American racism is complex, insidious and multi-layered. It is not a just black or white phenomenon. Our American racism comes in many shades of color and degrees of ignorance, contempt, stupidity and hatred. This brings me to the current seldom talked about or completely ignored ongoing racist beef/pedo between some Brown and Black folks in this country and in California, in particular.
We live in a great country with a history that is both magnificent and, at times, not so magnificent. Until very recently, we were the light of the world, the “shining city upon a hill,” as our country has been called in flights of oratory throughout modern history. Nonetheless, there have been several ugly periods of time in American history that should have us hanging our heads in shame: the massacres of Native Americans in the nineteenth century; the internment of Japanese Americans in the mid-1940s; the persecution and humiliation of Mexican American youth in Los Angeles by military servicemen and white Angelenos during World War II. Few of us are aware of the Reconstruction era, just after the Civil War when the black slaves were given their freedom. In school, many of us were taught that the slaves were freed and we went on to become a great industrial power. And we lived happily ever after. But the truth is otherwise.
