Column Progressives need to break the silence that follows the
hype
By DEMETRIA MARTINEZ
Its an irritating media ritual
that happens like clockwork: the breathless announcement that Latinos soon will
be the nations largest minority.
This season Newsweek magazine took the lead with a July 12
cover story that names 2005 as the year of our ascendency. Hispanics are
hip, hot and about to make history, reads the inside teaser.
A splashy news report consummates the ritual. Letters to the
editor comprise the closing prayers. And then -- silence. Everything reverts to
business as usual, that is, a refusal to cover Latinos in any consistent and
meaningful way. Latino activists, artists and opinion-makers of every stripe
vanish into thin air in mainstream and progressive media outlets alike.
Or course such skewed coverage is symptomatic of a tendency on the
part of many Americans to view race as primarily a black and white issue.
Incredibly, President Clintons first dialogues on race in
1997 excluded Native Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos.
Why the persistence of such tunnel vision? And what are the
consequences, particularly for those concerned with building a more just
society?
These are some of the questions taken up in a new book of essays
by Elizabeth Martinez, (no relation) one of this countrys leading Chicana
intellectuals, activists and journalists.
The book is called De Colores Means All of Us: Latina
Views for a Multi-Colored Century (South End Press).
Martinez is a veteran of the Chicana and womens movements.
During the black civil rights movement, she was a leader of the Student
Non-Violent Coordinating Committee -- SNCC -- in Mississippi.
Her straight talk, sharp humor and formidable historical
sensibilities shine in these essays, which open with a foreword by Angela
Davis.
De Colores has created a stir among young Latino activists
who missed out on the movements of the 1960s and 70s. And the book is
reaching another audience is well: non-Latino progressives who are less than
fluent in the history of Latino resistance.
These are folks who want a feel for the issues and not merely an
analysis. They wont be disappointed. De Colores is like a
conversation with the author that you want never to end. Readers come away
asking what their place might be in movements for justice that today are being
revitalized by Latinos and other young people of color.
And not a moment too soon.
A 1996 census report indicates that in 50 years, more than a third
of U.S. residents will be neither black nor white. We will fall into categories
including Asian/Pacific Island American, Latino, Native American and Arab
American.
The task for activists is clear, especially for those in the
church. The times call for fresh and fearless thinking about
racism, Martinez writes in the essay, Seeing More Than Black and
White.
The essay examines reasons for our current perceptions of race:
Historically, whites have depended upon blackness to define their superiority;
blacks posed the greatest threat to Anglo desire for racial purity;
other races, perceived as less threatening, often were viewed as
white, writes Martinez.
Add to this black/white dichotomy a woeful ignorance about
American history in general.
People who learn at least a little about black slavery
remain totally ignorant of how the United States seized half of Mexico or how
it has colonized Puerto Rico, writes Martinez. Mass lynchings of Chicanos
and Mexicans in the Southwest rarely appear in our telling of history.
Popular interpretation of the 1960s does nothing to fill out the
record: Many white progressives continue to place themselves at the center of
the action.
In That Old White (Male) Magic Martinez scrutinizes
two dozen books purporting to deal with that era, including Todd Gitlins
classic account The Sixties and James Millers Democracy is in
the Streets.
Martinez cites one example after another of mass organizing by
Latinos and other non-white groups that the twodozen chroniclers managed to
overlook in their fixation on white, male-led activism.
Three books devote from one paragraph to a page to the
Chicano/a movement, Martinez writes. The rest are totally
silent.
Only one book mentions the deaths of three Chicanos at the hands
of police during the Chicano Moratorium against the Vietnam War. The Aug. 29,
1970, demonstration in Los Angeles drew 20,000 people and ended in a cloud of
tear gas.
Martinez also takes the authors to task for their analysis of
black resistance, which she says gets short shrift, even as the books
acknowledge the massiveness and exceptional leadership of black protest.
You will look long and hard, however, for the concept of that movement as
central or seminal, as a catalyst of the 1960s in general, she
writes.
It is seen as germane only to the problems facing
African-Americans -- a special interest group ... and not as a
challenge to the totality of U.S. society.
Progressives have no business falling prey to the dominant
societys common view that the problem of racism is minorities feeling
dissatisfied, rather than a lethal poison in the spirit and the body of our
entire culture, Martinez writes. The cure is a whole new world that
only a sense of our global linkage, of interdependence, can breathe into
life.
Whether writing about art, or Latina liberation or about
xenophobia in For Whom the Taco Bell Tolls, Martinez makes it clear
that the future for progressives lies in forging coalitions across colors and
causes; and that feminism and gay rights must be central to all racial justice
movements.
Martinezs wisdom and wit is a must for anyone committed to
real change. You, too, can be hip, hot and about to make
history!
Demetria Martinez lives in Tucson, Ariz.
National Catholic Reporter, September 3,
1999
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