MCALLEN, Texas — Jessenia Herzberg and Lorena Houghton, two idealistic college students outraged over the recent killing of George Floyd and racial injustice, were chanting “Black Lives Matter” with a trickle of protesters as they marched last summer past the quinceañera dress shops and discount stores on Main Street in this sleepy Texas border city.
Suddenly, a blue pickup truck pulled up in front of them. Out sprang a man in a baseball cap, jeans, and work boots.
“Get the [expletive] home,” he furiously shouted at the group of mostly young Latino activists. The man, who also was Latino, hurled a racial slur referring to Floyd, saying the outrage over his murder didn’t “belong here.”
He pointed to the sky. “This is not up there,” he said, his breath catching in exasperation as he apparently gestured toward Minnesota. His arm flew back down, and he wagged a finger in the faces of the protesters. “This is here.”
In this region of South Texas where Donald Trump made massive inroads with Latino voters last November, shattering stubborn notions of this slice of the electorate as a monolithic bloc, both Democrats and Republicans have spent months trying to figure out the roots of the ex-president’s appeal — and whether the GOP will be able to capitalize on it in the future. Political analysts have floated the possibilities that Latino voters were attracted to Trump’s American brand of macho culture or his perceived business acumen or concerns over pandemic-related shutdowns that cost so many of their jobs.
But an under-discussed issue — one that Latina activists like Herzberg, 21, and Houghton, 20, faced head-on last June 5 — flows just under the surface: racism and disapproval of the Black Lives Matter movement among a swath of the Latino community.
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