Monday, September 22, 1997 Ethnic groups must come together to
produce social change RACE: Collaboration between blacks and
Chicanos would lead to a better America
By Mandla KayiseCollaboration between Africans and Chicanos is
essential to the development of progressive cultural and
socioeconomic change in American society. The key to such a
collaboration lies in the ability of the communities to recognize
the common historical experiences and cultural ties and, most
significantly, the distinct and invaluable contributions each group
can make in society.
The black/white paradigm in race relations and social change in
American society is giving way to the new cultural
mosaic/multicultural dynamic.
African/Chicano relations are central to the development of an
ethnically diverse, multicultural movement for positive social and
economic change in this country.
In addition to understanding common historical experiences and
cultural ties, Africans and Chicanos must recognize the unique
contribution each of these communities can make for the development
of a new social change movement.
This understanding will help each community develop a better
appreciation for the complexity of American society, a better
understanding of their own cultural identity, and the ability to
transcend the limitations of narrow cultural nationalist social
change agendas.
Nowhere is the globalization of American society more evident
than in Los Angeles. For a growing number of communities, Los
Angeles is now home to the largest population of immigrants. Yeah,
diversity is more than a word, as the changing demographics have
impacted Los Angeles on a number of levels. L.A.’s
entertainment-based economy has been juiced by the growth of a
garment industry driven by underpaid immigrant workers. If you go
out to eat dinner, you can select from Vietnamese, Guatemalan,
Belizean or Salvadoran in addition to the basic Mexican, Chinese
and Italian cuisine.
Nowhere, however, is the impact more dramatic than in the area
of social and race relations, where the traditional dominance of
black/white relations has been challenged by a "mosaic" of black,
Chicano, Asian, Jewish and white race relations, male, female, gay
and lesbian gender relations.
In a recent two-week period, 10 people were killed in an ongoing
battle between African American and Chicano youth in the Venice
area. Accounts of the conflict have drawn connections to prison
gangs and competition for the area’s drug trade. This is but one
graphic example of the wave of clashes between the two communities
that have punctuated Southern California in the ’90s. Students have
squared off at area high schools, community residents have argued
over the naming of buildings and competition over business
contracts, jobs and political offices has, at times, been
heated.
In a Los Angeles Times opinion piece, Gerald Horne, a professor
at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, suggested that
the major debate over how race relations should be addressed is no
longer between northern and southern states. In the ’90s, an
east/west dynamic has developed in which eastern states continue to
frame the race issue in terms of black and white. In the west,
however, people are advocating a multicultural approach to resolve
myriad inter-ethnic and racial conflicts that have challenged the
traditional black/white race relations model.
Relations between African American and Chicano communities are a
central feature of the multi-cultural society, due particularly to
the fact that large segments of these two communities share many of
the conditions that have come to define racial oppression in the
United States. This is true not only in Los Angeles and other parts
of California, but also in cities across the country, such as
Denver, Colo., Houston, Texas, and Chicago, Ill. Few people are
aware that even in New York, a standard eastern city, there is a
growing Mexican immigrant community.
In Los Angeles, a few organizations such as the Community
Coalition in South Los Angeles and AGENDA have made serious
attempts to organize African Americans and Chicanos in communities
where they live together and around issues of common concern. The
Students First! coalition on campus represents nearly 18 years of
organizing around issues shared by students of color. The current
undergraduate student leadership seats five Chicano students and
three African Americans. Too few organizations bring these
communities together; most choose instead to focus narrowly on the
needs of one group, often coming into conflict with members of the
other community.
Other approaches focus on the history of common experiences
shared by previous generations of African Americans and Chicanos.
Few members of either community are aware of the role of Mexicans
of African descent in the Mexican Revolution or of the farm worker
experience of Africans in America, having picked more than cotton
(rice, tobacco, sugar cane) and having continued to do so for more
than 100 years after slavery ended. How many African Americans
realize that Mexicans picked cotton in this country? Too few young
people (of all races) are taught the history of advanced
civilizations in Africa and in the New World prior to European
intervention.
There are, of course, limitations to these approaches. The
coalition approach often causes relationships to collapse between
issues. It isn’t always easy to identify issues compelling enough
to move people past interracial conflicts. Unfortunately, the
historical approach is even more difficult to sustain. In American
society, people of color, in particular, have difficulty
appreciating the significance of history. People may be somewhat
surprised and even moved to a certain extent by information about
historical connections. What African Americans and Chicanos need is
a deeper appreciation of how much they need each other. In addition
to their common history, both communities are struggling
psychologically to discover who they are.
Both African Americans and Chicano have redefined themselves
over the past several decades. As a result, the communities have
rejected imposed definitions of who and what they are. At the same
time these definitions have become limiting. While these
communities gained the power of positive self-identification and
group solidarity, the have not been able to transcend these
definitions and establish a level at which they can connect with
other communities. They, in fact, have not been able to transcend
these identities in order to connect with one another. Howard
Thurman, probably the greatest African American spiritual thinker
of the 20th century, spoke of the idea of transcendence, the
ability to move beyond the ordinary experience of our everyday
lives. Thurman applied the concept of transcendence both
spiritually and racially. In doing so, he was able to develop a
spiritual brotherhood with spiritual leaders all over the
world.
Among contemporary thinkers, Cornel West, professor of
philosophy at Yale, also talks of transcendence. This is a
difficult concept for white and black communities to apply to
today’s society. Racism and oppression have combined in new ways in
response to the challenges of the Civil Rights and Black Power
movements. For African and Chicano people, however, the concept
should be much easier to adopt. The idea that ultimately we are one
people is supported by our own self-determined identities developed
in struggle and in an effort to uncover our histories. For Africans
in America, the term black has come to represent all that we are
and have experienced in American society. Biologically, black has
been defined by the one drop theory . Thereby anyone with a single
drop of African blood can legitimately be considered black within
this framework. This explains why any Latino who can physically be
identified as having some African blood will often automatically be
called black.
Chicano identity is derived from the Mestizo, the biological
combination of the indigenous American people, Europeans and
Africans brought to the new world as slaves. This red, white and
black combination is not unknown to Africans in America as they too
are products of these same cultures. In fact, lighter-skinned
Africans, particularly creoles, are often mistaken for
Chicanos.
These common ethnic origins make transcendence and connection
particularly accessible to African American and Chicano people.
For Chicanos, connection with the African American experience
can provide insight into the black/white dynamic that has dominated
race relations in America for 500 years. Specifically, Chicanos can
better assess how this dynamic has affected their own experiences
with America and identify with the black condition to the extent
that it has been a part of their own. The response of African
Americans to white racism and oppression in America is their unique
contribution to the struggle for freedom of all people.
For African Americans, the Chicano experience provides an
opportunity to transcend the confines of the black/white racial
dynamic. African Americans can then more fully celebrate their
ethnic heritage and the various contributions to that heritage.
Chicano recognition of the multi-ethnic experience in America and
its dependence on an indigenous American cultural foundation is
instructive for Africans in America. Africans in America must come
to grips with their own multi-ethnic experience and how it can
progressively be continued in relation to indigenous peoples here
in America.
In the case of Africans and Chicanos, transcendence of ethnic
and racial identity and connection across self-created boundaries
is not merely a mental exercise. Given the multi-ethnic
demographics and political landscape in Los Angeles, new
conceptualizations of identity are necessary for both groups to
function effectively in the city.