With one tricolored mouthpiece, USC's Mark Sanchez has done more to advance the image of Mexicans in Southern California than a thousand marches could ever hope to achieve.
Last Saturday, the sophomore backup quarterback led the Trojans to a 38-0 mauling of Notre Dame's Fighting Irish. Reporters asked Sanchez afterward why he protected his teeth with a plastic mold decorated like the Mexican flag -- green, white and red, with a miniature eagle clutching a snake while perching on a cactus -- right in front of his incisors. The 22-year-old didn't flinch. "It's my heritage," he stated.
Describing the mouth guard as "sweet" and "cool," Sanchez went on to explain that using it was a "a portrayal of my love for my race" and hoped that his fashion flair "inspires" young Latinos who follow USC to do what he does: quarterback while Mexican. When a reporter told him some Trojans fans already were race-baiting his dental decision on radio and on Internet chat boards, Sanchez remained unfazed. "I didn't know it was that big of a deal," he told a reporter. "Was it bad?"
The mouthpiece and subsequent interview might not be as iconic a civil rights moment in sports as the raised fists of Olympians Tommie Smith and John Carlos, or Jackie Robinson's first Major League swing, but Sanchez's actions are nevertheless profound. In this era when many Americans fret that Mexican immigrants and their children are destroying this nation, it's stunning that a prominent athlete such as Sanchez professes pride in his spicy roots -- and also does it so nonchalantly.
America, meet your postmodern Mexican: one not hung up on your eternal suspicion of his ethnicity, one for whom multiculturalism is an afterthought, as natural and acceptable as breathing air.
Sanchez is by no means the first Latino quarterback to celebrate his ancestry. In the summer of 1970, Sports Illustrated featured Joe Kapp on its cover with the headline "The Toughest Chicano" after he led the Minnesota Vikings to the Super Bowl. In the present, journeyman Jeff Garcia and the Dallas Cowboys' Tony Romo speak fondly of their Latino upbringings. And do you wonder why so many Latinos love the Oakland Raiders? It's gracias to coach Tom Flores and half-Irish, half-Mexican QB Jim Plunkett, who helped the Raiders win two Super Bowls in the 1980s.
