Outrageous, insightful `Mexican' sums it up

LOS ANGELES Police Chief William J. Bratton has promised "retraining" for the elite officers who shot foam bullets and projectiles into a crowd of mostly Latino participants at a May Day immigration rights rally at MacArthur Park. How exactly does one go about retraining officers to remember that Latinos very often speak Spanish (the now-notorious dispersal order was issued only in English) and to avoid beating the holy heck out of such people in the crowd as KTTV camerawoman Patti Ballaz, KPCC-FM reporter Patricia Nazario and Telemundo anchor Pedro Sevcec?

An unlikely set of rehabilitation guidelines can be found in Gustavo Arellano's hilarious and testy new book, "¡Ask a Mexican!" It's a compilation of columns he began writing in 2004 after OC Weekly Editor Will Swaim decided that this "recipient of a master's degree in Latin American studies" and "truthful beaner" could help cure readers' confusion over such pressing questions as: "Why do Mexicans swim in the ocean with their clothes on?" And "What part of 'illegal' don't Mexicans understand?" It became an instant hit and now has a readership of more than a million. This collection is a sassy mix of Lenny Bruce rant and civil rights manual that might offer some good tips for Bratton while he's planning his discrimination-detox experiment. Consider, for example, one of the book's first question-answer exchanges:

"Why is it that when you enroll your non-English-speaking offspring in our school system and they get tested with all the other students, they bring down all the test scores of the school and my kids have to suffer because your kids don't understand the language? So would you ... beaners PLEASE learn some ... English ... ?"

\o7"\f7Pissed-off White Man in San Clemente

"Dear Gabacho: You're one of those parents who hate their kids learning to count up to three in \o7espanol\f7, right? And instead of embracing this confluence of cultures, you'd rather call Mexican kids beaners?! ... [R]emember that lower-performing schools tend to get more federal funding and attention. So really, say \o7gracias \f7for the current wave of Mexicans moving to your town -- they're ensuring [it] won't become another Detroit."