You can tell that the “Diversity Recession” meme is catching on because it’s being denounced by Hispanic journalists and Media Matters:

No basis for libel on minority mortgages

By MARY SANCHEZ [Email her]

The Kansas City Star

October 14, 2008 In the great search for somebody to blame for the nation’s economic meltdown, an easy scapegoat is emerging.

Or rather, make that a few million easy scapegoats. By golly, it’s those low-income minorities! Those people who never should have qualified for home loans in the first place. The uncreditworthy defaulters of all those nasty subprime loans that caused our lending system to crumble and is catapulting world markets into the tank.

It’s a conspiracy that involves all the usual boogeymen. The snooty liberal do-gooders who championed the Community Reinvestment Act; the 1977 law that mitigated lending standards for minorities under certain conditions; Wall Street sharks greedy to turn a profit, and everyone’s favorite miscreants, the members of Congress who failed to adequately regulate when the spigots of credit were opened.

“In fact, much of the crisis we’re in today is because the government set out to fiddle with the market,” George Will fumed on ABC’s “This Week.” He was referring to the CRA, which in his view “would criminalize as racism … if you didn’t lend to unproductive borrowers.”

It makes a nice conspiracy theory, but unfortunately it’s a lie. A big lie.[More]

No it’s not. Partly because it’s not properly a conspiracy theory at all–nothing about the government’s campaign against “redlining“ was secret. Media Matters is chiming in with the same idea:

Fri, Oct 10, 2008 9:24pm ET Myths and falsehoods about the purported link between affordable housing initiatives and the financial crisis

Summary: Conservative and other media figures — echoing a reported strategy on the part of Republicans — have attempted to lay blame for the financial crisis on proponents of the expansion of affordable housing. Those attacks are premised on several myths and falsehoods.

As usual, they have their myths and their facts backwards. But if it makes the complainers feel better,  “Diversity Recession” doesn’t mean we’re blaming minorities as such–we’re blaming multiculturalists.

This is an item I saw on Commonreaders Journal:

American Archbishop Calls for Enslaving Illegal Immigrants
No, really!

I thought to myself, “Not really.” And then when i read the the Catholic News Agency story,  I said “Really!” just like Commonreader did.

Archbishop Gomez: ‘intensive’ community service, not deportation, appropriate for illegals

Jefferson City, Oct 8, 2008 / 03:10 am (CNA).- José H. Gomez, Archbishop of San Antonio and the senior Hispanic member of the United States’ Catholic hierarchy, spoke at a rally at the Missouri State Capitol in Jefferson City on Saturday, calling for a moratorium on deportations, federal work site raids, and new anti-immigration legislation until after the upcoming elections. He suggested that instead of deportations, which he said break up families, illegal immigrants should be subject to “intensive, long-term community service.”

Saying he believed immigration to be “the great civil rights test of our generation,” he discussed his own status as an American citizen who grew up as an immigrant born and raised in Monterrey, Mexico.

“I’ve always had family and friends on both sides of the border. So I have many conflicting emotions about the way this debate has played out in recent years,” he explained.

Turning to early Christian history, he described how the notorious Roman emperor Julian the Apostate, who returned to paganism after a Christian upbringing, thought the uniquely Christian benevolence toward strangers weakened the power of his preferred religion.

“To be a Christian was to practice hospitality to the stranger,” he said, quoting several Scriptural verses and Church Fathers.

He especially focused upon Christ’s words in Matthew 25: “For I was a stranger and you welcomed me … As you did it to one of the least of these my brethren, you did it to me.”

Thus, Archbishop Gomez explained, Catholic interest in immigration is not a recent development but “part of our religious identity as Catholics, as Christians.”

Immigration Dispute Bad for American’s souls

Speaking as a pastor, the archbishop said the immigration dispute is “bad for the souls of Americans.” [More].

Of course, what he’s talking about is not really enslavement, but hard labor. And when Don Goldwater, as candidate for Arizona Governor,  suggested something similar in 2006, he was, of course, attacked by the SPLC’s Hatewatch. But it’s still a bad idea.

What’s depressing is that both McCain and Obama believe in “National Service,” which would more or less do the same thing to young Americans.

Archbishop Gomez, who was  born in Monterrey, Mexico, is worried about the state of Americans’ imortal souls, the consequence of the corrosive emotions “hate” and “fear”. It would be better if he warned Mexicans not to do things that are hateful and frightening, and worried about the damage to their immortal souls caused by breaking into the country and stealing its money.

Video of the debate between Peter Brimelow and Jacob Hornberger at the Heartland Institute’s 24th Anniversary Dinner is now online. Go here to see it.

As I have written on many occasions, Mexico’s progress-averse culture (as described by Prof Lawrence Harrison) makes Mexicans some of the worst immigrants on earth because of the incompatibility of their values with ours. Mexicans’ disdain for education runs deep and lasts for generations, even when they reside in America.

In Mexico, kiddies bribe teachers for better grades — a cynicism made a little more understandable by a recent news report: For Mexico’s teachers, jobs are things to inherit or sell, and they’re on strike to keep it that way [Houston Chronicle, October 12, 2008].

“We’re fighting to guarantee jobs for our kids,” Oscar Miranda said as he helped teachers stage a protest in front of the governor’s office in Cuernavaca, the capital of Morelos.

“Throughout history,” Miranda said, “the sons of carpenters have become carpenters. Even politicians’ children become politicians. Why shouldn’t our children have the same right?”

Gordillo and Calderon have denied the teachers’ accusations. Instead, they say Mexico urgently needs to overhaul its education system.

The plan would require teaching applicants to take government-administered exams before hiring or promotion. Pay raises would be linked to students’ performance on standardized tests. The details are being negotiated in the states, which will administer the project. Most have pledged their support of its general outlines.

In other coverage of the strike, Britain’s Daily Mail reported, Meet the teachers with a major discipline problem…

Next time these teachers ask their pupils to behave, they might find this picture returns to haunt them.

This protest erupted yesterday in the state of Morelos, south of Mexico City, when thousands of striking teachers clashed with riot police.

The Daily Mail apparently has higher expectations of Mexican teachers than is warranted by their previous behavior.

Meanwhile in Texas: Hispanic immigrants seen as slow to assimilate into American society [Fort-Worth Star-Telegram, October 12, 2008].

No kidding. Mexicans’ anti-assimilation attitude persists because they are only here for the MONEY; they despise our traditional culture (calling it “Anglo-Protestant” like that was a bad thing) and polling shows the majority of Mexicans regard Americans as racist and corrupt.

They hate America. We shouldn’t be surprised that their only desire is to receive their paychecks under the table, and they don’t want to join the national community.

By 2050, the number of Hispanics in America will be triple what it was in 2005, jumping from 14 percent to 29 percent of the U.S. population, according to the Pew Hispanic Center of Washington, D.C., which studies the growth of America’s Latino population.

The numbers are even higher in Texas, where Hispanics already make up more than a third of the population.

The large influx allows Hispanics to hold onto their culture and language longer than the last great wave of immigrants did a century ago, experts say.

How many more millions of these unfriendlies can America stand?