Prof: Hispanics Should Replace ‘Old White Men’

A UCLA professor has given public speeches in support of the DREAM Act in which he has made inflammatory statements, including the suggestion that Hispanics should replace “old white men” in positions of power and that Republican leaders in the Senate who oppose the immigration bill are racists.

On the UCLA website, Kent Wong is listed as the director of the Center for Labor Research and Education at UCLA, where he teaches Labor Studies and Asian-American Studies.

On Dec. 13, Wong gave a speech at a pro-illegal immigration rally at McArthur Park in Los Angeles in which he endorsed the DREAM Act in racist terms, according to a video first surfaced by Eyeblast.tv.

Toward the end of his speech calling for the DREAM Act to be passed by Congress, Wong proclaimed to the rally, “When that day happens, the young people of the DREAM Act movement will go on to accomplish and do great things with our lives. You will go on to become lawyers, teachers, doctors and members of the U.S. Congress to replace those old white men. (Applause) You are the hope and future of this country. You represent the hope and future of your generation.”

The website of the Center for Labor Research and Education includes as major funders, with donations of $10,000 or more, George Soros’ Open Society Institute and the Tides Advocacy Fund, as well as the city of Los Angeles and the Ford Foundation.

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In a separate video, posted on YouTube.com, Wong is shown giving a speech in what appears to be a classroom setting during a Dec. 9 press conference in which he said:

{snip} Let us be very clear what is behind the anti-immigrant hysteria in Congress today, and especially among certain Republican leaders in the U.S. Senate; it is racism pure and simple. If these young immigrant students were from Ireland, or from Italy, or from Germany, we would not have this massive outcry against the DREAM Act. It is because they are from Latin America, they are from Asia, they are students of color that the minority in the Senate is trying to use a procedure to block the will of the majority.”

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Wong also served as the founding president of the Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, AFL-CIO, a union group that claims to be “the first national organization of Asian union members and workers.”

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