So many Latino names and faces emerging in the alt-right Charlottesville rally/riot and KKK. Have Latinos joined the quest to be the next Irish, Italians, Jews? To "become white"? (whiteness used to be restricted to Anglo Saxon Protestants) Of course. It's been like that for a while, but not to this extent before, I don't think. There's deep desperation here on Latino's part, to fit in. And there's desperation on these white supremacist group's part, they must be strapped for membership, and trying to prove they're not racist, just concerned about white people's place in an uncertain future where Latinos and other immigrants will surpass whites (in population terms! Don't worry), and hoping they'll help maintain power (see? I told you not to worry. They won't surpass you in power. You can train them!)
A devil's bargain. Hate groups accept Latinos who hate and blame the same people they do, Latinos who will throw poor Latinos under the bus too.
Latinos get acceptance and the feeling that they're better than section 8, welfare collecting brethren who thinks the world owes them something. Of course, this involves making gross generalizations, but no matter. You know there's at least *some* stereotype fulfillers, and, hey, you're getting to wear these cool outfits and to troll people.
But how happy are you? Something's missing and broken inside. You yearn for a holy war, but then you'd be bored if you killed all your enemies. Deep down you believe that redeeming is much more meaningful. But you need a better job, and you're pissed at people on welfare because you're not doing much better than them by working.
Or you're in college and women are everywhere in power on campus taking out hatred of men on you, and passing oppressive rape laws, and you need to start a revolution that creates an America that rewards the best mental genes that rise to the top out of the barrios and from across the borders, that brings eternal renewal to our country , by deporting, by exterminating, or by sending to work camps the parasites on the top at the Federal Reserve and UN and media and big banks and Soros, and all the parasites at the bottom who hit you up for money but have a welfare mentality themselves.
But what if you're really boring and unoriginal, perhaps slow or unloveably weird, just another person whose resume is so-so, what if you get discovered? Discovered as desperate? You need enemies to distract from this. And you need to show you're down for any and everything, in excess.
Even if you worry you're not special, at least there's a bunch of whiners out there thumping Rules for Radicals and Communist Manifestos as they rage about identity politics whom you can point to as the *real* whiners. You selfish dividers focusing exclusively on your identity group. American has no color.
I should know, I'm a Latino Klansman.
People used to shut me up every time I expressed negativity, so I don't know how to love others who express negativity, because I don't know how to love myself. No one came to attend to me when I cried. Or, if they did, I got called a pussy. Then when a woman - a woman!- called me a pussy one time, I knew I had to shove it all into a black hole. Now anyone talking about reparations and privilege and "safe spaces" is done. Life isn't fair. This is America. Get over it. Fuck away from my hard-earned money you jealous crab. Get your own! The stars and stripes means motherfucking freedom you Muslim Nazis and hey did you know Hitler was a Socialist? #makeamericagreatagain #maga sorry do I offend you, you must hate free speech too
I could be the next person to be rich as Jay-Z, rich as Trump! But you lazy liberals want free everything, at *my* expense, by taxing me. I'm struggling with debt and my job is high pressure and I don't see my family often and I think my wife is turning my kids against me but I can just *taste* that big money, that Trump sized net worth, right around the corner. But Democrats, you know those n***as and wetbacks and Jews [there's a difference between Black people and n***as, Latinos and wetbacks, it's just that there's more bad than good, I'm just a special breed] and libtards possessed by guilt are only thing preventing me from getting there.
Fuck em. This is war.
This is war. Who cares if Shirley Sherrod had to be taken down due to doctored tapes that made her sound like a reverse racist. Reverse racism is real. Who cares if Planned Parenthood provides the only accessible necessary services in town for poor people. This is a Holocaust against babies. Yet y'all want my tax money?
My tax money is only going to F-16s, and badges on patrol against animals who hate the police and law and order anyway. Who cares if a few Iraqi or North Korean children get incinerated, the best defense is a good offense. Who cares if a few people get racially profiled, it is Black people and my disowned brown people coming from the bad neighborhood doing all the crime anyway, who cares if I myself get stopped, here's my ID officer, better safe than sorry. Did I take the words out of your mouth, officer? Btw, I'm not one of *those* Latinos. I'm more like Zimmerman. I'm your self appointed lapdog. Notice me. Recognize me. I'm Latino and validating everything you say. Isn't that good press for you? Need me. Please for the love of God, can I finally be indispensable for once?
note,
This is written by a white man of Cuban* and European descent
*Which means I'm part West African**, because conquistadors didn't bring women with them, and my DNA test didn't result in Taino blood
**8% to be exact.
Trump today: “Racism is evil and those who cause violence in its name are criminals and thugs, including the KKK, neo-Nazis and white supremacists and other hate groups that are repugnant to everything we hold dear as Americans”
Yes, Trump, racism *is* evil. However, the more we talk about it like that, the less people are going to admit that they are racist. I am racist. I'm in recovery, but I'll never be cured. Talking about racism in addiction terms has helped me go from 8th grade me: "let's kill all the racists and that'll solve the problem," to today where I realized that it's not a matter of identifying enemies and "bad guys" (which is very self-righteous of me).
Overt racism exists on a spectrum, and what I think really matters is the degree to which we've internalized and actualized unconscious racist belief systems and emotional reactions. I think it really matters that this is a spectrum which everyone is on, including everyone I know and love, and myself as well.
From this angle, focusing my energy on overt bigots/white supremacists is finding scapegoats at the cost of holding myself and my community accountable.
I've heard a Trump supporter say that Dylan Roof should be shot. I've heard a police officer say that the cops who killed Laquan McDonald should be executed. How convenient: now there is no responsibility to look at how white supremacy and police brutality don't happen in a vacuum, but in fact are part of the dominant culture in America. There is no responsibility to see how they or I could have become Dylan Roof or those murdering cops if a few things in our life had gone differently. These men are my friends and I don't want them thinking that they should be ashamed when they realize that they have the same implicit biases against Black people as overt racists (see the website projectimplicit and take the test "race"). Or the University of Colorado test where average people hesitate less when they pull the trigger on unarmed Black and Latino people.
Instead I want them to think about the implications of these subtle, unconscious biases playing out in how Black Americans get treated in terms of pay, job offerings, respect, homes, 911 calls, arrests, sentencing, parole, and being put on a track (college prep, remedial, special, advanced placement, etc.) in school and manager track at work, etc. and how this plays out in their occupation. I want them to think about how politicians can ring all sorts of bells when they say phrases like "welfare queens" and "supercriminals," etc. I want them to think about how we can stop these stereotypes.
I want them to think of themselves as people in recovery trying not to be in active addiction, knowing it's a life-long process of self-examination and working the 12-steps. We're not completely in control of our thoughts and feelings, which can be fucked up ("what is he [this Black man] doing in this [my] neighborhood?" I recently thought to myself because it was so unusual and I had to categorize him by making up a context), but *we* are not fucked up for having them. We're doing just what we were trained to do by a system that can't get over its denial (polls show most white people think they are the most oppressed victims of racism), self-obsession (making historically non-white characters white; not casting Latinos, Asians in roles enough and Black people mostly for stereotypes), willful ignorance (this Pepsi commercial), and fear of changing ("I'm not a racist but I'm scared about the future of America becoming mostly non-white. Fuck press 2 for English!"). In other words, a system that displays all the characteristics of addiction.
The question is, for me in this context (far be it for me to say "the" question), can we wean ourselves, our loved ones, and thus our country off of white supremacy- not just in white pride movements but in the actual literal white supremacy where "The Average Black Family Would Need 228 Years to Build the Wealth of a White Family Today" and we all know that in this country wealth means access to happiness (family time, vacations, chance to find ourselves, travel abroad), politics (lobbyists), influence (buy media time), respect (sadly, our country believes that the ability to generate wealth is alone enough a sign of virtue, though the opposite may be true), justice (attorney fees), services and aid (potholes fixed; no botched response to hurricanes or lead poisoning in water), and most tragically of all, health (see the PBS special Unnatural Causes). Currently America is a white supremacist nation for all of its policies which exacerbate this condition of whites being supreme over Blacks in terms of respect, power, control, etc. - policies which are enumerated in many books but to me most importantly in Black Wealth/White Wealth and The Hidden Cost of Being African-American both by Tom Shapiro, and Streets of Hope: The Fall and Rise of an Urban Neighborhood by Peter Medoff (about the obstacles in place for a Black community who tries to, God forbid, have control over its own resources in this country if they want to develop their own neighborhoods their own way).
The kind of racism of Roof and those officers who killed Laquan McDonald, and the man who plowed into a group of antiracist protesters, is criminal and tragic and deserves full prosecution. My point is, the FBI doesn't just go after the muscle/hit-men in the Mafia. These are the ones at the bottom of the pyramid, with the crime boss on top. America's crime boss of racism is its own institutions, its own psyche. In order to change that, that takes work in our own community institutions' to undo its complicity and teach our children about invisible structures of modern racism, reading books to know how we got here and what to lobby for and against, it takes a campaign to delegitimize commonly held assumptions (such as "urban renewal" and "war on police" and "school redistricting"), it takes work on our own selves and its complicity (from our unconscious biases, othering language, to our gentrifying bodies). Not just a dismissal of racism as "evil" or the idea that we can punch or kill or protest our way out of this. (though some strategic violence and protests are important once one has identified key institutions and higher level culture-setting individuals)
