There’s an old saying in Spanish, “Dime con quien andas, y te dire quien eres.” In a nutshell you are who you hang out with. There are somethings that you can overlook, wearing socks with sandals, or a coat and flip flops, all crimes of fashion but forgivable.

There are other things that would be forgivable if a person were sincerely repentant. I’ve written before that Marco Rubio just doesn’t know who he is outside of taking whatever political positions his donors tell him to take. I’m not changing my position, but I do think Marco knows that he is appealing to the worst of our community when he openly courts racists like Alex Otaola, and Christopher Monzon I’m not sure if the latter monikered himself the Cuban Confederate or the Twitter tweeps did, we’ve confirmed that he marched in Charlottesville “Jews will not replace us.” We’ve also confirmed that the Florida GOP paid him thousands of $$. Now he gets into an altercation with two other men also Latino and he’s the victim, his mouth likely wrote a check his butt couldn’t cash. Lest you think that I have no knowledge of Cuban Rednecks/Confederates my brother is one and I’ve disowned him because of his racism, not a mental illness. He is not repentant and doesn’t deserve my attention, from the 1800s they taught us that proximity to whiteness=money and power.  I see disowning my brother as the equivalent of cutting off a tumor in order to remain alive, not allowing the hate to fester in my life.

I’ll have more to say about why and how we got where we are, and why our attitudes on race are so antiquated later. When someone in your community was at the heart of the plot to overthrow our government (Tario) and marching with Nazis in Charlottesville (Monzon), it is time for all of us to stand up. Nobody’s immune from racism, the silence from our elected Cuban leaders and prominent Cuban citizens is deafening with  few exceptions.

I’ll close by saying this, if you are ok with racism against anyone, don’t expect any help when they come for you.