The Long War: Faces and Phases of Racism and Justice

MAYBE YOU’VE SEEN THIS BY NOW. I wonder sometimes if my readers wonder when I don’t comment on stories that seem so very “Unapologetic Mexican.” I think the answer is not simple.

I think firstly, it’s sort of like why I don’t make the same drawn out post on Cinco de Mayo every year. Sometimes I link back, sometimes I may even totally not post on that day. You begin to feel a bit silly when you write out the same feelings and reasons for doing or not doing on a certain every year like clockwork. We change. The way we approach a day changes. Even if it remains the same feeling in our heart.

Then, too, there’s that feeling like “Oh, boy, I know I should post on this.” And sometimes defiantly responding to that voice is the voice of free will that says “But I am not inspired to blog on this now!” On a job, you don’t normally get to entertain such feelings. But since blogging does not pay me (not here, not in my blog), I can indulge those types of feelings. Thus, I’ve not commented at all on a few issues that have happened this week and provoked my thoughts and feelings, but I may.

Another layer of my not blogging on very UMX-ish issues sometimes is that the world has changed since I began this, over three years ago. And I, too, have changed. We’ve changed together. One of the ways in which the world (and by “world” I mean the society I meet online through news sites and media messages and blogs and people on software and fones and teleconferences and conventions and conversations in bars, too) has changed is it is paying much more attention to things like this! One payoff (if it can be framed in such a way) to the focused hate and violence that has stepped up from the Normal, is that more “Liberals” and “good people” are saying  ”Hey…it’s not cool if Mexicans are called sleaze!” or “Hey, people seem to be blaming a lot of crap on Mexicans and that’s not cool!” or “Hey, there’s a lot of messaging in the media that casts people of color in a gross way. And that’s not cool!”

Because, again, (a big) part of why I came out here and began this blog (which began at El Grito) was to add my voice to what felt like a deluge of anti-Mexican hate. I’m not saying all these voices are “here” forever, or see things as I do, or have the same aim…but overall, there is more company in exactly what I’m writing/saying most of the time.

Now, whereas issues would have once floated in the news ether a long, long time; or where I would’ve felt I was battling with only one or two people by my side, I look to my left and right quickly as I chug from my cantina and notice more and more people at the camp, polishing steel, dancing or eating in this army; unifying their voices behind these types of things. I don’t care why it happened, I’m glad, though. And not that I was alone, but now sometimes I feel okay sitting back because so many voices are carrying the fight. Seriously, just in the last three years I’ve seen a massive wave rise of pro-Latino, pro-immigrant voices, or coalesce. I’ve seen orgs form and I’ve been part of a number of efforts in activism. It’s very encouraging. Hell, the New York Times has written numerous articles just in the last few months that I never thought I’d see on their site.

So given these changes, it can be downright pleasant to keep working on other things, and watch my (proven or incidental) compas rouse up righteous around me. (I laugh at the possible funny chapter title now, “The Incidental Compa.” I think a very small demo would get that humor.)  I’m all “keep at it, I’ll get your back, bringin up the rear!”

But I guess there’s yet another layer as to why I let some things go by—especially things like these costumes that turn Mexicans (we know what that mustache is about) into aliens, that turn human beings into ugly villains, that throw another log of hate on the eternal bonfire of humanity.

Those masks pretty much say everything about how this culture can make you feel growing up as a person of color. To me, those masks sort of just say it all. They tell you the responses a person of color (Mexican in this case) will get in response to those recurring and early questions you have as an individual in a society when you look around at the We, to see where you fit in.

Are They Like Me? and Am I One of You? and Am I Loved and Am I Special and Am I Beautiful? and Am I Happy to Be Here? and How Should I Add to This Group? and How Can I Return to Society What it Has Given Me?

The “immigration restrictionists” are always trying to pretend that “IT’S” not about “Mexicans” or people of color, “IT’S” about “unregulated immigration” etc. But I think they are a bit too clever when they go so far as to embrace products that draw no such distinction and they show their true face by doing so:

But of course William Gheen (“Psychotic” leader of ALIPAC) and Lou Dobbs stand up for products that underline their own oldwhiteracist/greezysleeezy views.

But we in the Latino comunidad are supposed to be confused about  this message?

I’ll toss a stone or two in the online comment-field fest, and I do more when I can and when I’m moved by imperative or need, and sometimes don’t get enough sleep in doing so. But I guess the final reason I come at some of these incidents in due time is a need to pace myself in all of it, in all the haywire back and forth. This fight won’t end with Lou (even the day I visit his grave to dance on it and yes I will, Lou), or masks in Walmart, or even Walmart, or comment threads that only reinforce that there’s a lot of the “We™” out there that feels the same as it ever did. Though, yes, all those things are parts of “it.”

But “it” is larger and longer and deeper than all of that. This is and has been a long, long war. This foul spirit that rises and repeats and seeks to make mi gente retreat has been tearing at the land and the skin of the face and the hands of my people for hundreds of years.

Still we breathe, still we love, still we grow. Still, we fight.

Tomorrow, we will do the same. And the day after that, so will our children.