Are There Too Many Anglos?

The illustration above is a panel from Mexican muralist Jose Clemente Orozco's Epic of American Civilization series on the reserve reading room walls of Dartmouth's Baker Library. I saw it with the other parts frequently as an undergraduate, but this one in particular, entitled "Anglo-America", didn't make much of an impression on me at the time -- at best, I thought it might represent the artist's respect for the prosperity and organizational genius of his neighbors to the north. Now that I revisit it, I have a sense of his profound discomfort.

I think a very similar sense lies behind the controversy over Bad Bunny's Super Bowl halftime show -- there's an unsettling sense that corporate elites have signed onto the idea that America is "too white", or at least too Anglo, and, well, maybe too male and too straight as well. Here's Rolling Stone's take:

Here’s a rather essential fact about the guy some conservatives tried to cast as an enemy to American values well before his Super Bowl halftime show even began: As a kid, Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, a.k.a. Bad Bunny, was literally a choir boy. He grew up to become one of the least problematic humans in the entire music industry, an introspective, humble guy whose biggest “scandal” involved tossing an intrusive fan’s phone into the bushes.

. . . The mere announcement that Bad Bunny would headline the halftime show was enough to ignite outrage from some MAGA quarters — a reaction [reporter Julyssa] Lopez says she never saw coming. “I thought, if anything, celebrating a halftime performance in Spanish as sort of a historical moment would be something to embrace and aspire to,” she says.

. . . Especially after Bad Bunny took on ICE at the Grammys, conservatives seemed to expect some sort of anti-Trump extravaganza. What they got was something far more subtle, powerful, and joyful: a communal celebration of Puerto Rican identity as well as the unity of countries across the Americas, along with unabashed patriotism for the United States. A performance that was supposed to be somehow so transgressive that it merited an alternative Turning Point U.S.A. halftime show — starring purported moral exemplar Kid Rock — ended with red, white, and blue fireworks. “If you love America, you have to love all of America,” Lopez says. “And Puerto Rico is part of America.”

Or put just a little bit differently, why is it upsetting that official corporate propaganda should urge us to celebrate what we have in common with s***hole banana republics, especially in the language of those banana republics? There was similar controversy over the essentially corporate sponsorship of the Orozco murals when they were first installed:

[Then-Dartmouth] President [Ernest] Hopkins states that Orozco came to him with a portfolio and a plan for some murals that he’d been carrying around. For years Orozco was looking for the proper wall space and told Hopkins the basement of Baker library was perfect for what he had envisioned. Hopkins then authorized these paintings for Dartmouth College.

In addition to funding from the college, there was outside funding. Chief among this was the funding provided the Rockefeller family. Nelson Rockefeller, Dartmouth Class of 1930, had been a student of [sponsoring Art Professor] Lathrop’s, and a tutorial fund for special educational initiatives set up by Nelson’s mother, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, would ultimately make the commission possible. Once Orozco had preliminary sketches drawn, they were published in The Dartmouth. It was at this moment that this piece of art became controversial.

. . . “Ancient America begins with the migration of peoples into the Central Valley of Mexico and the arrival of Quetzalcoatl, an enlightened deity who establishes a Golden Age in which the arts, agriculture, and society flourish. Quetzalcoatl’s departure marks the decline of the ancient world and its destruction by conquistadors enacting Aztec portent. Modern America begins in Christian conquest, presided over by Cortez, Quetzalcoatl’s antiheroic counterpart.” It is after this moment in the mural that the panels shift to modernity’s dark lens. Human industry is developed; “individuality is deadened by a consensus society and the regimentation of standardized education. The cycle culminates in the blind fury of nationalist war and a Christian apocalypse.” . . . The points about education, in addition to the depictions of Christ, are what brought the main wave of opposition against the Orozco’s murals.

There was much correspondence between alumni and Hopkins in which they expressed their negative feedback on the content of the murals . . . . One such letter. . . from Matt B. Jones, president of New England Telephone and Telegraph Company, . . . states, “My feeling about the murals is that when the College makes them a part of a building it stamps with its official approval of the type of art to which the particular mural belongs. . . . there is no reason why the College should not recognize and teach its students the theories and the polices of Socialism, or Communism, or Nudism, or other isms, but it would be a vey different thing to carve in stone over the doorways of the College buildings the tenets of those various isms[.]"

The controversy over Bad Bunny is very similar: in 1932, the corporate establishment, than whom there could be no greater avatar than the Rockefellers, endorsed a view of America seen from the perspective of its neighboring banana republics to the south. In 2026, the corporate establishment, than whom there can be no greater avatar than the consensus of National Football League owners, endorses a view of America seen from the perspective of its neighboring banana republics to the south, expressed in their language, and oh-by-the-way suggesting we're a little too male and too straight. From Chrome AI mode:

Bad Bunny is widely recognized as a major ally to the LGBTQ+ community, frequently incorporating queer themes, gender-fluid fashion, and messages of inclusion into his music and visuals. While he has faced conservative backlash for explicit sexual lyrics in general, accusations regarding "gay" content often stem from his visible queer allyship and progressive themes rather than specific lyrics about male-male romance.

The central problem with this is that it's top-down, an official corporate ideology that's just starting to get a bit old -- the country is movimg beyond it, and US Latins in particular don't especially like it, particularly the gay part. But it's also been around since the 1930s and the Rockefellers.