Immigration debate reaches new level of insensitivity with San Antonio high school basketball team

LatinaLista — Throughout the course of the GOP presidential campaign, the nominees have been repeatedly warned by their Latino peers to tone down their anti-immigrant rhetoric not just because it offends Latino voters but because their rhetoric has consequences.

Though the consequences they had in mind were the lack of Latino votes there are other consequences. There’s probably no greater example of what kind of unforeseen consequences such kind of talk has than what happened during a basketball game in San Antonio, Texas.

A predominantly white high school basketball team showed their unsportsmanship when a competing team from San Antonio Independent School District (SAISD), mainly comprised of Latinos, was awarded a trophy. The losing team started yelling a simple chant — “USA, USA, USA.”

The implication was obvious and triggered the SAISD to take action.

SAISD athletic director Gil Garza filed a complaint with the UIL, the governing body for extracurricular activities in Texas public schools, on Tuesday while attending a conference in Dallas for the state’s high school athletic directors.

“I appreciate Coach Brewer taking the action he took to stop it,” Garza said. “Our kids try real hard and work extra hard to get to the regional tournament, and then we have to worry about them being subjected to this kind of insensitivity.

“To be attacked about your ethnicity and being made to feel that you don’t belong in this country is terrible. Why can’t people just applaud our kids? It just gets old and I’m sick of it. Once again, we’re on pins and needles wondering what’s going to happen.”

It’s clear that nothing much will happen if politicians — whether local, state or national — start talking about immigration as it should be discussed — as a policy issue that needs to be updated, and not use it as a vehicle to justify racism and discrimination against the one demographic who has a longer history in this country than the politicians calling for their deportations.