Return to the Root

AND SO I RETURN TO THE ROOT: This is the radical positivity that I use as my compass. This is the simple vision that I have. Not a never-ending wearying battle, not an eternal tightlipped scowl. Not moping and hoping and weeping and keeping the feeling of being a victim alive. But a joy filled heart on a sun-drenched field with fight in my bones and light in my eyes.

ON MAY FIRST, I chose to draw a line. May first happens to be an important day to me, for all the reasons you might imagine, and I’ve drawn a line on that day before. I didn’t plan it this time…but it snuck up on me. A feeling, a question, an understanding…a decision.

What is a Latin@ in today’s era—to me? What sort of a Latinos and Latinas do I want to affiliate and align myself with? What type of Latin@ would I rather simply smile and walk on by? And do these standards apply to other people of color?

Now, I know there are various ways to celebrate and define Latinidad as you see, feel, and live it. And I’m not here to be a gatekeeper or get into the “coconut” discussion. ^†» This may be related, or even a variant…but I’d like to avoid the word and simplistic name calling as that does not illustrate my point well.

Initially, I was happy to know and see and support all and any kind of raza; Latin@s of any stripe, from any place, involved in any work. And overall, I still am. But there is a certain kind of Latino/a that recently I decided I just don’t have much respect for. And I certainly won’t try to aggravate or hinder them; it’s not like that. I still want Latino/as overall to succeed and often if I can help, I will. Even this kind. But that doesn’t mean I have to spend any amount time and energy there.

This comes about over an arc that spans years, and is built of many incidents and thoughts and moments. But I think I can make clear the idea by telling you about a couple moments that brought it all, finally, to a boil.

There was a person on Twitter and their name was something like “LatinoOrganizer” or “LatinoMaster.” Well, it wasn’t actually either of these, but I’m not here to pick a fight or embarrass any individual. On the other hand, it’s important to my point that I get across that their name indicates this feel: they were someone there to lead the way on Latin@ issues. Which, by itself, is fine by me. Love the energy, raza needs pasión y energía and this is very positive to me.

Now, over time (and very slowly) I began to see that the issues they wrote on or highlighted were never dealing with immigration. And sure, sure—as the presente.org people made sure to tell me when they contacted me to see if I was interested in the job of nat’l Campaign Director: “Latinos diverge on the issue.” (Sort of funny when a couple white guys tell you this authoritatively, but whatever. It is true after all.) So I didn’t think much more of it, just made a tiny note in my mind. It wasn’t a negative note. It was a curious one. A note that said “let’s keep an eye and see what their position is on this.”

And so it was a week or two later, on May 1—oh most auspicious of blog-birthdays—that I thought about it once more and it suddenly became as clear as the floor fading away from under my feet on US Airlines at forty thousand feet above sea level: they were avoiding the issue.

Wow.

Now dunk your nuance bagel into my exposition-brew and nibble: Am I saying, once again, that every person involved in social justice type actions need to pay attention to these issues? Not this time. (Not saying that is not true, it’s just not my focus here and now.) Am I saying that even offline, any person of Latin American descent needs to be working in some way to better conditions for raza? Firstly, I’m not saying anyone needs to do anything. I know this type of post can get one on the defensive so let me again underline my main point: I am talking about how I feel about working with/spending time with others. And where I’ll be. That’s all. Not what you should do. After all, there are plenty of raza out there with their hands full feeding families and keeping a job with no extra time or energy, and thats working for a better world as it is. So, no. But if you want to apply these thoughts to yourself and your life….I won’t stop you.

Maybe I’m talking about a mindset more than anything else. Maybe if this person’s Twitter name were something else…and if they weren’t positioning themselves to be a representative or central focus for Latin@s with a blog and activities…and if so many people weren’t suffering behind the apartheid desert wall and if wasn’t becoming acceptable to see and treat migrants and mexican@s and latin@s as subhuman and deserving of a different set of rules, law, medicine, and morality…and if our women weren’t suffering some of the worst atrocities behind the standing war(s and I include US social behaviors/patterns against Latin@s) on Latin America and her children… and maybe if the workers who are being abused and exploited weren’t at the same time making it possible for us to have the comforts we do…then I wouldn’t care.

But when I looked out at my Twitter list and saw all types and colors of people talking about May Day—for these are the people I want to be around and herein lies the corazón of this post—this Latino® person (there was more than one, in truth) stuck out like a…snowflake in a cup of cocoa, and there I go using colorism to make my point. But if I imply that this person was a cool, frosty spot in a warm blend of brown, it remains the glosario-tastic version of Brown™, of course, because as I said: many “whites” were marching in actuality and virtually, that day. And my feeling at this supposed-Latino’s total ignoring of the moment and day and the issues and livelihoods and lives at stake points the way more than anything else that skin color/genes is less important than action and heart and demonstrated conscious intention. Even in these matters.

I could not justify the blatant avoidance of such a dire issue in someone otherwise (apparently) engaged in activism, political action, and “para la gente.” So I cut them loose.

There were at least three I stopped following on that day, or shortly before. One I had been reading for a while now. And all this person spoke of were comforts. Midtown. Massages. Luxuries. Lawsuits. Book signings. Personal glory. Just another person, just another American®, could have been any color, embarked upon the sociopathic “American Dream”; a philosophy which justifies every kilowatt of every spotlight moment and the accumulation and use of energy at the expense of all others….and never looks back or thinks twice about the stagehands sweeping up or working the switches.

In another case, I felt it would be best to go to the person’s site to make sure I was not missing something. What did I find? Almost every face on their roster of bloggers was light-skinned, and many light haired. Latin@s after all, are not beholden to any demographic. I’m making another point, not the colorist one it might seem. My point is that if you can pass—if you lack accent and marked darkness and other traits that the the US dominant culture devalues as less “white” than others—you are nonetheless beholden to support your people. That’s my thought. And to tell you the truth, I feel there is a focus is on you and a weight on you to do so. Because you have somewhat of a choice, depending on your situation. And that is a choice that has been stolen from the others by the maintenance and reification of a corrupt system of benefit and entitlement…which favors you arbitrarily. And when that’s the case, yes, it would be easy to turn and simply be All Things Latino when it comes to superficial flavor; to throw in a word here and there of Español but to skirt far away from anything icky or sticky or brown or “controversial.”

Doing so marks you, to me, as someone riding the backs of raza in not too different a way than the dominant culture does. Which marks you, to me, as something worse, even.

I try to understand it, but do not. To an activist type, what makes you “Latino” if you sever yourself from the land and people of Latin America? What makes you “Latino” if you stand discrete and distinct from not only the atrocities your own country wreaks upon your ancestral homeland, but the struggle to change them? What makes you “Latino” if all the books you read and suggest to others steer away from the politics that ensnare and exploit others who are “Latino”? What even makes you a “Latino” at all if you claim no solidarity with those who suffer from anti-Latino hate even in your own nation?

This remains Nezua’s blog. It is not Gospel. You are free to form your own opinion. You are even free to leave it in the comments below. This is simply the decision at which I have arrived. And I don’t care if you come from Puerto Rico, Cuba, Guatemala, México or Arizona. Perhaps it is up for debate before that moment you identify as “Latino/a” but once you do, and once you put yourself out there and in any way reap benefit from today’s cultural gold rush—this new economy of both catering to and exploiting raza—you owe the rest of those people to which you are connecting yourself. You owe some kind of foot en la lucha, some hand, some voice. Something.

Don’t you think so?

I’ve been coming to this post for a while, as I said. And by now I know the feeling when the Universe is whispering in my ear. I just let things simmer. They begin to add up. I can almost see the post forming, the ideas congealing, reaching around, making more sense, roots growing deeper until they reach my heart and I understand what it is I am seeing, or feeling, or knowing.

Another of those events also took place on Twitter. Do you know about FollowFriday? It’s a tradition of recommending people you read on Twitter, to other people who read you. And on a Friday, someone I “follow” shouted out their variation of the tradition and did so as a “samesex” followfriday. Which…I guess meant that all the people recommended were gay? I was on that list. I am not gay, but there was no point saying anything at that juncture, I just sort of smiled and kept going. +/-» So, a tuff, black, queer added me, I thought she was cool but I had a feeling she wouldn’t stick around due mostly to her first tweet before adding me which was “I don’t know about followfriday. Just because we’re all queer doesn’t mean our politics match” which was of course true, and I felt, then, probably prescient on her part. But I am happy to get along with others, other marginalized peeps, other artists, and she was both. I figured it would play out as it should, and I hoped she wouldn’t be mad when she learned that I was not gay. Should I say something? I wondered, feeling a tiny bit like I had accidentally deceived her. Even though I had nothing to do with it. But this issue never arose as a central issue, or not directly. It was something else that rose up, and when it did, I heard that cosmic whisper again.

At one point she asked (this may have even been the next tweet, I don’t remember but it was soon after) “Do people of color always have to focus on oppression in their art?”

I wrote “Definitely not. But…don’t they owe it on some level to be enjoined in la lucha?” And she replied something about an “Essentialist Straitjacket.” I sort of joked and admitted I didn’t understand the words. “I don’t know what either a fullmetal or strait essentialist jacket is!” And hoped if she wanted me to know, she’d explain. +/-» But she didn’t answer, only answered someone else in a sort of carom shot that she really preferred or respected those who escaped this “Essentialist Straitjacket’ mindset. Shortly after, she unfollowed me.

I was hurt, I’ll admit it. I sensed from the start we wouldn’t last, but it still hurt to be rejected. And especially, I felt, in a way where I was being mistyped. I’ll always wonder if it was other things that put her off and this straitjacket idea was a symbol or a convenient point to make a break, but even if so, it stings when you put down my art and equate it with some stilted, victimized mindblemish. Does the Sanctuary art feel as if it’s “About Oppression”? Does my Scary (book) art feel as if its About Oppression? Are all the grafix in this blog About Oppression? No way. And more importantly, I come back to the point of this post.

Fancy college words or not, a person of color is a person of color. And I don’t know which people of color nowadays aren’t fighting a battle. Against oppression. It is not some thing in the past that you can choose to acknowledge or not. ICE raids, ICE jails,  la migra ripping up birth certificates, all-white juries acquitting white murderers who bash in the skulls of gente, invasion and occupation of the Middle East, sex trafficking and rape of vulnerable brown girls and women (and violence/sex-violence against all women, and gays just as much), songs and films and phrases and language that normalize and glorify this very same violence—these things are all part of the same battle. And even if you can’t hear the bombs and bullets and screams in the cozy room where you sign your books, it doesnt mean you are not a deserter from the fight.

I don’t know what Essentialist Straitjackets look like. But I know what it looks like when a person of color cashes in on being of that color either in their online persona or company name/business persona and then opts to ignore the suffering that others in that group fight every day. And I hope the reader at this point understands that while these two incidents were symbols to my mind and heart, this post is not about them personally. I don’t mean it that way at all. I know that I could meet either of these individuals and be happy to see them, and further, I can allow that we both may have different views on that day or the same ones but with different feelings.

I want to focus on the larger points.

If you are lucky enough to be living in such a way/place that you are not being targeted, do not the mightily skewed prison statistics upset you? (And is anyone in your family locked up?) Does not the rape and murder in disproportionate numbers rile you? (And has anyone in your family/friends been attacked behind hate or racism?) I am not saying don’t celebrate beauty or positivity. I am not talking about the slant on the topic. Be bright if you want, uplift and underline those who rise above and conquer the hate. But do you know why I want to hang out less and less with those who identify as “white” for the most part? It’s not the skin tint. (I’m not dark, just a bit honeyed, after all.) +/-» Because too often, these people also have that same mindset.

I don’t need to pay attention to that. That issue doesn’t concern me. I’m here to look out for mine. Run along with your pet issue….

This was probably my very own attitude once upon a time. Or a variation of it. And to be honest, I think it can be a natural reaction of being deprived of “yours” for a long time. ***» But it is the cramped clench of a hand holding on hard, and it must open in time or become locked closed. And it’s been a process of coming to awareness, returning to this fundamental. As I’ve written about before…at NYU and feeling connected more to the janitorial help than my peers. It’s not all about race…it’s not all about class. It’s about both and more. And it’s been a journey with many bends in the path that have ultimately led me to this proclamation. And so perhaps more than anything else, this line I draw is one where I leave an old self behind.

Today, if I don’t need to pay attention to that is your attitude (and mind you: I’m not saying this was the case with the Twitter person, I don’t know them half as well as the one person imagined they knew me); if this is how you see the world, then we are at odds on every topic. Because this fight—and the need for warriors in this fight—is everywhere, at every time, and it bleeds into and is fed by everything. And if you are lucky enough to live without the marks and wounds and scars that the soldader@s in this fight collect, and you are far enough from the dust and din that you have many measured moments of light and peace and rest, and if you don’t use some of those moments to get closer to the fight? I think the bottom line is that you and I may simply be on different sides.

Back to the root. This is the radical positivity I use as my compass. This is the vision that I have. Not a never-ending wearying battle, not an eternal tightlipped scowl. Not moping and hoping and weeping and keeping the feeling of being a victim alive. But a joy filled heart on a sun-drenched field with fight in my bones and light in my eyes. And on each side, gente who won’t disappear when it’s time to meet the teeth and barbs and projectile harm that the opposition will never tire of slinging. It’s not About Oppression. It’s about truth. It’s about Love. It’s about knowing who you are, what you owe, and where you belong…and to whom.