the world’s most advanced and meritorious granddaughter, the only credible evidence for Darwin. Helluva baby. A military-minded friend said I should regard her as “a howitzer round fired eighty-five years down-range.” See below for specifications.

Ava Carlyle Vernier, her own self. Eight pounds seven ounces, all systems go. A major advance in biology. The evolutionary progression: Al Sharpton, the Great Apes, Neanderthals, Cro-Magnons, Ava Carlyle. Estimated IQ: Low four figures. Nobility: Obvious. Does not look like every baby ever born. If respiratory capacity may be judged by the volume of outraged squalling, she may have the best lungs on the planet. (“Where is this? I don’t like it. I’m hungry. Put me back. Give me something to eat. Now.”)

Meanwhile I have been studying the Latino population of Los Angeles, something I have wanted to do for some time. Ever since the US set about merging with Mexico, I have wondered: Are Latinos going to form a separate country within the country, hostile to the white population? If so, God help us. Are truculent whites going to force them into said status? If so, also God help us.  Or, since they are not going to go away, is amicable accommodation possible? To investigate these vexing matters, I and Violeta (my spousal unit)–spent many hours over two weeks of walking the streets of Van Nuys, Sherman Oaks, East LA, and the like.

I wondered whether there would be more hostility when Latinos were in overwhelming numbers, as they are in East LA. No. In los callejones, the alleys, we found narrow streets lined with stalls selling clothes, toys, boom boxes, sloes. Dense throngs moved through, music came from countless stereos, children held their parents’ hands, and all was sound and color and life. Infrequent gringos or couples flowed along with the current, and no one seemed to care. Don’t try it in Detroit, amigos.

Conservatives are often horrified by this sort of thing though I am not sure how walking through a crowded alley and buying toys for the kids portend the end of civilization.

The cultural difference is real. Americans are Nordic, efficient and good at space ships. They invent things. They are not good at flavor, flair, liveliness, and are usually described as chilly and distant. Norway doesn’t do flamenco. Yet there is a distinction between intolerable cultural differences, such as looting malls or not letting girls go to school, and differences that are merely differences, unfamiliar, or annoying, like listening to loud mariachi music too late at night.

So where are these people heading? Into the middle class, most of them, eventually, is my guess. It will be rocky at times. They aren’t studios and the government wants to turn them into welfare parasites or impose damn-fool things like bilingual education. Immigration wasn’t a great idea in the first place, and wasn’t necessary, but what is happening, at least in many places, is a hell of a lot better than what could have happened.

Of course, I was wrong once, back in 1927 I think it was, and maybe I’m due now.

And now off to help satiate a small localized  famine. The kid grows like an unnecessary federal program. A most promising howitzer round.

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