RUBEN NAVARRETTE JR.: Use the word “qualified” fairly and evenly — or don’t use it at all
A white reader in Arkansas who is interested in learning about Hispanics recently sent me a kind note, thanking me for the education he gets from my columns. Today’s lesson: Why non-Hispanics should know the difference between speaking their mind and speaking out of turn.
Fueled by tamales at holiday dinners, my family will go at it. We criticize, feud and push each other’s buttons. The same goes for the larger community. When something needs to be said, Hispanics will say it. When someone needs to be put in check, we’ll do it. We have no qualms criticizing our own kind.
Still, when an outsider attacks one of us — especially in a way that is dishonest, petty or unfair — we close ranks and push back.
Take the case of California Attorney General Xavier Becerra — or as Joe Biden likes to call his choice to be secretary of health and guman services: “Xavier Bacharia.”
Cards on the table: I like Becerra, and I respect his accomplishments. Right-wingers label him a radical, as they do most people with Spanish surnames. But Becerra has always been on an even keel. I’ve covered him and written about him since the early 1990s, when he served in the California Legislature and ran unsuccessfully for mayor of Los Angeles.
I have a beef or two with his record — especially on immigration, where he was missing in action during the Obama administration’s reign of terror against immigrants. When Phoenix-based “Dreamer” Erika Andiola confronted him directly in 2014 and implored him to help undocumented youth, Becerra told her to help elect more Democrats. This Hispanic Democrat is a team player who is “Democrat” first and “Hispanic” second.
I think Becerra is a bad fit for the Department of Health and Human Services, but I also think the Department of Health and Human Services is a bad fit for Becerra. Biden turned the Stanford Law graduate and former congressman from rising star to racial token, putting him in the impossible position of heading a Cabinet department that is far outside his wheelhouse.
You want Becerra to shine? Make him attorney general. But Biden obviously has someone else in mind to lead the Justice Department.
Having said that, I’m not in the mood to put up with cheap shots at Becerra by conservative white men in Congress or in the media. Radio hosts and the editorial page of The Wall Street Journal act as if they were leafing through the dictionary and just discovered the world “qualified.”
White men are the last people who should talk about qualifications. Not when people such as Hunter Biden or Donald Trump Jr. are born on third base. Besides, everyone knows that the word “qualified” is subjective. How many former HHS secretaries in the past 20 years have been unqualified, unremarkable and unmemorable? But because they were white — or even better, white men — I bet no one questioned their qualifications.
Case in point. All this snark from conservative white men about how qualifications are going out of the window in favor of diversity and the least “qualified” Cabinet pick so far might just be a white male.
What better way to herald a new era of change than to nominate Tom Vilsack to be secretary of agriculture, a post the former Iowa governor held for all eight years of the Obama administration? What is Vilsack going to do this time around that he hasn’t already tried?
Still, Vilsack probably will be confirmed. Even if he is a retread who may have a conflict of interest given his private sector work, you won’t hear that he is “unqualified.” That word is reserved for women and people of color.
For those of you who still doubt that white privilege is a thing, and that white male privilege is an even bigger thing, take a good and hard look at the emerging Biden Cabinet.
Ruben Navarrette’s email address is ruben@rubennavarrette.com.
