Looking out: Parts of the rainbow are violent
By Brandon Astor Jones
"In all things that are purely social we can be as separate as the fingers, yet one as the hand in all things essential to mutual progress." — Booker Taliaferro Washington (1856-1915).
You don't stop being a person of colour just because you are willing to say you are not. I find myself often offended by members of various other cultural groups when I hear them in such denials. Alas, it is not uncommon to encounter Asian, Mexican, Chicano, Puerto Rican and even Native Americans who vehemently deny being persons of colour.
Their reason for doing that is that they don't want to become part of that racist American equation that some people call a "White-on-Black" thing. That is what Elizabeth Martinez calls it in her May 1994 Zeta magazine article entitled "Seeing More Than Black and White" and subtitled "Latinos, Racism, and the Cultural Divides".
It is encouraging and refreshing to read the words of a Latina who has lived on the west coast and who recognises that while there are indeed many different cultures amongst us, we are still all people of colour subjected to white supremacy in the USA. Like Martinez, I have always had an inclusive view and ideal regarding all "black, brown, red and yellow" people as each group proudly gives its contribution to the world's magnificent colour spectrum.
I also share her desire to unify our cultures against our common foe, racism. The crippling mentality of misguided separatists only serves to weaken our struggles against the foe.
Geography can be a strange helpmate to racism and bigotry in North America. I once worked for two years as a bartender in a Mexican establishment located on 17th Street in Chicago Heights. Except on very rare occasions, I was the only African-American on either side of the bar. Never once did I encounter a patron who openly resented my not being Mexican.
But if that establishment had been situated in an East Los Angeles barrio, the chances are better than good that I would not have lasted two days, let alone two years, without being subjected to verbal or physical attacks for no other reason than being black, in a Mexican establishment.
Geographical attitudes often defy logical comprehension. I cannot doubt Martinez's experiences when she said, "Having lived on both the East and West Coasts for long periods, I feel qualified to pronounce: An especially myopic view of Latinos prevails in the East."
I will also agree that there are more than sufficient reasons to support her view of how Chicana/os and Puerto Ricans are grossly mistreated in the eastern portion of the United States. However, she infers that people on the west coast are leaps and bounds ahead of people in the east, in the area of tolerance. To some degree I agree with that too, but I have a perspective that is missing from her article.
If a Black man and Chicana/Latina woman go for a walk holding hands down the street in a Hispanic neighbourhood in Chicago, New York, Boston, New Jersey, Baltimore, Washington, DC, or any other large eastern city, the most they would likely endure is an occasional distasteful glance. If that couple took the same walk in an East Los Angeles barrio, three out of five times the black man will be subjected to violent attacks from groups of Hispanic men, and the woman will be called every kind of "puta" one can imagine.
It is as if Hispanics and blacks (especially the males) are engaged in an undeclared war with each other that is being waged, for the most part, on the west coast. This undeclared war has been going for at least 35 years, that I know of.
Even inside midwestern and eastern prisons, black and Hispanic prisoners have joined forces in a struggle against the racist bureaucracies that most US prisons are controlled by. On the other hand, in California prisons, by and large, Hispanic and black prisoners are so divided that prison administrators are able to use that division to further oppress all of California's prison populations.
We must stop seeing each other as the enemy. If we don't do that soon, we will never get around to the abolition of the racist concept of white supremacy, because we have not yet gotten past the cultural bigotries within our own groups.
[The writer is a prisoner on death row in the United States. He is happy to receive letters commenting on his columns. He can be written to at: Brandon Astor Jones, EF-122216, G2-51, GD&CC, PO Box 3877, Jackson, GA 30233, USA.]