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In these strange times, Mexicans — and by that, I mean the whole extended familia: Mexican legal residents, Mexican-Americans, naturalized Mexican-born U.S. citizens, and undocumented Mexican immigrants — don’t have many friends, allies, advocates and defenders who are willing to stick their neck out and risk their livelihoods on our behalf.

Tragically, there is one less such person now that Anthony Bourdain is gone. The beloved and celebrated chef and writer — who became an unlikely television star thanks to his CNN show, “Parts Unknown” — apparently committed suicide last week in Paris.

Bourdain was an outspoken defender of, and advocate for, Mexican immigrants. He was not shy about standing up to bullies. He took on racists who would just as soon deny the many contributions of immigrant workers to, for instance, the restaurant industry because it doesn’t fit their narratives that immigrants are takers who are bankrupting the United States. He knew the truth. And he would write it, say it, and share it on social media — without apology or reservations.

Bourdain was a friend to Mexico, and to Mexicans, when they were most in need of support. It often feels as if our friends south of the border, and their distant relatives north of the border, are the last group of people on Earth that despots and demagogues can mistreat and malign with impunity.

President Trump traveled all the way to Singapore to broker a deal with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, whose country was not so long ago considered part of the so-called Axis of Evil.

Meanwhile, in this hemisphere, consistent with a bizarre policy of treating our friends and neighbors in an unfriendly and un-neighborly manner, Trump and members of his administration continue to treat Mexico — a trusted ally and trading partner — with utter disrespect, bordering on contempt.

But while Bourdain stood by Mexico and Mexicans, the misery of it is that they didn’t the chance to return the favor.

I’m a writer. I’m also a foodie. So believe me when I tell you that writers who are also foodies come in two varieties: Those who envied, admired, and respected Anthony Bourdain — to the point where they wanted to be Anthony Bourdain; and those who have trouble telling the truth.

Who could blame us for envying him? Here you had someone who was paid to travel the world, stay in the best hotels, eat fantastic food, meet interesting people, and tell good stories.

Where do I sign up?

Now the 61-year-old’s sudden and shocking death leaves us with a huge and uncomfortable question: How could it be that someone who had a life that so many people wanted to have apparently didn’t want it himself?

Last year, I was asked by Bourdain and his production company in New York to go into the avocado groves and mandarin orange fields northeast of San Diego and find out what would happen if America deported every illegal immigrant. Bourdain thought it would topple the restaurant industry and literally leave Americans wondering where their next meal was coming from.

I took the assignment, grabbed my notepad, and headed out to the fields. What I saw there taught me that Bourdain was right — that the U.S. agricultural industry is now completely dependent on illegal immigrant labor and that the workers who feed the country deserve our nation’s appreciation and respect.

Bourdain paid his respects by speaking truths like this:

“Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales…in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people — as we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, look after our children. So why don’t we love Mexico?”

What a good question, even if the answer will never come.

Or this: “As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy — the restaurant business as we know it — in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are ‘stealing American jobs.’ But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position — or even a job as prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.”

Preach it brother. I’m tempted to say that Anthony Bourdain was an honorary Mexican. But he was more than that. He was our compadre. He was familia. And he will be missed as such.

Ruben Navarrette, a contributing editor to Angelus News, is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a Daily Beast columnist, author of “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano,” and host of the podcast “Navarrette Nation.”

Who broke the California governor’s race? Just about everyone, it seems.

Here are some takeaways from what turned out to be — in my crazy home state — an even crazier primary election than expected.

• Lt. Gov. Gavin Newsom — the top vote-getter with 33.4 percent — employed a cynical strategy that worked, perhaps too well for the long-term interests of Democrats. Newsom spent the last several weeks pumping up the leading Republican candidate, San Diego-area businessman John Cox, and largely ignoring his strongest Democratic opponent — former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa. He clearly wanted to face Cox in the runoff of the top two vote-getters, and he had no desire to line up against Villaraigosa. At the start of this campaign, it appeared that Newsom — who looks like he stepped out of central casting for the role of California governor — would demonize President Trump. (In 2016, Californians voted for Hillary Clinton by a 2-to-1 margin.) But in the closing days of the primary, after the job numbers came in strong, Trump all but disappeared. Cox became the new boogeyman, portrayed as far out of step with the California mainstream. But Newsom’s game-playing appears to have come at a cost to the Democratic party, as many liberal voters stayed home. He’ll have to re-energize them in time for the November general election. It’s the peril that comes with being the majority party; your voters get bored, complacent and now cynical.

• Cox finished with 26.2 percent of the vote, a stronger showing than many observers expected. Some of Cox’s surge may have been due to Newsom’s Jedi mind games. But a better explanation is that, in a deep-blue state like California, Republicans were far more energized to vote than Democrats. The GOP circled the wagons around Cox like it was Custer’s Last Stand. You know how that turned out. Apparently unencumbered by core principles, he’ll be whatever you want him to be. Right-wing Republicans — many of whom would dearly love to make California white again — wanted Cox to breathe fire on immigration, and so he did. They wanted him to declare war on an illusionary state “sanctuary” law that supposedly stops federal immigration agents from apprehending illegal immigrants — except on days that end in “y” — and he did that too. However, now that Cox is in the runoff, he will likely dart back to the middle and market himself as a moderate in the general election. That could make the conservatives who got him this far less than enthusiastic about carrying him the rest of the way.

• Villaraigosa — who might have beaten Newsom had the two of them squared off in November, when Latino turnout will be higher — came up short with only 13.4 percent. According to exit polls, Newsom carved into both of Villaraigosa’s core constituencies: Latinos and Southern Californians. That’s impressive given that Newsom hasn’t done anything for either group. As for Villaraigosa, this could be the end of the road politically for someone who was once one of the most well-known Latino elected officials in America. The man has his gifts: a willingness to listen, emotional intelligence that is off-the-charts and an earnestness that leaves people rooting for him to succeed. But in the end, even in a state that is now about 39 percent Latino — or because of it — breaking through the tortilla ceiling and becoming California’s first Latino governor is a tall order. You can’t be all things to all people. Villaraigosa successfully wooed white farmers in Central California who normally vote Republican and took in millions of dollars in contributions from white billionaires pushing charter schools. But it’s hard to do that and still give the proper attention to Latinos back home in Southern California. Making history will have to wait.

Look, I’ve lived in California more than half my life. I love my home state, and I have something to compare it to because I’ve also lived in Massachusetts, Arizona and Texas.

I spent the night of the California primary wishing I were in Ohio, Michigan, Colorado or Virginia. In those too-close-to-call battleground states, both parties have to work hard because nothing is guaranteed.

Contact Washington Post Writers Group columnist Ruben Navarrette at ruben@rubennavarrette.com.

I missed the Bobby Kennedy story. Yet, inexplicably — as a student of history, as a Mexican-American, as part of a family that worshiped Camelot, and as a Catholic — I’ve spent the last 50 years missing Bobby Kennedy.

I was only 13 months old on June 6, 1968, when Robert Francis Kennedy was shot and killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, where the Democratic candidate for president had gathered with supporters to celebrate his winning the California primary. A son of Hyannis wealth and privilege who sat at many tables — Harvard, Senate aide, helping elect his brother president, fighting the good fight as Attorney General, serving as U.S. senator from New York, running for president — took his last breath on the floor of a hotel kitchen, holding the hand of a poor Mexican dishwasher who gave him a rosary.

Yet what matters most about the fellow whom my grandmother used to call “El Bobby” was not how he died but how he lived.

Consider what United Farm Workers Vice President Delores Huerta — who was at Kennedy’s side that night in Los Angeles — said about him. Huerta recalled that, while other politicians would go into Mexican-American neighborhoods and tell people what was best for them, Bobby would ask two questions: “What do you need?” and “How can I help?” Then he listened.

When speaking with Mexican-American voters or lending support to farm workers, he might stop to touch a child’s cheek in a genuine show of affection.

Huerta noted that, while Mexican-Americans admired President John F. Kennedy, their bond with the younger brother was stronger. “With Bobby, it was like he was ours,” she said.

From everything I’ve read, watched, studied and heard over the years about the connection between Bobby Kennedy and Mexican-Americans, it seems that — for many in my community — it wasn’t just that Bobby was ours. It was that he was us.

RFK Biographer Jack Newfield described Bobby as “more Irish and more Catholic” than his brother. He didn’t have all the answers. He was always searching, challenging, questioning. He thought about becoming a priest. And, as he traveled, he was never without the protection of his medal of St. Christopher.

Even as a Kennedy, life did not always go his way. He struggled in school, and he had to hit harder in football because he was so small. He was comfortable in the shadows, the strategist behind the scenes making others look good. He was easily overlooked or ignored in a large brood. He knew what it was like to struggle, to be picked on, to be chosen last.

Most of all — in the dark, grief-shrouded days after November 22, 1963 — Bobby Kennedy knew what it was like to have your heart broken and experience, often against your will, what his favorite Greek philosopher, Aeschylus, called the “wisdom” that comes from “pain that cannot forget.”

This is all familiar terrain to Mexican-Americans. And it helps explain why Bobby was our most beloved Kennedy.

My favorite Bobby moment? It happened on my home turf, in California’s San Joaquin Valley three months before he died.

On March 10, 1968, Kennedy quietly made a pilgrimage to the farm town of Delano to attend a Catholic Mass. There, he helped Cesar Chavez break a 25-day fast. Kennedy told those who had gathered, “When your children and grandchildren take their place in America, going to high school and college, and taking good jobs at good pay, when you look at them you will say, ‘I did this, I was there at the point of difficulty and danger.’ And though you may be old and bent from many years of hard labor, no man will stand taller than you when you say, ‘I was there. I marched with Cesar!’”

My favorite speech? It was the one Bobby delivered on June 6, 1966 at The University of Cape Town in South Africa. There, he told an audience of college students:

“Few men are willing to brave the disapproval of their fellows, the censure of their colleagues, the wrath of their society. Moral courage is a rarer commodity than bravery in battle or great intelligence. Yet it is the one essential, vital quality for those who seek to change the world which yields most painfully to change. I believe that in this generation those with the courage to enter the conflict will find themselves with companions in every corner of the world.”

Maybe it was the Irish, or the Catholic, or the fact that he could — despite his wealthy and privilege — identify with the dispossessed and the downtrodden. But for whatever reason, Robert Francis Kennedy found the courage to enter the conflict.

On the 50th anniversary of his trip home, that’s worth remembering — and honoring.

Ruben Navarrette, a contributing editor to Angelus News, is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, a member of the USA Today Board of Contributors, a Daily Beast columnist, author of “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano,” and host of the podcast “Navarrette Nation.”

SAN DIEGO — I’ve written about the immigration debate for nearly 30 years, and yet there are still things about it that I don’t understand.

Such as this: If Republicans are really so insistent that immigrants “follow the rules” in coming here, then why would so many GOP lawmakers now be aligned against the better interests of nearly 800,000 recipients of Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, the Obama-era program that gave young immigrants short-term work permits and temporary deferment from deportation? The only way to qualify for DACA was to step forward and follow the rules, which included turning yourself in to government officials and handing over personal information. Fulfilling this last requirement makes them and their families easier to find, and still they did it.

Or this: If Republicans really care so much about respect for law and order, then why would they be so resistant to finding a reasonable accommodation for the DACA DREAMers? After all, we’re talking about people who were brought here as young children illegally, through no fault of their own and often against their will. Surely, according to the law, these people are not guilty of any crime. They may currently be out of status, or maybe they’re living here without legal documents. They hate that fact more than anyone. But where was the intent to commit wrongdoing or the desire to break the law? There isn’t one.

Or this: Why can’t a renegade group of some two dozen House Republicans just be honest about their motives? They have now joined with more than 190 Democrats in trying to persuade a majority of members to sign a “discharge petition” that would bring to the floor a bill protecting DACA recipients. While I support what this band of rogues is doing, it’s obvious why they’re doing it, and it’s not to help DREAMers. Lawmakers have had nearly 20 years to do that, dating to 2001 when the DREAM Act (Development, Relief and Education for Alien Minors) was first proposed to give legal status to undocumented youth. The bill died in 2010, with plenty of opposition from the GOP. Instead, the goal here is to save the long-term electoral prospects of the Republican Party in a country that becomes more diverse by the hour and where Latinos could make up nearly a third of the population by 2050. The insurgents might as well admit it.

Or this: Just who are the hard-liners in the GOP opposition pandering to? Poll after poll shows that the vast majority of Americans think that some accommodation should be worked out for DREAMers, if for no other reason than that they have nowhere else to go and this is the only country they know. In April, a Quinnipiac Poll found that 77% of Americans favored letting DREAMers stay in the United States compared with just 18% who opposed it. Among Republicans, 59% supported such a bill and 35% opposed it. Yet in the House, you still have more than 200 Republican holdouts led by Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy.

Most of them are just garden-variety cowards — eager to avoid the thorny immigration issue as well as the wrath of President Trump (who has called on Congress to pass a “bill of love” to help the DREAMers but only if he also gets billions of dollars for his big, beautiful border wall).

Some Republicans, however, actually seem ready to go to war against DREAMers. What are they thinking? Or are they doing any thinking at all? What’s the political calculus? How does this play out? Do the hard-liners really think that those relatively few Republican voters who are so mean and so petty as to want to deport DREAMers are going to punish them at the ballot box if they allow a vote on a bill to help these young people stay in this country? What a silly and needless worry.

And finally this: If Republicans aren’t just blowing smoke when they say they want more educated and more skilled immigrants who love this country, assimilate into our society, and adopt our language and customs, then how in the world can any of them line up against the DREAMers? That group checks all the boxes. As former president Barack Obama correctly noted, these young people are already full-blooded Americans — in every way but one. No matter what immigration hard-liners say, they’re not the problem. It’s more likely that they’re part of the solution.

So yes, there’s a lot that’s difficult to understand in the immigration debate and how DREAMers fit into it. Because it doesn’t make any sense.

Yet voters keep rewarding failure by re-electing these mischief-makers. That doesn’t make any sense, either.

Ruben Navarrette Jr., a member of the USA TODAY Board of Contributors, is a syndicated columnist with the Washington Post Writers Group and host of the daily podcast, Navarrette Nation. Follow him on Twitter: @RubenNavarrette.

SAN DIEGO — In their treatment of immigrants and refugees, Republicans are really bad. But this doesn’t mean Democrats have been any better.

The Obama administration was never all that good at dealing with newcomers. And often, it was terrible.

Just how terrible became clear last week thanks to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union — which was often missing in action while President Obama was in office but now seems to have awakened from its siesta.

The report alleged that many unaccompanied minors from Central America who crossed the U.S.-Mexican border between 2009 and 2014 — that is, during the Obama administration — were repeatedly beaten, sexually abused, stunned by Tasers, deprived of food and medicine and threatened with rape or death by U.S. Customs and Border Protection agents. Complaints were filed with the Department of Homeland Security, but they were largely dismissed.

When it comes to immigrants and refugees, the party of Barack Obama must not get a pass on everything it has ever done wrong — just because the party of Donald Trump can’t do anything right.

In one of the latest examples of Trump’s undeniable hatred for Latinos, The Washington Post described an Oval Office meeting last year in which Trump reportedly described hypothetical rapists and murderers with made-up Latino names.

You can see why Latinos look more favorably on Democrats. That party’s Latino outreach material writes itself: “Vote Democrat. We’re not Republicans.”

But politics isn’t like a rewards program where the more loyal you are to a hotel chain, the better you’re treated. With political parties, those who are loyal are often not treated very well.

I say as much whenever a group asks me to speak about the politics that drive the immigration debate.

“Don’t you think you were a bit too hard on Democrats?” a woman asked after a recent speech to a community group.

I told her I didn’t think so, explaining that I routinely criticize both parties for their treatment of immigrants.

Still, I decided to take inventory of what Democrats have done — and have failed to do — on immigration since 1986, which marks the last time that Congress passed real immigration reform.

In 1986, the Immigration Reform and Control Act (IRCA) gave amnesty to more than 3 million people. Written by Republican Sen. Alan Simpson of Wyoming, the bill was opposed by dozens of Democrats who seemed to be taking orders from labor unions, which worried legalized immigrants would compete against U.S. workers.

In 1994, President Clinton militarized the U.S.-Mexico border near San Diego with Operation Gatekeeper, which funneled immigrants through Arizona, where many died in the desert.

In 1996, according to documents from the Clinton Library, Clinton adviser Rahm Emanuel came up with a cynical plan to keep Democrats from being portrayed by the GOP as soft on crime: Increase deportations of illegal immigrants.

Also in 1996, Clinton signed into law the Illegal Immigration Reform and Immigrant Responsibility Act, a wrongheaded piece of restrictionist legislation that made it easier to deport people and harder for them to return.

In 2005, Emanuel — then a congressman from Chicago — encouraged vulnerable Democrats to support a harsh GOP-sponsored immigration bill, according to Rep. Luis Gutierrez, D-Ill. At the time, a spokesman for Emanuel denied the accusation.

In 2007, Emanuel — who was, by then, a top lieutenant to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi — told the Congressional Hispanic Caucus that immigration reform would not be on the Democratic agenda because it was the “third rail” of American politics.

Also in 2007, then-Sen. Obama supported “poison pill” amendments in order to weaken guest-worker provisions in a Senate immigration bill, drive away Republican support and kill the measure.

In 2010, with Democrats controlling the Senate, five of them — Kay Hagan of North Carolina, Max Baucus and Jon Tester of Montana, Mark Pryor of Arkansas and Ben Nelson of Nebraska — voted against cloture and essentially killed the Dream Act.

In 2017, President Obama — having broken his promise to deliver immigration reform — left office after deporting more than 3 million people, dividing scores of families and placing thousands of abandoned U.S.-born children in foster care. Obama did launch DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals), which enticed Dreamers to turn themselves in to authorities in exchange for having their deportation deferred for two years.

All the while, Latinos made excuses for Democrats who disappointed and betrayed them. After all, they said, Democrats are the lesser of two evils.

Funny thing about the lesser evil. It is still, well, you know.

When someone breaks up with a boyfriend or girlfriend, he or she sometimes says, “It’s not you. It’s me.”

Well, when it comes to white people who want America to be “English-only” going ballistic because Spanish is spoken in their presence, I hope those folks are clear about who is the problem. It’s most certainly not us. It’s definitely you.

The person with the problem is the angry white man who was recently caught on video insulting and threatening two women for speaking Spanish at a New York restaurant. Aaron Schlossberg threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement on them because, he said, he didn’t want to hear Spanish spoken.

He shouted: “Every person I listen to — he’s speaking it, she’s speaking it. This is America!” When confronted by a manager, the man continued his tirade, saying, “Your clients and your staff are speaking Spanish to staff when they should be speaking English. My guess is they’re undocumented, so my next call is to ICE to have each one of them taken out of my country. I pay for their welfare. I pay for their ability to be here.”

The man was thrown out of the restaurant.

The people with the problem are the folks who run a grocery store in San Diego that, according to officials with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), recently subjected Hispanic employees to “harassment” and “a hostile work environment by implementing a no-Spanish language policy.”

The EEOC filed a lawsuit alleging store managers at Albertsons publicly reprimanded Hispanic employees for speaking Spanish. The workers were prohibited from speaking Spanish around non-Spanish speakers — even during breaks or when talking to Spanish-speaking customers, the lawsuit charged. Employees complained about the language ban but nothing was done.

Albertsons — one of the largest food and drug retailers in the U.S., employing about 280,000 people in 35 states — had no comment on the lawsuit, but said in a statement that it has no formal policy requiring employees to only speak English.

In fact, the statement said, “Albertsons serves a diverse customer population and encourages employees with foreign language abilities to use those skills to serve its customers.”

What is going on? Where is this anti-Spanish bigotry and hostility coming from? And why is it rearing its ugly head now?

Part of the blame goes to conservative talk radio, Fox News and President Trump — all of whom trade regularly on fear of immigrants to push their respective agendas.

From the sound of it, the fearmongers are especially rattled by brown-skinned, Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico and the rest of Latin America. That’s because, while they don’t know much about immigration from that part of the world and the positive contribution it makes to the United States, they do seem to understand the concept of changing demographics.

With Latinos expected to make up 30 percent of the U.S. population by 2050, many whites are feeling pushed aside by something that sociologists call cultural displacement. Simply put, some white people are panicked that the world their grandchildren will live in will bear not even a passing resemblance to the one in which they grew up.

And one cultural indicator is language. Certainly, English doesn’t exactly need a life raft. It’s more than holding its own in the United States against, let’s see, German, Italian, Chinese, Portuguese, French and, yes, even Spanish.

Americans have been hassling one another over language since the mid-1770s, when German immigrants settled in Pennsylvania.

The new arrivals promptly got crossways with Benjamin Franklin because — at least in the first generation — they held on to the German language, even printing newspapers in German, which really rubbed Franklin the wrong way, since he was a newspaper publisher in his own right.

In fact, it’s worth noting that the nation’s first English-only laws had nothing to do with Spanish. They were aimed at punishing and marginalizing German immigrants who, Franklin warned his fellow Englishmen, would “establish their language and manners to the exclusion of ours” and “soon be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them.”

So how did that turn out? You could ask the German-American descendants of those early German immigrants. But if so, make sure you ask in English. After all, it’s a safe bet that not many of them speak a word of German.

One thing I hear a lot is that the proponents of English-only are afraid that, when someone is speaking Spanish, that someone is talking about them.

You caught us. You’re right. Most of the time, we are talking about you.

And, given how you’re behaving, it’s just as well that you don’t understand. Because we don’t have a lot of nice things to say.

Ruben Navarrette, a contributing editor to Angelus News, is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, a contributor to USA Today and the Daily Beast, author of “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano” and the host of the podcast “Navarrette Nation.”

SAN DIEGO — Let’s hear it for the redemptive power of the third way. There is a lot to be said for finding a crafty solution that helps navigate a sticky situation without being sucked into the vortex of all-or-nothing.

The best answer is often found in the center. You have to respect leaders who reject the false choice between extreme positions, think outside the box and come up with a sensible alternative — even if it angers hard-liners on both sides. These are rare qualities these days, when folks on every side of every issue are encouraged to pander to the mob and no one wants to give an inch in any direction.

Which brings us to the tale of how the “Aztec” dodged extinction and lived to fight another day near the sunny beaches of Southern California.

If you come to town, look him up. You can find him at San Diego State University, which has been affiliated with the name since 1925.

Of course, this was long before the politically correct wave of institutions ditching mascots, symbols and names that some consider culturally or racially inappropriate.

Now, in a surprise move that would appear to end a divisive and emotional debate that has lasted nearly two decades and has often been racially charged, San Diego State has decided to stand up to protesters and keep the word “Aztec” as its symbol.

Notice I didn’t say “mascot.” That word is off-limits, under the accommodation. Instead, the image of an Aztec warrior will be treated only as a kind of bold and inspirational “spirit leader.” And the nickname — i.e., the “Aztecs” — will be preserved, which is just as well since the moniker appears on everything from buildings to sweatshirts to coffee cups.

It’s all about preserving dignity. What is called for is a “much more dignified and appropriate demeanor” for the Aztec, interim university President Sally Roush told The San Diego Union-Tribune.

Ironically, preserving dignity is also one of the things that protesters insist has been driving their cause since 2000. That’s when the Native American Student Alliance first raised objections about the university’s mascot, Monty Montezuma.

The school tried to do better in 2004, when it approved a more historically accurate version of the Aztec warrior in full headdress. The cartoon gave way to a cultural symbol.

In 2017, the SDSU Senate overwhelmingly passed a nonbinding vote to retire the Aztec mascot.

Then came the creation of a task force made up of faculty, students, alumni and community leaders to explore whether using the Aztec was insensitive or even racist. The task force members did their homework and looked at the issue from all sides. They even sent out 200,000 survey forms to alumni, faculty, staff, students and the community to hear their views on the subject.

According to the Union-Tribune, nearly 13,000 people replied. There was lots of support for keeping the name; some alumni threatened to stop sending checks if it was scrapped. But there were also those who opposed the name, and others in the middle who wanted to see a compromise.

In the end, the task force agreed with those who said it was time to sacrifice the Aztec. And it issued a report that said at one point: “No human should be a mascot.”

Now Roush has pretty much closed the book on the whole saga by deciding to keep the name but dump the mascot. She also decided that the words Monty and Zuma would no longer be used by the university because, she said, the word play is “very disrespectful of the emperor of the Aztec civilization.”

That’s the third way. It’s also the right decision. But I hope SDSU officials make the effort to understand what this controversy was really all about.

Here’s a hint: It’s not the Aztec. It was never the Aztec. That poor guy is the symptom of something much bigger. You think most Mexicans, or Mexican-Americans, care one way or another about this silly debate? I’ll clear it up for you: They don’t.

These sorts of cultural kerfuffles have always been about only one thing: how comfortable some students of color feel at mostly white universities. Oftentimes, they feel ignored, neglected and alienated. They feel their background is undervalued and underappreciated by others on campus, especially the administration. And so they don’t want their culture trivialized or ridiculed.

Getting rid of a mascot is easy. Getting rid of that feeling will be more difficult.

There’s a word that I don’t like to use. And I say this, even though, in writing about the immigration debate for the last 30 years, I’ve had plenty of opportunities.

In fact, sometimes I pretend that I have — in this  lifetime — a limited supply of this particular word. And so I use it sparingly. To do otherwise would cheapen its meaning.

But today, reluctantly, I have to dip into the reserve and talk about that word. I speak of the dreaded “r-word”: racist.

Many immigration restrictionists are obsessed with the fact that more and more communities in the United States are becoming Latinized. One assumes that anyone who has this particular worry must consider Latinos — their language, culture, customs, etc. — inferior to the mainstream. Otherwise, why worry?

Notice I didn’t put food on that list, Mexican food in particular. Even those who don’t like Mexicans simply adore Mexican food. Apparently, nativism comes with a taco exemption.

The fact that many Americans consider Mexicans inferior to themselves is a telltale sign of racism.

Look, I get it. This is a free country, and you don’t have to like anyone you don’t want to like. But if you fear, hate, or look down upon a group of people — just because of their race or ethnicity — well, you might be a racist.

What’s worse, you might not even know it. Maybe that poison somehow found its way into your bloodstream because of the kind of media you take in.

For instance, if you’re fired up over immigration, talk radio will likely make you angrier. But it won’t make you smarter. Most radio hosts are experts: “The Immigration Debate for Dummies.”

In San Diego, a conservative radio host recently complained that all it takes for someone to get labeled “racist” these days is supporting border security or thinking that the undocumented ought to be deported. Simple as that.

Not long ago, after I wrote a column blasting the California Republican Party for “succumbing to racism when railing against immigration,” an irate reader strongly objected. “Show one example!!!,” he wrote. “Republicans are against ILLEGAL immigration and that is not racism.”

Another reader wrote an angry response to a column I wrote on immigration. “Don’t even bother to respond, if you’re going to call me a racist,” he said.

Again, it’s not like I use that word lightly. Calling someone a racist is serious business. The word is as ugly as it gets, and it has a knack for stopping a conversation cold.

In an ideal world, it should be difficult to get hit with that accusation. And you shouldn’t be able to get there simply by supporting border security or being against illegal immigration. Those are perfectly reasonable positions, and the fact that you have them is also perfectly reasonable.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of people in the immigration debate who still manage — through word and deed — to earn the label and wind up being called “racist.”

Here’s one good way to wind up wearing the label: If you feel compelled to describe immigrants by using one or more of the “d-words” (dangerous, defective, diseased, damaged or detrimental to society), then you’re well on your way.

Some of the folks who behave so reprehensibly are Democrats; in fact, many of those who voted for President Trump in the Rust Belt states came from the party of Franklin Delano Roosevelt. But the truth is, these days, most of the bad behavior comes from Republicans. That’s probably because GOP lawmakers and officials think that is what conservative voters want to hear. I think they’re wrong about that, by the way.

Republicans are always lecturing the rest of us about how we shouldn’t play the victim and how we need to take responsibility for our actions. So now it’s only fair that they step up and lay claim to the awful things that they’ve said and done when it comes to immigrants.

Let’s not be afraid to call this plague by its proper name, and explain in the simplest possible language what is really going on in our society. We don’t need to sugarcoat it to spare anyone’s feelings, least of all the wrongdoers.

Once more, there is nothing wrong with believing that the United States should secure the border, or preserve law and order, or send home the undocumented. Every country has the right to do those things, and the United States is no different. And so believing all that doesn’t make you a bad person.

But if you happen to fear, hate, or look down upon recent immigrants as inferior to the rest of us — and you feel this way solely because of the race, ethnicity, or skin color of the immigrants in question — well, have I got a word for you.

Ruben Navarrette, a contributing editor to Angelus News, is a syndicated columnist with The Washington Post Writers Group, a contributor to USA Today and the Daily Beast, author of “A Darker Shade of Crimson: Odyssey of a Harvard Chicano,” and the host of the podcast “Navarrette Nation.”

SAN DIEGO — For Latinos trying to survive the Age of Trump with their dignity intact, the hate just keeps on coming.

Americans can’t make up their minds whether they want to appropriate Latino culture or stamp it out altogether. One minute, everyone in the country is going loco for Latinos; the next, they’ve just gone plum loco.

It’s time to take inventory. I don’t want to keep you here you all week, so let’s only focus on 10 incidents from the last several months.

— Columnist Ann Coulter told radio host Lars Larson that putting the National Guard on the U.S.-Mexico border won’t be enough to stop immigrants from crossing it unless “they’re going to shoot one and send a message to the rest.” Message received: Coulter is a ghoul.

— Bragging about his deportation record, President Trump told a delegation of California officials: “We’re taking people out of the country. You wouldn’t believe how bad these people are. These aren’t people. These are animals.” The next day, Trump claimed he was referring only to MS-13 gang members.

— White House chief of staff John Kelly said that undocumented immigrants from Latin America do not assimilate very well because they are often poorly educated and “overwhelmingly rural people” who “don’t have skills.” Of course, much the same thing was said about Kelly’s Irish ancestors.

— Fox News contributor Tomi Lahren came to Kelly’s defense and insisted that welcoming immigrants with “low skills” and “low education” who speak foreign languages is “not what this country is based on.” Quite right. It’s more accurate to say that low-skilled immigration is what this country was built on.

— In Havre, Montana, at a gas station near the U.S.-Canada border, two women were singled out and questioned by a Border Patrol officer who suspected they were undocumented immigrants. The probable cause? The women were speaking Spanish. Both are U.S. citizens. So linguistic profiling is a thing now?

— At a Starbucks in Southern California, a young man ordered a white mocha and an iced caramel macchiato. The word “Beaner,” a racial slur for Latinos, was on the labels attached to his drinks. Starbucks apologized and said it is investigating the incident. The company has a Venti-sized image problem.

— An angry white lawyer named Aaron Schlossberg was caught on video berating two women for the sin of speaking Spanish at a New York deli. He threatened to call Immigration and Customs Enforcement. He later apologized and claimed that he is not racist. Sure. He just plays one in videos.

— An Albertsons grocery store in San Diego ran afoul of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission after allegedly subjecting Latino employees to “a hostile work environment.” What caused the hostility? The employees were speaking Spanish. The company said in a statement that it has no set language policy. Remember when being bilingual was an asset?

— Fox News host Tucker Carlson invited Cesar Vargas — an undocumented immigrant and lawyer — onto his show and bullied him. Carlson told Vargas — who wants to become a U.S. citizen — “I’m an American and you’re not. I don’t think you should become a citizen.” Could we take a vote on whether ugly Americans should be able to keep their U.S. citizenship?

— In Georgia, Republican gubernatorial candidates targeted Mexican immigrants. State Sen. Michael Williams campaigned in a “deportation bus” adorned with a message: “Danger! Murderers, rapists, kidnappers, child molesters, and other criminals on board.” Another candidate, Secretary of State Brian Kemp, has bragged he owns “a big truck just in case I need to round up criminal illegals and take ’em home myself.” Georgia is famous for its peaches, but these jokers seem like lemons.

What in the world is going on? If this keeps up, Latinos in the United States are going to get our feelings hurt. We might even conclude that — even with all the “Help Wanted” signs — you don’t want us around. Someone may have to leave.

But hey, we were here first. Look it up. English settlers in Virginia founded Jamestown in 1607, but the Spanish had established Santa Fe de Nuevo Mexico nine years earlier. The Spanish could’ve sent them a gift basket to welcome them to the neighborhood.

We’re not leaving. No way, Jose. The people who should skedaddle are the ones with the problem. You have the problem. So what else can we say — except adios.