rudy acuna <acunarudy427@GMAIL.

COM>

Rudy Acuña, Anything But Mexican Revisited, Comment

Although I have searched but I cannot find the original, “Why was Richard so
angry? Arguably the greatest tennis player ever he is painted as an angry
ungrateful man. Pancho Gonzales was born Richard Gonzales. He dropped out
of high school to play tennis on the ill kept tennis courts in the parks of East Los
Angeles. He was called Pancho by his teachers and the press because every
Mexican was known as “Pancho,”, Ricardo was too foreign, Even after he beat
every player standing he was not allowed membership IN the well kept country
clubs which he entered through the kitchen door. Always Pancho, never
accepted, he beat the best. One ranked player said if he had to choose a player
to play if the fate of the world depended on he would choose Pancho Gonzales.
He was reckless, and raced cars. He betrayed it is said his benefactor Agassi, He
threw tantrums his name was Richard. No matter what he accomplished he was
always Pancho to them. Ted Williams, a renowned hitter, was also Mexican and
concealed the fact because the fans in Boston would never have forgiven him
for being Mexican. He chose to live in fear, he was “Ted”’ not Pancho.

Created: 23 December, 2010

Last update: 27 July, 2022
EN
La Vida Es Un Juego
Commentary:
By Rodolfo F. Acuña

One of my gifts in life is that I attended and teach at a state college.

It has tempered my elitism something that has been nurtured by a
terminal degree and the academy. This sort of elitism gets worse as
you get older depending on the institution you teach.

However, being part of the system has its advantages. It gives you a
sense of its awesome power. You learn that you can never discount
the rhetoric of its members.

Irregardless of what people say, words are important. Words form

the culture of an era.
 For instance, presently confronted with a budget crisis brought
about by the failure of the capitalism and the refusal of politicos to
require the rich to contribute to the maintenance of its infrastructure,
the cost of education has been shifted to the student. Consequent to
this, education is beyond the reach of most poor and middle income
families.

The fundamental problem is that country does not have enough jobs.
It has abandoned the old Henry Ford model that well paid workers
become good consumers. At the same time, Americans are still having
children. They still believe in the myth that the American Dream is
possible. They believe that education is the stairway to the middle-
class heaven.

In order to reconcile these apparent contradictions, it has become

popular as of late to blame the poor. “99 cent store” economists say
that the problem is not the higher cost of education but that we have
too many ill prepared students attending college. According to them,
too much money is being spent on education overall. They propose
budget cuts and the raising of tuition.

The rationale is that if tuition is not raised that “the state will have
to raise taxes, which will further damage the business climate.”

Much to my dismay, this discredited survival of the fittest theory was

recently espoused by the chair of the economics department at
California State University Northridge.

Shirley V. Svorny in an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times on

November 22, 2010 wrote that fees at the CSU are artificially low and
consequently attract lower-achieving students. This, according to
Svorny, results in watered-down courses.

If you are as old as I am, you will remember that the same
arguments were made when the G.I. Bill opened the colleges to the “ill
prepared” veterans of World War II and the Korea. The same old
argument was made in the sixties as larger numbers of minority
students and women entered academe.
 Svorny’s piece is filled with false syllogisms. Nevertheless, it is
wrongheaded to dismiss her fallacies. It is even dangerous because
taken with the avalanche of right wing articles produced by other
academics, it is paving the ground for among other things the
privatization and defunding of public education.

Svorny’s argument could easily be refuted by citing Donald Bogue’s

analysis of the 1980 U.S. Census that concluded that the prime
indicator of success in college was not cultural or racial but the
father’s income.

Moreover, you only have to remember the fiascos of the energy

deregulation in the 1980s and the privatization of the prison industry
to see where this reasoning leads.

However, dwelling on Svorny’s piece would detract from my theory

that “la vida es un juego,” that “life is a game.” You have to know the
game life before making assumptions.

Part of the American Delusion is that there is a level playing field.

Intellectual acuity and physical superiority always comes through. The
American Delusion avoids any discussion class or the complexity of
identity in forming these aspirations.

The role of identity is especially sensitive when it comes to Mexican

Americans. Identity has a hidden side when it comes to Latinos. We
cannot shake the image of Pancho, the Cisco Kid’s sidekick.

Take Lee Treviño who was born in El Paso in 1939. He was dubbed
as “The Merry Mex” and “Supermex” by the press. Treviño was raised
by his mother; he never knew his father. He didn’t attend much school,
and began working in the cotton fields at the age of 5. Treviño worked
at a golf course and learned to play golf. Eventually, he won the U.S.
British and Canadian Open championships in a single year. The high
cost of putting fees and membership in tennis clubs kept most people
of color from achieving his dream—he was the exception not the norm.

Ricardo Alonso Gonzales was born in 1928—generally known as

Pancho. He was perhaps the greatest American-born tennis player.
Pancho was rated No.1 in the World for eight years in the 1950s and
early 1960s.

He was self-taught, and many of the tennis clubs were inaccessible

to people of his color which severely limited his playing time.

While on the tennis circuit, his name was routinely mispronounced.

Further, raised in Boyle Heights, Gonzales was never accepted by the
elite tennis crowd. It was rumored that he got a scar from a knife. In
reality, it was from an accident. At the time the stereotype was that all
Mexicans carried knives. He was a hot tempered Mexican to others.

Gene (Genaro) Brito was born in 1925. His dad was Spanish
American (AKA New Mexican) and his mother Mexican American.
Raised in Lincoln Heights in LA, he played defensive end in the
National Football League. He played in the Pro Bowl.

However, not many people knew he was Mexican American; he was

even elected to the National Italian American Sports Hall of Fame in
1989. Brito was stricken by a disease similar to the ALS that killed Lou
Gehrig. His health deteriorated and he died in 1965 at age 39.

Although he never denied his race, Brito lived in an era when being
Mexican was not an asset. Few of the over one hundred Mexican
American NFL players before 1970 are known to Mexican American
children.

Probably the greatest baseball hitter of all time was Ted Williams who
played for the Boston Red Sox. He is the last player in Major League
Baseball to bat over .400 in a single season. Williams holds the highest
career batting average of any player with 500 or more home runs.

His mother May Venzor was a Salvation Army worker from El Paso,
Texas—he was raised in San Diego.

It is true that Williams was not a pioneer for Latino players who
came after him. Williams said little about being Mexican. “He never
made a point of letting it be known,” said Williams’ nephew. In his
1969 autobiography, “My Turn At Bat,” Williams said, “If I had my
mother’s name, there is no doubt that I would have run into problems
in those days, the prejudices people had in Southern California.”

Williams spent time in Santa Barbara visiting his Mexican

grandmother, who barely spoke English. He was advised by Eddie
Collins, the Sox’s manager, not to acknowledge that part of his family.

Williams once told his cousin Manny Herrera, while the fans in
Boston were good to him, he harbored one fear. ‘’They don’t know who
I really was, how poor I really was.’’ His cousin replied, “We’re all poor,
Ted.’’

On another occasion, Manny told Ted, “You’re a damn Mexican like

me and you don’t even speak Spanish.” Williams replied, “Yeah, I’m a
pitiful one.”

I recount these stories not to glorify the sports figures, but to shed
light on the importance of identity. Colleges are like private clubs that
you have to belong to before acceptance. If you want your kid to get a
soccer scholarship or to become a professional, be prepared to sock
out $3,000-$5,000 annually per child. It is not enough to give her or
him a soccer ball.

Pancho González made it in spite of the system. Life was his

nightmare; he died destitute.

Ted Williams dreaded that the system would learn who he was and
kick him out of it. He was tired of being poor, which he associated
with being Mexican.

Now people like Svorny want to close the door to membership in the
last club open to the masses of poor people, higher education. They do
not want to seem as if they are racist or that the American Delusion
does not work. For them the illusion of the dream is what is important.
However, words have consequences and they set the rules of game.
@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

Join LARED-L, the fastest growing Latino/Hispanic Listserv Network in the

country. It's Free and Easy to join. Just fill out the simple form below, and
become part of our Cyber Community: (( La Voz del Pueblo))

http://listserv.cyberlatina.net/SCRIPTS/WA-CYBERL.EXE?SUBED1=lared-l&A=1

Saludes, Felicidades, y Bienvenido/a,

*********************************************************
Welcome to the La Red Latina WWW Network

"LaRed Latina" WWW site: http://www.lared-latina.com

"LARED-L" Discussion Group: http//www.lared-latina.com/subs.html

LRL Internet Seminar: http://lared-latina.com/seminars.html

Roberto Vazquez rcv_5186@aol.com

President, CEO http://www.lared-latina.com/bio.html

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

LRL Internet Seminar Enterprises is a La Red Latina sponsored concern which

is involved in conducting "Internet/WWW" seminars/lectures for High School,
College, and University Latino/Hispanic/Chicano organizations and
associations
from throughout the West Coast, Southwest, Intermountain, Midwest, and
Texas Regions.

For further information check out LRL Internet Seminar Enterprises at:

http://lared-latina.com/seminars.html

@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@

To subscribe or unsubscribe from the LARED-L list, click the following link:
http://listserv.cyberlatina.net/scripts/wa-CYBERL.exe?SUBED1=LARED-L&A=1