"Straight Shooting": Colorblindness, Latinos, and Post-9/11 Political Correctness

In 1964 President John F. Kennedy wrote that the United States was a “nation of immigrants;” however, such pronouncements mask histories of colonialism, racism, and systemic violence behind a cloak of American... [ view full abstract ]

In 1964 President John F. Kennedy wrote that the United States was a “nation of immigrants;” however, such pronouncements mask histories of colonialism, racism, and systemic violence behind a cloak of American exceptionalism. Despite residing in the United States since the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo in 1848 and the Treaty of Paris in 1898, Latinos are persistently framed in the U.S. English-language media as new immigrants who do not fit into U.S. (read: white and English-speaking) America. Such representations trope Latinos as incessant threats flooding over the U.S./Mexico border who bring with them waves of crime, overpopulation, sexual deviancy, plots to re-conquest the U.S. Southwest, as well as youth and drug.
For instance, on 16 July 2015 Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, in a performative dynamic that I term as “straight shooting,” tactlessly spoke his mind when he announced his campaign for the Republican nomination for U.S. president. During his speech, Trump orated that across the U.S./Mexican border, Mexicans are “bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.” This paper argues that such straight shooting rhetoric operates in concert with and is enabled, in style and intent, by post-9/11 politically correct (PC) discourse. Trump’s speech is analyzed at length later in this article, but this quotation highlights that, when ascribing to a politics that draws attention to the speaker by castigating others for being PC, overt racist statements are not only viewed by some audience members as permissible, they are often celebrated. Straight shooting responds to perceived political correctness with a confrontational, crass, and in many cases argumentative or combative counter-discourse that ostensibly deviates from the overly-PC culture of Washington.
This individual paper performs a critical discourse analysis of representations of “straight shooting” statements that stand in opposition to perceived political correctness (PC) in post-9/11 United States English-language media. I argue that denigration of so-called PC behavior in part indicates that racism is understood as an individual problem rather than a social problem. This contemporary racial formation discursively casts immigrants, people of color, and specifically Latinos as “others” outside of the national project or in some cases in direct conflict with national security and cohesion. Participating in PC discourse, these confrontational statements create an ideology where straight shooting, or overtly racist statements, are upheld by some as a discursive revolution that operate in opposition to Washington D.C.’s political stagnation and image-conscious rhetoric. These straight shooting statements rely on the interpellation of New Right neoliberal social agendas, like personal responsibility, as common sense.