From: "Arnoldo Garcia" <agarcia@nnirr.org>
To: "Arnoldo Garcia" <agarcia@nnirr.org>
Subject: IRN: The Black Agenda Report "The Black-Latino Future: Finding a Way to Solidarity"
Date: Mon, 23 Oct 2006 11:32:24 -0700
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Tuesday, Octubre 24, 2006 @12:00 AM
Gracias for sending me this bold, great and inspiring report. I wish all Blacks and Browns, who shold be natural allies, could read it, think about it and go look in the mirror.
Your original Email was from and to yourself with no Cc: so I must gotten it Bcc: Why? Sharing is caring and we should not be afraid to share. That's is half the problem in the world between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots'.
I will take the liberty, as is my style, of passing it on and forwarding it to others. Adelante!
Many Latinos still argue amongst themselves as to who we are and what to call ourselves as a people, but we are definately not White people of European extraction and who knows how many pure-blooded indigenous people there are inside the United States?
I myself have learned great lessons from the experiences of the Black Libeation Movement, especially from the blood, sweat and tears of the now defunct Black Panther Party.
I myself have learned great lessons from the experiences of the Black Libeation Movement, especially from the blood, sweat and tears of the now defunct Black Panther Party.
The sublime truth in all its beauty and ugliness must be the truth serum and antidote to the mutual racism between Blacks and Latinos "that threatens to poison the prospects of unified action among Black and Latino progressives against white supremacy and corporate rule in the United States", as Companero Glen wrote so well.
All of us must learn about each other's cultural histories and ways in order to work together for the betterment of all of humankind as human beings, not as separate races, but as HUMANE BEINGS WITH COMMON SURVIVAL NEEDS: food, clothing, shelter, education and health care.
Being born and raised in downtown Sacramento, the most racially integrated city in the United States, I was blsssed with being around different peoples and cultures growing up, including our Yellow brothers and sisters {mainly Chinese and Japanese people}. We were all poor by the Southside Park Area, along with our White friends. Our common class origin was a natural unifying factor, then, the 1960's hit!
We will help get rid of all remnants of the poison of racism by coming together, by working together on a common agenda ~ a humane rights agenda ~ and 'in the process' we will learn and remmember that we are all one people in the end upon one planet called Mother Earth.
I am watching Democracy Now! right now. My Favorite TV Program. Monday, October 23rd, 2006:
The End of Maliki? Will a Coup Unravel Iraq? Robert Dreyfuss and Raed Jarrar Discuss the War in Iraq
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Liberation Now For All Repressed Peoples!!!
Peter S. Lopez ~aka Peta
Humane-Liberation-Party
P.S. Click Links to Report in case this Message in truncated because of its length.
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The Black Agenda Report
http://www.blackagendareport.com/001a-cover-gf_black_latino_future.html
http://www.blackagendareport.com/001a-cover-gf_black_latino_future.html
The Black-Latino Future: Finding a Way to Solidarity
by Glen Ford, BAR Executive Editor
When as many as two million immigrants and their supporters, most of them Latino, turned out for demonstrations against draconian undocumented worker legislation in cities across the nation this spring, everywhere the question was raised: Is this the new civil rights movement? By all appearances, some kind of great awakening had indeed occurred which, if sustained, would transform the participants and, eventually, the society at-large.
When as many as two million immigrants and their supporters, most of them Latino, turned out for demonstrations against draconian undocumented worker legislation in cities across the nation this spring, everywhere the question was raised: Is this the new civil rights movement? By all appearances, some kind of great awakening had indeed occurred which, if sustained, would transform the participants and, eventually, the society at-large.
However, Black opinion was decidedly mixed. Traditional and progressive African American organizations generally supported the explosion of Latino activism, and marveled at the coordination and sheer size of the rallies in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Dallas, Houston, Seattle - at least two dozen cities, nationwide. Luminaries such as Rev. Jesse Jackson, Rev. Al Sharpton, NAACP chairman Julian Bond, the SCLC's Rev. Joseph Lowrey, and numerous Black congresspersons were quick to make a positive connection to the struggles of the Sixties.
"Among some Black circles, the mass Latino political actions were met with a sullenness often deeply tinged with envy, and even outright hostility drenched in vicious vitriol and willful ignorance."
Yet among other Black circles, the mass Latino political actions were met with a sullenness often deeply tinged with envy, and even outright hostility drenched in vicious vitriol and willful ignorance. Black one-man bands like Claud Anderson's Washington-based Harvest Institute lashed out at mobilized Latinos, blurring the distinction between undocumented and legal immigrants (just as do white racist-led groups), and blaming the entirety of African American economic slippage over almost two generations on immigrant influx. Mary Mitchell, an incredibly shallow Black columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, expressed her "disgust" with undocumented Mexican immigrant Elvira Arellano, who along with her young U.S. citizen son sought sanctuary in a Chicago church. Arellano, said Mitchell, "is pimping the system" and should "return to Mexico," "brush up on black history" and then thank African Americans "for [their] sacrifices" over the centuries in North America.
Anderson's and Mitchell's rants are deliberately insulting to their mainly Latino targets, and range from intellectual dishonesty (Anderson) to just plain stupid-mean (Mitchell). Unfortunately, these shrill and wrong-headed voices find echoes in the perceptions of a highly ambivalent African American citizenry whose sense of social space has been thrown into turmoil by the largest migration on U.S. soil since the "Great Migration" of Blacks to northern and western cities - a trek that slowed and began to reverse itself about the same time as the Latino (non-Puerto Rican) migration began rolling in earnest, around 1970.
This column, the first of many BAR articles that will address the extremely complex and history-shaping subject of African American-Latino relations, deals with the "meanness" factor in Black discourse around (mainly Latino) immigration - the invective from the African American side of the argument that threatens to poison the prospects of unified action among Black and Latino progressives against white supremacy and corporate rule in the United States.
Yet among other Black circles, the mass Latino political actions were met with a sullenness often deeply tinged with envy, and even outright hostility drenched in vicious vitriol and willful ignorance. Black one-man bands like Claud Anderson's Washington-based Harvest Institute lashed out at mobilized Latinos, blurring the distinction between undocumented and legal immigrants (just as do white racist-led groups), and blaming the entirety of African American economic slippage over almost two generations on immigrant influx. Mary Mitchell, an incredibly shallow Black columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times, expressed her "disgust" with undocumented Mexican immigrant Elvira Arellano, who along with her young U.S. citizen son sought sanctuary in a Chicago church. Arellano, said Mitchell, "is pimping the system" and should "return to Mexico," "brush up on black history" and then thank African Americans "for [their] sacrifices" over the centuries in North America.
Anderson's and Mitchell's rants are deliberately insulting to their mainly Latino targets, and range from intellectual dishonesty (Anderson) to just plain stupid-mean (Mitchell). Unfortunately, these shrill and wrong-headed voices find echoes in the perceptions of a highly ambivalent African American citizenry whose sense of social space has been thrown into turmoil by the largest migration on U.S. soil since the "Great Migration" of Blacks to northern and western cities - a trek that slowed and began to reverse itself about the same time as the Latino (non-Puerto Rican) migration began rolling in earnest, around 1970.
This column, the first of many BAR articles that will address the extremely complex and history-shaping subject of African American-Latino relations, deals with the "meanness" factor in Black discourse around (mainly Latino) immigration - the invective from the African American side of the argument that threatens to poison the prospects of unified action among Black and Latino progressives against white supremacy and corporate rule in the United States.
Insults Born of Ignorance
First, it must be said that African Americans have been conditioned to be much more "Anglo" in their perceptions of Latino political assertiveness than most of us are willing to admit. Having been raised under the same Black-White paradigm as Euro-Americans, we often share with most whites a profound ignorance, not only of global historical and social realities, but of the conditions that have shaped the societies of our Latin American neighbors. Despite constant lip service to racial solidarity, few African Americans grasp the social complexities of the African Diaspora in its Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking manifestations in the Caribbean and Central and South America.
First, it must be said that African Americans have been conditioned to be much more "Anglo" in their perceptions of Latino political assertiveness than most of us are willing to admit. Having been raised under the same Black-White paradigm as Euro-Americans, we often share with most whites a profound ignorance, not only of global historical and social realities, but of the conditions that have shaped the societies of our Latin American neighbors. Despite constant lip service to racial solidarity, few African Americans grasp the social complexities of the African Diaspora in its Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking manifestations in the Caribbean and Central and South America.
"To describe Hispanics as 'non-Anglo Saxon Whites speaking Spanish' is to deny Latinos their racial and national legacies."
African Americans are confident that we know what "Black" is, here, but we know next to nothing about what "not white" is, "over there" - places where there exist more flavors of racial admixture than Campbell had soups or Howard Johnson had ice creams, each with its own group label and all under the jackboot of "whites" (or near-whites) who proudly trace their lineage to Europe. Racism is a daily experience among darker mestizos in Mexico and the non-white majority of Venezuela, for example. To generally describe Hispanics as "non-Anglo Saxon Whites speaking Spanish," as does the book-promoting fog-blower Claud Anderson, is to deny Latinos their racial and national legacies. It is the ultimate insult, of the kind African Americans would never accept if we were referred to as simply darker-skinned, English-speaking white people.
Such degradations of whole peoples and their distinct national, racial and cultural subgroups seem to flow freely from the mouths of African Americans like Anderson - in putrid streams that mimic the rhetoric of the rightwing white sources he relies on to "document" his pseudo-academic diatribes. In his polemic "Immigration Harms Black America," Anderson declares, baldly, that "immigrant population increases in the last 30 years have made Blacks third-class citizens in America after they were second-class citizens for hundreds of years," and that "immigration has erased the 10% income gains that native Blacks made between 1956 and 1966, the years of the civil rights movement."
So it is the immigrants who have done the foul deed - not the native white American racists who created the paradigm that calls for Blacks to be perpetually on the bottom, and who continue to enforce that formula in the present; not the de-industrialization process that was coterminous with the immigrant influx, a deliberate corporate policy that resulted in Blacks suffering 55 percent of the union jobs lost in 2004; not the general white backlash that followed immediately upon the victories of the Black Freedom Movement of the Sixties, ushering in a national policy of mass Black incarceration that has devastated every aspect of African American society.
No, the immigrants are the root of all things evil done to Black folk in the last 30 years. Anderson, who undoubtedly considers himself a "Race Man," has in fact crossed over to the White Right. He infers that Latinos are out to make a separate peace with white racism in return for (some future) favored status in the United States. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, rooted in an ignorance and protean fear that prevents many long-isolated and besieged African Americans from making common cause with "others." Ultimately, Anderson and other faux nationalists turn to the historical enemy - white racists - for theoretical verification and political support.
Apparently, Anderson wants to make a deal with racists before the Hispanics do. He calls for a total shutdown of immigration to the U.S., to "close the nation's doors until policies are in place that redirect resources to native Blacks to correct the inequalities of slavery and Jim Crow semi-slavery."
African Americans are confident that we know what "Black" is, here, but we know next to nothing about what "not white" is, "over there" - places where there exist more flavors of racial admixture than Campbell had soups or Howard Johnson had ice creams, each with its own group label and all under the jackboot of "whites" (or near-whites) who proudly trace their lineage to Europe. Racism is a daily experience among darker mestizos in Mexico and the non-white majority of Venezuela, for example. To generally describe Hispanics as "non-Anglo Saxon Whites speaking Spanish," as does the book-promoting fog-blower Claud Anderson, is to deny Latinos their racial and national legacies. It is the ultimate insult, of the kind African Americans would never accept if we were referred to as simply darker-skinned, English-speaking white people.
Such degradations of whole peoples and their distinct national, racial and cultural subgroups seem to flow freely from the mouths of African Americans like Anderson - in putrid streams that mimic the rhetoric of the rightwing white sources he relies on to "document" his pseudo-academic diatribes. In his polemic "Immigration Harms Black America," Anderson declares, baldly, that "immigrant population increases in the last 30 years have made Blacks third-class citizens in America after they were second-class citizens for hundreds of years," and that "immigration has erased the 10% income gains that native Blacks made between 1956 and 1966, the years of the civil rights movement."
So it is the immigrants who have done the foul deed - not the native white American racists who created the paradigm that calls for Blacks to be perpetually on the bottom, and who continue to enforce that formula in the present; not the de-industrialization process that was coterminous with the immigrant influx, a deliberate corporate policy that resulted in Blacks suffering 55 percent of the union jobs lost in 2004; not the general white backlash that followed immediately upon the victories of the Black Freedom Movement of the Sixties, ushering in a national policy of mass Black incarceration that has devastated every aspect of African American society.
No, the immigrants are the root of all things evil done to Black folk in the last 30 years. Anderson, who undoubtedly considers himself a "Race Man," has in fact crossed over to the White Right. He infers that Latinos are out to make a separate peace with white racism in return for (some future) favored status in the United States. It is a self-fulfilling prophecy, rooted in an ignorance and protean fear that prevents many long-isolated and besieged African Americans from making common cause with "others." Ultimately, Anderson and other faux nationalists turn to the historical enemy - white racists - for theoretical verification and political support.
Apparently, Anderson wants to make a deal with racists before the Hispanics do. He calls for a total shutdown of immigration to the U.S., to "close the nation's doors until policies are in place that redirect resources to native Blacks to correct the inequalities of slavery and Jim Crow semi-slavery."
"We sulk or rant in our longstanding impotence - a function of the death of our own movement, a generation and a half ago."
It's about 30-plus years too late for that, the "diversity" deal having been consummated by the remnants of the Civil Rights Movement and various "minority" and "women's" organizations long ago, and written in stone by the U.S. Supreme Court in its affirmative action decision of 2003. Anderson's spiel may play well in Black barber shops and beauty parlors, but it ignores the reality outside: the Latinos are here; they outnumber African Americans and will grow larger; they are the majority in LA's Watts and countless other formerly "Black" communities; they are predicted to outnumber Blacks in Georgia by as early as 2010; and they are on the move, politically.
Who is not on the move? African Americans. Instead, we sulk or rant in our longstanding impotence - a function of the death of our own movement, a generation and a half ago - while the worst of us importune white racists to rescue Blacks from the historical trap whites have created and fought desperately to preserve. What madness!
Movement-Envy
Ill-concealed envy is the saddest - and ugliest - aspect of some of what passes for Black political critique of the evolving Latino/immigrant movement. The Chicago Sun-Times' Mary Mitchell, after getting her "mean on" by expressing "disgust" with sanctuary-seeking undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano for "pimping the system," demands that Latinos thank Blacks "for paving the way" before they dare mount a movement for social change. "The benefits that so many other groups - women included - now enjoy were purchased with black blood, sweat and tears," wrote Mitchell - as if Arellano and her fellow Latino activists have not consistently cited the Black Freedom Movement as a cherished model.
But Mitchell is caught in a contradiction, made worse by the green glaze of envy at Latino activism and her shocking misunderstanding of the same African American history that she demands immigrant learn before they get uppity on U.S. soil. In comments to reporters, Ms. Arellano paid homage to a civil rights icon. "I'm strong, I've learned from Rosa Parks - I'm not going to the back of the bus. The law is wrong," she said.
Who is not on the move? African Americans. Instead, we sulk or rant in our longstanding impotence - a function of the death of our own movement, a generation and a half ago - while the worst of us importune white racists to rescue Blacks from the historical trap whites have created and fought desperately to preserve. What madness!
Movement-Envy
Ill-concealed envy is the saddest - and ugliest - aspect of some of what passes for Black political critique of the evolving Latino/immigrant movement. The Chicago Sun-Times' Mary Mitchell, after getting her "mean on" by expressing "disgust" with sanctuary-seeking undocumented immigrant Elvira Arellano for "pimping the system," demands that Latinos thank Blacks "for paving the way" before they dare mount a movement for social change. "The benefits that so many other groups - women included - now enjoy were purchased with black blood, sweat and tears," wrote Mitchell - as if Arellano and her fellow Latino activists have not consistently cited the Black Freedom Movement as a cherished model.
But Mitchell is caught in a contradiction, made worse by the green glaze of envy at Latino activism and her shocking misunderstanding of the same African American history that she demands immigrant learn before they get uppity on U.S. soil. In comments to reporters, Ms. Arellano paid homage to a civil rights icon. "I'm strong, I've learned from Rosa Parks - I'm not going to the back of the bus. The law is wrong," she said.
"Mary Mitchell doesn't know much about politics or history, and her moral position is hopelessly contorted by meanness and jealous resentment against 'newcomers' who are building a movement."
Rather than accept the sincerity of Arellano's remarks, Mitchell spewed abuse - and displayed both cheeks of her own phenomenal ignorance. Arellano had no right to invoke the name of Rosa Parks. "I even doubt that Arellano has any idea who Parks really was," said Mitchell, who then proceeded to reveal that it is she who fails to comprehend the act of civil disobedience that put Parks in the history books.
"Parks didn't refuse to go to the back of the bus. She refused to give up her seat to a white man who couldn't find a seat in the so-called "white section." As onerous as the Jim Crow laws were, Parks didn't break them. That's why she could calmly go to the police station and sit in jail until her husband came to bail her out.
"Because Parks wasn't a lawbreaker, the local NAACP decided to use her as a test case to challenge the Jim Crow laws. Her righteous cause drew widespread support and launched the civil rights movement in earnest."
Of course, Rosa Parks did break the law - on purpose and according to a plan hatched in advance by the local NAACP, of which she was Secretary - because the law was "wrong," just as Arellano maintains U.S. immigration laws are wrong. Alabama law specifically required Blacks to relinquish their seats to whites when the "white" section was full. Parks was convicted of failing to heed the directions of the bus driver, thus setting the stage for the Montgomery bus boycott and creating the "test case" sought by civil rights activists.
Civil disobedience - the breaking of unjust laws - became the primary tactic deployed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a 26-year-old Montgomery minister at the time of Ms. Parks' arrest. To claim that "Parks wasn't a lawbreaker" is to strip her action of all political, moral and historical meaning. But Mary Mitchell doesn't know much about politics or history, and her moral position is hopelessly contorted by meanness and jealous resentment against "newcomers" who are building a movement while African Americans sit on the sidelines with no national movement worthy of the name.
Rather than accept the sincerity of Arellano's remarks, Mitchell spewed abuse - and displayed both cheeks of her own phenomenal ignorance. Arellano had no right to invoke the name of Rosa Parks. "I even doubt that Arellano has any idea who Parks really was," said Mitchell, who then proceeded to reveal that it is she who fails to comprehend the act of civil disobedience that put Parks in the history books.
"Parks didn't refuse to go to the back of the bus. She refused to give up her seat to a white man who couldn't find a seat in the so-called "white section." As onerous as the Jim Crow laws were, Parks didn't break them. That's why she could calmly go to the police station and sit in jail until her husband came to bail her out.
"Because Parks wasn't a lawbreaker, the local NAACP decided to use her as a test case to challenge the Jim Crow laws. Her righteous cause drew widespread support and launched the civil rights movement in earnest."
Of course, Rosa Parks did break the law - on purpose and according to a plan hatched in advance by the local NAACP, of which she was Secretary - because the law was "wrong," just as Arellano maintains U.S. immigration laws are wrong. Alabama law specifically required Blacks to relinquish their seats to whites when the "white" section was full. Parks was convicted of failing to heed the directions of the bus driver, thus setting the stage for the Montgomery bus boycott and creating the "test case" sought by civil rights activists.
Civil disobedience - the breaking of unjust laws - became the primary tactic deployed by Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a 26-year-old Montgomery minister at the time of Ms. Parks' arrest. To claim that "Parks wasn't a lawbreaker" is to strip her action of all political, moral and historical meaning. But Mary Mitchell doesn't know much about politics or history, and her moral position is hopelessly contorted by meanness and jealous resentment against "newcomers" who are building a movement while African Americans sit on the sidelines with no national movement worthy of the name.
Katrina Told It All
If there were any doubt, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina proved that the Black Freedom Movement is, indeed, dead and gone - in need of resurrection, not mere resuscitation.
Soon after the catastrophic exile of most Black New Orleanians, University of Chicago political scientist Michael Dawson declared: "Katrina could very well shape this generation of young people in the same way that the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King shaped our generation." Dawson is in his early fifties.
According to Rev. Lennox Yearwood, the 36-year-old head of the Washington, DC-based Hip Hop Caucus, "New Orleans is our Gettysburg. If we lose there, we lose all the marbles."
If Dr. Dawson is right, then the emerging African American generation's formative political experience - Katrina - has been one of defeat. And if Rev. Yearwood is correct in his belief that Katrina is the equivalent of the Battle of Gettysburg, then Black folks have suffered a monumental loss.
If there were any doubt, the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina proved that the Black Freedom Movement is, indeed, dead and gone - in need of resurrection, not mere resuscitation.
Soon after the catastrophic exile of most Black New Orleanians, University of Chicago political scientist Michael Dawson declared: "Katrina could very well shape this generation of young people in the same way that the assassinations of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King shaped our generation." Dawson is in his early fifties.
According to Rev. Lennox Yearwood, the 36-year-old head of the Washington, DC-based Hip Hop Caucus, "New Orleans is our Gettysburg. If we lose there, we lose all the marbles."
If Dr. Dawson is right, then the emerging African American generation's formative political experience - Katrina - has been one of defeat. And if Rev. Yearwood is correct in his belief that Katrina is the equivalent of the Battle of Gettysburg, then Black folks have suffered a monumental loss.
"Black America did not - could not - come together in a mighty cascade of demonstrations and confrontations with the powerful perpetrators who are attempting to erase a major Black city."
Yearwood says he's seeing young Fannie Lou Hamer types among a new crop of activists, and was heartened by the surge of student involvement in Katrina organizing and relief work. Indeed, the waves of volunteers journeying to New Orleans were reminiscent of the Mississippi Freedom summer of two generations ago. It is also true that many thousands of churches, big and small, responded to the Katrina disaster with a wide range of programs. Katrina has seared into the collective Black consciousness - a kind of African American 9/11. There is no question but that Katrina has radicalized a new cohort of youth, and re-radicalized many of their elders.
However, it is these very facts - of radicalization, of universal Black horror and revulsion, of the thousands of localized responses to Katrina - that so dramatically illuminate the strategic defeat of the Black polity in the Battle of Katrina. Black America did not - could not - come together in a mighty cascade of demonstrations and confrontations with the powerful perpetrators who are attempting to erase a major Black city. Katrina showed definitively that the Movement, as we once knew it, is dead. The failure of the Black polity to set millions of bodies in motion revealed the utter impotence and disarray of the national Black political infrastructure.
(The October, 2005, "Millions More Rally" on Washington's Capitol Mall was coincidental to Katrina, having been scheduled long in advance by the Nation of Islam and other organizers. The rally produced a laundry list of wide-ranging demands, most unrelated to the catastrophe. There was nothing like a follow-up "Millions to the Front in the Battle for New Orleans" rally.)
If the national Black political infrastructure, such as it is, could not set masses in motion after Katrina, when African Americans were as one in their concentrated anger and collective will to do something, then what currently passes for leadership will never effectively mobilize Black folks for anything. They have lost the tools and desire to fight, and cannot function as leaders even when the people cry out for common action.
Had Black people been called out en masse, they would have come - but the historical moment has slipped away, wasted. In a few years, a new generation of Black activists will deploy themselves in structures of radical resistance, their world views shaped by the multiple crimes of Katrina. But in the near term, it must be recognized that not only have African Americans been numerically overtaken by Hispanics, we have been eclipsed in mass organizing, as well.
Yearwood says he's seeing young Fannie Lou Hamer types among a new crop of activists, and was heartened by the surge of student involvement in Katrina organizing and relief work. Indeed, the waves of volunteers journeying to New Orleans were reminiscent of the Mississippi Freedom summer of two generations ago. It is also true that many thousands of churches, big and small, responded to the Katrina disaster with a wide range of programs. Katrina has seared into the collective Black consciousness - a kind of African American 9/11. There is no question but that Katrina has radicalized a new cohort of youth, and re-radicalized many of their elders.
However, it is these very facts - of radicalization, of universal Black horror and revulsion, of the thousands of localized responses to Katrina - that so dramatically illuminate the strategic defeat of the Black polity in the Battle of Katrina. Black America did not - could not - come together in a mighty cascade of demonstrations and confrontations with the powerful perpetrators who are attempting to erase a major Black city. Katrina showed definitively that the Movement, as we once knew it, is dead. The failure of the Black polity to set millions of bodies in motion revealed the utter impotence and disarray of the national Black political infrastructure.
(The October, 2005, "Millions More Rally" on Washington's Capitol Mall was coincidental to Katrina, having been scheduled long in advance by the Nation of Islam and other organizers. The rally produced a laundry list of wide-ranging demands, most unrelated to the catastrophe. There was nothing like a follow-up "Millions to the Front in the Battle for New Orleans" rally.)
If the national Black political infrastructure, such as it is, could not set masses in motion after Katrina, when African Americans were as one in their concentrated anger and collective will to do something, then what currently passes for leadership will never effectively mobilize Black folks for anything. They have lost the tools and desire to fight, and cannot function as leaders even when the people cry out for common action.
Had Black people been called out en masse, they would have come - but the historical moment has slipped away, wasted. In a few years, a new generation of Black activists will deploy themselves in structures of radical resistance, their world views shaped by the multiple crimes of Katrina. But in the near term, it must be recognized that not only have African Americans been numerically overtaken by Hispanics, we have been eclipsed in mass organizing, as well.
No Victory Without Latinos
Mary Mitchell's Chicago has actually witnessed some of the most notable examples of Black-Latino solidarity - not that she seems to have noticed. The late Harold Washington was elected Chicago's first Black mayor in 1983 after forging strong alliances with the growing Hispanic community, which now amounts to 27 percent of the city (Blacks make up 36 percent of the population). After Washington's untimely death in 1987, the coalition fell apart, leading to the election of the current white mayor, Richard Daley, Jr.
In the run-up to 1992 elections activists registered 130,000 new voters. Chicago Latino voters put Carolyn Moseley-Braun over the top in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate; she became the first Black woman to hold a seat in the upper chamber of the U.S. legislature.
The lesson is: when Blacks and Hispanics fail to unite in Chicago, progressive Blacks lose in city- and state-wide races.
Mary Mitchell's Chicago has actually witnessed some of the most notable examples of Black-Latino solidarity - not that she seems to have noticed. The late Harold Washington was elected Chicago's first Black mayor in 1983 after forging strong alliances with the growing Hispanic community, which now amounts to 27 percent of the city (Blacks make up 36 percent of the population). After Washington's untimely death in 1987, the coalition fell apart, leading to the election of the current white mayor, Richard Daley, Jr.
In the run-up to 1992 elections activists registered 130,000 new voters. Chicago Latino voters put Carolyn Moseley-Braun over the top in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate; she became the first Black woman to hold a seat in the upper chamber of the U.S. legislature.
The lesson is: when Blacks and Hispanics fail to unite in Chicago, progressive Blacks lose in city- and state-wide races.
"The Chicago experience puts the lie to those who maintain that Latinos favor a sub-living wage structure."
However, there is another side to that coin: Black Chicago politicians as a body, having a longer history of collaboration with corrupt white machines, turn out to be demonstrably less progressive than their Latino counterparts. This political truth was brought home in the recent battle to impose living wage legislation on Wal-Mart and other "big box" retailers. After years of organizing, unions and community and church groups succeeded in assembling a veto-proof super-majority in the city council - 35 of 50 members - mandating that the big boxes pay at least $10 an hour and $3.00 in benefits for the privilege of doing business in Chicago. All ten Hispanic members of the council initially voted on the progressive side of the issue, compared to only half of the 18 Black aldermen.
Under intense pressure from Mayor Daley, and in face of threats by Wal-Mart, Target and Home Depot to withhold further investment from the city, four aldermen later switched their votes: two Latinos and two Blacks. But the Chicago experience puts the lie to those who maintain that Latinos favor a sub-living wage structure. At least in the Windy City, it is easily corruptible Black politicians who are the problem. These elements are joined by Black business groupings, that care more about a potential contract with Wal-Mart than whether workers earn a living wage (and who may have no intention of paying a living wage to their own employees - a trait they share with employers of all ethnicities).
Chicago, like many other urban centers, will continue to become more Latino - unless gentrification reverses the process, which will also inevitably diminish the Black proportion of the population, as well. In Manhattan, both Black and Latino populations have declined under gentrifying assault. Black majorities are in danger of collapsing in numerous "chocolate cities" across the nation - most because of gentrification rather than Latino influx. Claud Anderson may want to strike a deal to stabilize Black numbers in the cities, but Big Capital is not cooperating, and never will. Only a Black-Latino urban alliance can withstand the onslaught and preserve the political power of both groups.
The Penalty for Arrogance
Latino organizers don't need permission from African Americans to assert their demands; no human group is obligated to bow and scrape to another. Their primary duty is to turn out the numbers, in what they believe to be a just cause. African American insistence on Latino obeisance - to the extent it exists - is backhanded, hostile, mean-spirited, sulking, the product of bewilderment, jealousy and impotence. Certainly, Latinos should not dignify the wild ravings of Claud Anderson, who blames immigrants for every economic, political and social setback that Black folks have been unable to prevent since 1970. And Mary Mitchell, the people-insulting Chicago columnist, has nothing to say worth hearing by anyone of any ethnicity.
Rather, it is Black folk's obligation - the duty of future Black leaders at every level - to give political direction based on analysis of the world as it actually exists.
There is no room for gratuitous insult in the dialogue between Latinos and African Americans that must occur in earnest if both groups are to escape eviction from the cities by encroaching capital in the form of gentrification.
Latino organizers don't need permission from African Americans to assert their demands; no human group is obligated to bow and scrape to another. Their primary duty is to turn out the numbers, in what they believe to be a just cause. African American insistence on Latino obeisance - to the extent it exists - is backhanded, hostile, mean-spirited, sulking, the product of bewilderment, jealousy and impotence. Certainly, Latinos should not dignify the wild ravings of Claud Anderson, who blames immigrants for every economic, political and social setback that Black folks have been unable to prevent since 1970. And Mary Mitchell, the people-insulting Chicago columnist, has nothing to say worth hearing by anyone of any ethnicity.
Rather, it is Black folk's obligation - the duty of future Black leaders at every level - to give political direction based on analysis of the world as it actually exists.
There is no room for gratuitous insult in the dialogue between Latinos and African Americans that must occur in earnest if both groups are to escape eviction from the cities by encroaching capital in the form of gentrification.
"Hispanics are second only to Blacks in eagerness to join a union."
There will be no living wage for anyone if corrupt African American politicians insist on making common cause with oppressive employers like Wal-Mart, all the while subscribing to the canard that Latino immigrants want to work for sub-standard wages.
There is no solution to a two- or three-tier wage system, except a one-tier wage system - which requires the closest collaboration among those who work or want to work, whatever their social background. Hispanics are second only to Blacks in eagerness to join a union. (The order of union-friendliness is Black women, first, followed by Black men, Hispanic women, Hispanic men, white women, with white men dead last.)
Hispanics are overwhelmingly supportive of public schools and affordable health care. They oppose racial profiling, to which Latinos have been subjected by immigration authorities as well as police for generations. The police state, immigrant-hunt regime that would descend on the nation if Claud Anderson and his white supremacist allies get their way, combined with anti-terrorist hysteria, would inevitably erase every civil liberties gain of the past four decades, most severely impacting the state-criminalized Black ghetto poor, as usual.
There will be no living wage for anyone if corrupt African American politicians insist on making common cause with oppressive employers like Wal-Mart, all the while subscribing to the canard that Latino immigrants want to work for sub-standard wages.
There is no solution to a two- or three-tier wage system, except a one-tier wage system - which requires the closest collaboration among those who work or want to work, whatever their social background. Hispanics are second only to Blacks in eagerness to join a union. (The order of union-friendliness is Black women, first, followed by Black men, Hispanic women, Hispanic men, white women, with white men dead last.)
Hispanics are overwhelmingly supportive of public schools and affordable health care. They oppose racial profiling, to which Latinos have been subjected by immigration authorities as well as police for generations. The police state, immigrant-hunt regime that would descend on the nation if Claud Anderson and his white supremacist allies get their way, combined with anti-terrorist hysteria, would inevitably erase every civil liberties gain of the past four decades, most severely impacting the state-criminalized Black ghetto poor, as usual.
The Reality Quotient
Blacks were as surprised as whites when more than half-a-million mostly Latino demonstrators rallied in Los Angeles in late March of this year. Where did the crowds come from? How did they pull off such a gargantuan gathering? African Americans had less excuse than white Anglos for not knowing what was up. After all, Watts is 62 percent Latino, Compton is three-fifths - African Americans and Latinos live in proximity throughout much of the mega-city. But, as radio broadcaster and Hip Hop guru Davey D told me, "KKBT-FM [the top-rated Black-oriented radio station] completely ignored one million people in the streets." It was "similar to the Million Man March right on their doorstep," yet to KKBT and its listeners, the huge outpouring of humanity "didn't exist." The same applied for the rest of English-speaking commercial media.
Spanish-language media, particularly radio, were key to the massive turnouts in Los Angeles, Chicago (another half-million) and more than a score other cities. Radio personalities talked up the demonstrations, creating the kind of community-wide consciousness that once surrounded major Black political actions, two generations ago. However, it would be wrong to credit the corporate (and often, non-Latino) owners of Spanish-language media with some special sensitivity to the political aspirations of their audiences. Rather, Spanish-language outlets were compelled to respond to what they recognized as a groundswell of community organizing for immigrant rights. In other words, Hispanic media got on the right side of the movement.
Blacks were as surprised as whites when more than half-a-million mostly Latino demonstrators rallied in Los Angeles in late March of this year. Where did the crowds come from? How did they pull off such a gargantuan gathering? African Americans had less excuse than white Anglos for not knowing what was up. After all, Watts is 62 percent Latino, Compton is three-fifths - African Americans and Latinos live in proximity throughout much of the mega-city. But, as radio broadcaster and Hip Hop guru Davey D told me, "KKBT-FM [the top-rated Black-oriented radio station] completely ignored one million people in the streets." It was "similar to the Million Man March right on their doorstep," yet to KKBT and its listeners, the huge outpouring of humanity "didn't exist." The same applied for the rest of English-speaking commercial media.
Spanish-language media, particularly radio, were key to the massive turnouts in Los Angeles, Chicago (another half-million) and more than a score other cities. Radio personalities talked up the demonstrations, creating the kind of community-wide consciousness that once surrounded major Black political actions, two generations ago. However, it would be wrong to credit the corporate (and often, non-Latino) owners of Spanish-language media with some special sensitivity to the political aspirations of their audiences. Rather, Spanish-language outlets were compelled to respond to what they recognized as a groundswell of community organizing for immigrant rights. In other words, Hispanic media got on the right side of the movement.
"Latinos have fielded the beginnings of a powerful movement, while a coherent national Black movement is just a memory - for now."
No such movement exists in Black America, and therefore Black-oriented mass media see no need to diverge from their news-less menu of celebrity gossip and assorted nonsense. Had African American "leadership" infrastructures been willing and able to put out a credible call for massive Katrina-related turnouts, Black-oriented media would have responded as readily as their corporate Hispanic counterparts. They are the same bottom line-feeding animals. The difference lay in the levels of community organization - Latinos had their act together, while African Americans languished in political paralysis.
"Hispanic media collaborated on their march," said Davey D. "We could have had a million people in the streets about Katrina - 'Where are the kids?' But Black media were absent. All this contributes to the disintegration of political organization in our communities."
It is senseless for African Americans to squabble over whether Latino mass activism represents the "new Civil Rights Movement" or not. The fact is, Latinos have fielded the beginnings of a powerful movement, while a coherent national Black movement is just a memory - for now.
The Black polity is the unique product of the strivings of a singular people, whose institutions and shared consciousness were forged in enforced intimacy over hundreds of years. It is not so fragile as to fade into permanent inconsequentiality simply because a bad crop of leadership was allowed to demobilize the Black Freedom Movement, over 30 years ago. Katrina has already awakened the organizers of the future. However, that future will be shared with Latinos. For the sake of our common interests, Black progressives are obligated to do everything possible to cleanse the African American dialogue of parochialism, insults against other ethnicities, useless nostalgia that keeps us fixed in a past time and - most importantly - the nativism inherited from our historical oppressors.
We are a raise-up people, not a speak-down-to people. Let's act like it.
BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford(at)BlackAgendaReport.com. When sending email you must replace the "(at)" with the character "@".
No such movement exists in Black America, and therefore Black-oriented mass media see no need to diverge from their news-less menu of celebrity gossip and assorted nonsense. Had African American "leadership" infrastructures been willing and able to put out a credible call for massive Katrina-related turnouts, Black-oriented media would have responded as readily as their corporate Hispanic counterparts. They are the same bottom line-feeding animals. The difference lay in the levels of community organization - Latinos had their act together, while African Americans languished in political paralysis.
"Hispanic media collaborated on their march," said Davey D. "We could have had a million people in the streets about Katrina - 'Where are the kids?' But Black media were absent. All this contributes to the disintegration of political organization in our communities."
It is senseless for African Americans to squabble over whether Latino mass activism represents the "new Civil Rights Movement" or not. The fact is, Latinos have fielded the beginnings of a powerful movement, while a coherent national Black movement is just a memory - for now.
The Black polity is the unique product of the strivings of a singular people, whose institutions and shared consciousness were forged in enforced intimacy over hundreds of years. It is not so fragile as to fade into permanent inconsequentiality simply because a bad crop of leadership was allowed to demobilize the Black Freedom Movement, over 30 years ago. Katrina has already awakened the organizers of the future. However, that future will be shared with Latinos. For the sake of our common interests, Black progressives are obligated to do everything possible to cleanse the African American dialogue of parochialism, insults against other ethnicities, useless nostalgia that keeps us fixed in a past time and - most importantly - the nativism inherited from our historical oppressors.
We are a raise-up people, not a speak-down-to people. Let's act like it.
BAR Executive Editor Glen Ford can be contacted at Glen.Ford(at)BlackAgendaReport.com. When sending email you must replace the "(at)" with the character "@".
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