JD Vance could have bungled Sen. Alex Padilla’s name in any number of ways. Al. Allen. Alexis.
But no, he went straight to José.
After the vice president parachuted in last Friday to basically troll Los Angeles, Vance made his now-infamous remark:
“I was hoping José Padilla would be here to ask a question. But unfortunately I guess he decided not to show up because there wasn’t a theater.”
“Theater” is how Vance described what happened a week earlier, when Padilla was handcuffed and detained at the federal building in Westwood for trying to pose a question to Homeland Security head Kristi Noem at a news conference.
The only wannabe thespian that day was Noem, who channeled her inner Evita when claiming that the deployment of nearly 5,000 National Guard troops and Marines to clamp down on L.A. activists trying to stop la migra from conducting immigration raids was necessary “to liberate this city from the socialist and burdensome leadership” of Gov. Gavin Newsom and L.A. Mayor Karen Bass.
“José” is what Vance thinks of Alex. Anyone who thinks this was a slip of the tongue doesn’t know their anti-Latino history.
For over a century, Americans have used Spanish first names as catchall slurs against Latinos. Mexican men were dismissed as violent Panchos and stupid Pedros. Latinas of all backgrounds have endured being typecast as a slutty Maria or subservient Lupe.
“José” was originally deployed against Puerto Ricans, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang. By the 1970s, because of the name’s ubiquity, racists had adopted it to describe all Latino men. The Social Security Administration lists José as the most common Hispanic name for boys over the last 100 years.
Vance’s misnaming of Padilla “was the perfect linguistic and class storm,” said San Diego State English professor William Nericcio, who has spent his career documenting the psychology behind anti-Latino racism in this country. “The vice president was proclaiming to Sen. Padilla, ‘Yeah, I know you. I don’t even remember your name. That’s how little you mean. You’re a José. You’re a nothing, a nobody, a dirty Mexican.’”
Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.) is removed from the room after interrupting a news conference with Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the Wilshire Federal Building in Los Angeles on June 12..
(Luke Johnson / Los Angeles Times)
“It was the cherry on top of them actually throwing Padilla to the ground,” Nericcio added, referring to federal agents’ handcuffing of Padilla, which was captured on video.
Padilla went on MSNBC over the weekend to call Vance’s jab “petty and unserious,” adding, “He knows my name,” since the two of them served in the Senate together, and the vice president presides over the Senate.
He was too polite. When I saw the video of Vance’s “José” crack — a flash of a grin on his face just after he uttered it, his eyes flitting around as if expecting a laugh — my blood boiled just as much as after watching footage of migra agents roughing up undocumented immigrants.
I thought of all my friends who had their name butchered as children and even adults — “Joe-zay,” “Josie” or pronounced correctly but in an exaggerated tone.
I thought of my grandfathers, José Miranda and José Arellano, who came from isolated Mexican mountain towns that are brothers from another madre to Vance’s ancestral home in Appalachia, but who never let hard times sour their outlook — unlike the vice president’s clan. I thought of my Tía Maria’s oldest son, José Fernandez, whom everyone calls “Chepe.” We cousins all love him for his gregarious attitude, delicious carne asada and a career in cement that saw Chepe advance from laborer to supervisor.
None of the Josés in my family were jokes. Neither were the Josés I admire — Cuban revolutionary José Martí, Mexican singer-songwriter José Alfredo Jiménez, farmworker-turned-astronaut José M. Hernández. Nor was Joseph, the earthly father of Jesus — José is what we call him in Spanish. Vance, a professed Catholic, should know better than to use such a holy name as a joke.
That Vance reduced Padilla’s attempted questioning of Noem to a charade shows what a clown he is. Spitting out “José” like a villain in a low-budget western reveals his rank racism. And if you think I’m exaggerating, consider how Vance’s press secretary, Taylor Van Kirk, responded when Politico asked her to elaborate on his José insult: She said her boss “must have mixed up two people who have broken the law.”
Not only did Alex Padilla not break any laws, but Van Kirk’s vague allusion to a second supposed criminal confirmed the point I made a few weeks ago: to Trump and his crew, all Mexicans are interchangeable, not to be trusted and most likely felonious.
So to repeat: Vance misnames Alex Padilla during a press conference. His press flak insinuates it’s because the senator’s name sounds like that of a nameless criminal.
The common dehumanizing thread is “José.”
I called up two Josés I know to see how they were feeling after Vance’s verbal ballet of bigotry.
José R. Ralat represents the sixth generation of men in his family with the same name. Yet that pedigree meant nothing when he moved to the mainland from his native Puerto Rico.
The taunts of “No way, José!” followed Ralat throughout his childhood in North Carolina — the same line his father had heard from gringos in 1960s New York. An elementary school teacher didn’t even bother to try to pronounce “José,” instead calling Ralat “Whatever your name is.” A middle school instructor called all the Latino students “José.”
“At first I was really confused,” said Ralat, who’s the taco editor for Texas Monthly. “It’s the most boring-ass name in Spanish, where I came from. Make fun of that? But it just kept happening. It was weird. It was awful. It was almost as awful as being called ‘spic.’”
That’s why when Ralat heard Vance’s José dig, “I rolled my eyes and thought, ‘Here we go again.’ It’s such a childish, boring insult. Shakespeare he is not.”
José M. Alamillo is chair of Chicana/o Studies at Cal State Channel Islands. Named after his father, he has traced the Josés in his family tree all the way back to 1759. But growing up in Ventura as a Mexican immigrant, the 55-year-old said the mockery he endured over his first name was so pervasive that he went by Joe through high school.
Alamillo only started calling himself José again at UC Santa Barbara, after a professor on the first day of class pronounced it like it was any other name.
“The move was small,” he said, “but it gave my name back some dignity.”
When Alamillo saw the clip of Vance misnaming Padilla, he immediately thought of Ricardo “Pancho” Gonzalez. The L.A.-born Mexican American tennis player dominated the game during the 1950s, yet was labeled “Pancho” by opponents and the media — a nickname he eventually adopted but always hated.
“What Vance did was really messed up,” Alamillo said. “I can see a staff member doing that, but not the vice president of the United States.”
The profe quickly corrected himself. “Actually, I’m sure he did it to appease to his followers and especially Trump — ‘Yeah, you got him! Way to show up Padilla!’”
Alamillo laughed bitterly. “To them, we’re all just a bunch of Josés.”
