Guest Column
Black vs. Brown: A Racial Boxing Match?
- Black vs. Brown: A Racial Boxing Match?
- By Pilar Marrero, Translated from Spanish by Elena Shore
- Jan 24, 2007
- When immigrants marched through the nation’s
streets last year protesting an anti-immigrant law, rumors of discomfort
in other communities, especially the African American community, became
more and more prevalent.
Every time there is a fight between African American and Latino students in an overcrowded school in South Los Angeles, let’s say, Jefferson High School, we hear the same thing: there is a war between Latinos and African Americans. “Black vs. Brown,” as if it were the title of a boxing match.
The recent incident in Harbor Gateway, a small community in South Los Angeles near Torrance, once again has sounded the alarm: Latino gangs shoot a young African American and won’t allow neighbors to enter a store that they consider to be part of “their territory.”
Then commentators of all kinds, those who are knowledgeable and those who aren’t, come out to condemn the incident, generally without ever having set foot in a Los Angeles neighborhood, saying it is evidence of a race war: Latinos don’t like blacks, blacks don’t like Latinos.
If in general terms I concede that there is a racial – and racist – element in these incidents, a closer reading of the situation reveals that it is a much more complex subject to analyze than what we skim from the surface.
I am not pretending I have all the answers, but during the marches I decided to do a series of reports exploring the issue. What I found was an issue with many nuances: an African American community with a long history of racism in this country and of battling injustices. Latinos generally don’t know that history and have their own problems, their own struggle.
When you go deep into these communities, you notice everyday life, not the brutality of the events that make the news. That is to say: African Americans and Latinos get married, have kids, are neighbors, are friends, go to school together, and sometimes even go to the same church.
It’s true, many African Americans I spoke with are worried about being displaced from their old neighborhoods and jobs by the Latino community. But when most educated on the issues, and when most tolerant, they see clearly that they are being displaced not by the worker or the neighbor looking for a place to live, but by economic realities.
When it comes to Latinos, a majority of them have just experienced racial and economic discrimination in their own countries. With the exception of Caribbeans and people from some parts of Mexico and Central America, where there once were slaves, they have never seen a black person in their lives. What they repeat are the prejudices of others, prejudices that exist in this society.
But beneath all of this is the typical scramble for meager scraps: jobs, affordable neighborhoods – which are more and more scarce – and low quality education. And there is the reality of criminal gang activity, a problem that has never been seriously addressed in the way that matters most: that of prevention. - ______________________________________________________
- Pilar Marrero is a columnist for Spanish language daily,
La Opinion,
Article at: http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=3ae0c8a6006882fa00d070ab6fc6807d
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