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By Armando Vazquez / Guest contributor
Armando Vazquez.
“We black men have a hard enough time in our own struggle for justice, and already have enough enemies as it is, to make the drastic mistake of attacking each other and adding more weight to an already unbearable load.”… Malcom X
Racism as American as Apple Pie
But, pathetically, we do attack one another. Always, it seems, fighting for the proverbial crumbs that the oppressor throws at our feet. Latino and Black folk in this country have had a troubled and checkered history when it comes to, as Rodney King implored, “to just get along”. American racism is complex, insidious, multi-layered and has been “as American as apple pie” and an evil and shameful scourge on this nation for 250 years. Racism permeates and infects every aspect of American life. No one is totally inoculated and immune from this highly infectious American pathology, Latinos and Blacks are no exception.
This brings me to the current mess that Los Angeles city council finds itself embroiled in at the moment. A racist statement made by the now disgraced, Nury Martinez, ex-President of the Los Angeles City Council, was caught on a hot mike and all hell has broken loose in the city. Martinez’s racist statements are indefensible. Her out of control ego, pendejismo, and her insatiable lust for power was her ultimate undoing. There are currently heated demands and city wide protest calling for the head of Gil Cedillo and Kevin de Leon, the other two city council members, along with labor leader Ron Herrera that were present during Martinez’ racist rant and apparently they did not shut down, push back or censor the now disgraced Martinez. Martinez is a pendeja and racist, she should go. If Cedillo, de Leon, and Herrera were involved in the racism spewed by Martinez they should step down immediately as well.
We fight for power and justice and they throws crumbs
These kinds of racist conversation, observation and statements occurred frequently, in both the Chicano and Black communities. I have hear gross, vile, and racist statements all my life in my communities and have had to walk away from the racist banter more times than I can recall. All four Chicano politicos may be driven from office in the coming days, however the racist scourge that has always infected relationships between Chicanos and Blacks in the barrios and the ghettos of California and throughout our nation will remain, and this shameful and destructive racist event will repeat itself, over and over again through this nation.
A couple of years ago the monstrous killing of Vanessa Guillen by a Black Army man, and the subsequent military cover-up, had again put the spotlight back on this tragic, and very real riff between some Black and Brown folks in this nation. It is a long festering American story of the disenfranchised and exploited turning on themselves. There is, of course, a sick, pathetic and racist historical institutional logic to the long simmering ambivalence, animus, distrust and often outright hatred that Black and Brown folks have for one another. The current orchestrated socioeconomic and ethnic wars engineered by Trump and company, now more than ever have exposed and laid bare the ugly truth that a discernable percentage of Black and Brown folks are programmed, brainwashed and manipulated to distrust, hate, fight, and kill each other over the bones that the criminal elite have thrown our way.
With My Eyes Wide Open
I am a 70 year old immigrant Chicano boomer, who has lived all but 7-8 years in Southern California. I have witnessed the distrust, disdain, and sometime the outright hatred, that some Brown and Black folks have for one another first hand and up close. What follows is my Brown and Black experiences and race relations I have lives through in the San Fernando Valley (circa 1958 through the present), and subsequently in Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara Counties.
In 1964 I began my middle school years at McClay Junior High School in the city of Pacoima. Up until that time I had met few Black folk and avoided as much as I could white folks. Up to that time I had no Black class mates or friends. McClay changed all of that, quickly! The racial composition of McClay was roughly 40 % Black, 40% Brown (Chicano), 12 % White, and 8% Japanese, Samoan and Philippino and other. It was a glorious rainbow coalition of youth. We were pushed and pulled along by an incredibly diverse and progressive faculty that lovingly and consciously worked tirelessly to directs us toward the American dream that most of us still could not envision. It was this once in a life time group of teachers that helped us along the newly developing contours of race relations circa 1964 in the rough and tumble barrio of Pacoima, Lakeview Terrace, and San Fernando.
When it goes Down you Stick to your Race
Left to our own devices, programmed and infected by the racism that swirled all around us we were already subconsciously and insidiously being indoctrinated to distrust and avoid one another. We self-segregated by race, Chicanos, Blacks, Asians and Whites, almost never voluntarily hanging out together. At McClay we had to be pushed and prodded to interact and co-mingle with students of other races by the teachers. When school fights broke out, and they were frequent, the fights seemed to always instigate along the precarious fault lines of race. When the school fights went down you stuck with your race, no matter what. Anyone that broke that universal code of “supporting or sticking” with your race was jumped, ostracized and treated as a traitor, never to be trusted again. So you stuck with your own race. I never saw anyone break the code.
By the end of the 9th grade most of my friends were Black. The common denominator for me and my Black friends was our love of sports. With the help and support of my Black friends my American dream was made crystal clear and possible. I would work my butt off to become the shortstop for the Los Angeles Dodgers in the near future. Upon graduating from McClay Jr. High in the summer of 1967 at the tender age of 16 years I made both the biggest and most costly mistake of my young life.
Another School and some more Racism
I had anguished all summer, vacillating between going to Verdugo Hills High School in Sunland-Tujunga, an almost all White school that had a superior baseball program that could propel me to the big leagues. Or I could attend San Fernando High School and join all my Black and Brown friends that by now were part of my beautiful diverse extended sports family. I chose Verdugo High. I wasn’t a racist. I would not have any problems with anyone because I was Chicano. Boy, was I stupid and naïve, in the very first hours of the very first day I was bombarded with racist attacks by both students and staff. I had made a horrific mistake, but there was no turning back, I had to stick it out to follow my dream. I played and excelled for the varsity baseball team that year. The constant, unrelenting, overt and blatant racism that I and the few other Chicano students that attended Verdugo High, experienced and witnessed that year literally crushed my “crystal clear baseball dreams” into a million pieces and crushed all the joy of playing the game I had loved. I transferred to San Fernando High the following summer. I was never again the same magical “blue chip” baseball prospect; somewhere in the racist hills of Sunland-Tujunga I lost my childhood dream and became a very disillusioned young man.
Do not Break the Code
My my junior year at San Fernando High I was a shell of my old self, at 17 years of age I was a baseball washout. At the end of a very average baseball season I secretly threw away all my baseball gear, and never seriously again played a game of baseball. It is tragic how insidious and crushing racism can be to the soul of a developing young mind. And then came the first of many Black and Brown student race riots at San Fernando High. In the frenetic madness of the moment I would run past my black friends, making eye contact with each of them to assure that we were “cool” with one another. Then we would dash off to our “safe turf” areas of the school that were “controlled” by either the Chicanos or Black students. Back to the ugly default that you never forget, you fight alongside and defend your own race. You dare not breach this “commandment”. I did, I tried more than once to be a peacemaker between the Black and Brown students. I failed miserably and to add insult to injury I became one of the school’s race relations Pariahs. My high school years were scarred by overt and unrelenting racism, wilful ignorance, youthful fear and stupidity. I hated the racism, I hated high school! I started self-isolating and in short order lost all contact with my Black friends.
University Life and more Racism
At San Fernando Valley State College (now California State University, Northridge (CSUN) the few Chicano and Black students that where admitted into the college, circa 1969, very seldom interacted with one another. Even in the tiny college dorms that housed Black and Brown students we never interacted. On the rare occasion that we did come together it was to demonstrate temporary “optic” Chicano/Black solidarity to the administration. As quickly as the marches, sit-ins, or the demonstrations were done we would go our separate ways. I never had a Black or White friend in college the whole time I was at CSUN.
A Fully Infected Adult
In my professional career I interface with many ethnic groups. I know many White and Black folk in Oxnard, the greater Ventura County and Santa Barbara area, however almost all my friends continue to be Chicano. For the past four decades I worked in the greater Oxnard, Ventura and Santa Barbara counties continuously with a glorious multi-ethnic grouping of local activists fighting for justice in our community. In this line of activist work in Oxnard and beyond, we have struggle mightily to form multi-ethnic coalition. We, the Black, Brown, Yellow and White social activists work together periodically on specific issue of mutual concern or benefit and then we would self-segregate and go back to our own tribes. As adult, I observed, we were programmed to self-segregate early in our American race experience and never truly committed to the continued and arduous demands of everyday and universal integration efforts. Race integration in America, we talk about it, but that is about as far as it gets. We don’t ever fully commit to the race integration work required.
As Black and Brown adults in in America for the most part we are no longer fussing and fighting with one another as we did in our youth. We have learned for the most part to be “mature adults” and uncomfortably co-exist. Live and let live, until the next racist episode between us occurs and we are at each other throats. It has been my painful experience in the communities of color that Black and Brown folk remain for the most part very “cool” and detached from one another. We, the Brown and Black adults of California, have gotten numb, somewhat oblivious, to one and another’s pain, suffering and aspirations. We have our own tribal “bones” and agendas to drag around and can’t be bothered with another ethnic group’s issues or problems. Predictably, over the years we have infected our children with this racist and callous indifference toward racial harmony. We feint horror and complain bitterly when our kids act out in ignorant, senseless, cruel and sometimes violent behaviors toward individuals or groups of different races. Pathetically, we do very little or nothing to teach our children to extend a loving and empathetic hand or heart to our sisters or brothers of color. We have fail our kids miserably in the area of racial relations and we are now reaping the tempest.
Time Brown and Black folk to get our Stuff Together and Work in Unity
Yes, American racism is complex, insidious and ubiquitous. The current and recurring riff/pedo between the Chicano and Blacks in the city of Los Angeles is emblematic of this nation’s angst and failure when it comes to race relations. We have forgotten or just merely neglect to do the daily hard work that is necessary to keep love, empathy and understanding alive and vibrant in our multi-ethnic community. A wise friend of mine use to remind me that, “One of the very hardest things for adults to do is change their hard-headed minds and cold hearts!” When it comes to race relations in Oxnard or in America this is so painfully true. But it can be done. This ongoing historical beef that we Black and Brown folks have with one another can be squashed permanently if only we can redirect our hearts, and minds and understand that we when we are playing it very small and fighting with one another we are selling ourselves and our people dreadfully short. Truth be told we are fighting for nothing more than the crumbs and bones that the oppressor throws our way. We must unify and consolidated our power, that is how we collective we gain political, social and economic power.
The Black and Brown conundrum is our, we must own it, and only united can we fix it! We must resolve to work hard to reconcile our many differences and then do the righteous and necessary work together as equal and loving sisters and brothers to petition the prevailing power structure and demand and secure, by any means, that which is rightly ours, and stop fighting over crumbs.
— Armando Vazquez, M.Ed., founding member of CORE and the Acuna Art Gallery and Community Collective.