Latinos must take up leadership of the second civil rights revolution

MILESTONE: Before we can change society, we have to change ourselves.

That tragic incident at the Martin Luther King Day parade in Baton Rouge on Jan. 19, where a young man shot and killed another young man and wounded others, thereby desecrating our observance of Dr. King’s life and death, reveals some important ironies and contradictions that we need to address.

At the risk of engaging in hyperbole and overanalysis, it seems that this senseless act of violence was a milestone in the history of the civil rights movement, or what is left of it, and by extension, our nation’s history. Perhaps we can learn from this tragedy, so that we do not repeat it.

Latinos, especially, have much to learn, not only from this incident, but from the civil rights movement in general. Those of us involved in El Movimiento need to engage in some self-criticism, as well as the criticism of those claiming to represent us. And we need to start taking some heavy doses of realism and pragmatism in the meantime.

Too many of us are bedazzled by the black civil rights movement as a model for our own effort to gain equal rights, equal opportunity and equal justice under the law — or the three equalities — forgetting that there exist some important differences between the black experience and the Chicano or Latino experience, and that these differences determine the parameters within which Latino activists and organizers operate.

Instead, Chicano leaders and organizations have followed in the footsteps of the black leaders and organizations, not understanding that because we have different problems, we have different solutions available to us.

This reality is important because the civil rights reaction threatens to sweep away many of the gains that all Americans have enjoyed since Brown v. Board of Education was handed down by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1954, and as a consequence, Chicanos and other Latinos need to develop new goals, tactics and methodologies for achieving the American dream. To Chicanos in particular and Latinos in general, the leadership of the second civil rights revolution has been passed. Evidence for this can be seen in the ongoing decay of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and other civil rights organizations.

That Latinos are assuming the leadership of the movement is reflected in the unseemly silence of blacks when it comes to the deprivation of Latino rights in California and elsewhere, except for the principled participation of Jesse Jackson against Proposition 209. If only other blacks would follow the Rev. Jackson’s lead and act in concert with other groups fighting for their rights as well.

But then again, Latinos in various guises have been the main targets of those responsible for Propositions 187 and 209, and now the Unz initiative, which would abolish bilingual education in California.

There is a second civil rights movement now beginning, and it is being led by Latinos, because the issues that preoccupy certain politicians and a significant part of public opinion revolve around Latinos and, therefore, a response has been inspired with the Latino community, not only in California but throughout the country. We, therefore, have a responsibility not only to ourselves, but to everyone else to see to it that our leadership and organization are based on the right motives and aspirations.

We should avoid parochialism at all costs. The issue of bilingual education is itself part of a larger issue of educational equity, not only for Latinos but for everyone else as well. It would seem that some people have recently come out of the woodwork only because bilingual education is being seriously threatened with extinction. Where were these people when Proposition 187 and 209 were being put on the ballot?

All of these machinations are part of the same scheme to either eliminate or roll back the rights of various minorities, so fighting on one front is fighting on all fronts. Similarly, we should avoid getting involved or participating in the political process only when Latino issues are involved, because the rest of society deserves our full participation, not our qualified and self-interested participation.

We have to disprove the myth that people act merely out of self-interest. We have to remind ourselves that we are advocating not only for Latinos, but for the entire community. To do otherwise is to be narrow-minded. For this reason, we should seek allies wherever we can get them in order to build a united front of like-minded progressives. In so doing, reactionary tendencies and viewpoints have to be avoided lest they poison the movement. Be that as it may, we must be prepared for traveling alone on the road to equality and self-determination.

We need to be aware of the fact that we are representing not only ourselves but those we claim to serve, whether they are Latinos being discriminated against or a Spanish-speaking child being placed in an English-only program at his or her school. They deserve the best representation possible. We should periodically critique ourselves to ensure that we are not being opportunistic or unprincipled; by imitating the dishonorable mind-set of our opponents in this regard, we are doing ourselves a disservice. During this process of self-criticism, we might ask ourselves if we are still in touch with the people we claim to serve.

So what is to be done? Narrowing our focus to certain fundamental issues, and doing so realistically and pragmatically would seem to be a good starting point for setting our agenda. If we do this correctly, then we will have broken the cycle we find ourselves locked into, wherein we are constantly reacting to the stratagems of the opposition, instead of controlling our own destiny.

We have to stop tilting at windmills. The most important issues as far as I am concerned are:

1. Educational equity, by which I mean how Latinos have been underserved and underrepresented within the educational system. Our children have the highest dropout rates, the lowest testing scores and the lowest graduation rates of all the groups in California, and probably the nation. In school districts with majority Latino student bodies, there are still few Latino teachers and, therefore, role models. These school districts are benefiting from the large numbers of Latino students, but are not returning the benefits to the Latino communities that they serve. Many of these school employees do not reside within the school districts, but live in comfortable, middle-class neighborhoods.

2. The Latino population is overrepresented in the jails and prisons, and underrepresented on our juries and on the district attorney and public defender staffs. There are too few Latino judges.

3. The large employers at all three levels of government do not employ enough Latinos relative to their share of the population, especially at the management levels. It would appear that blacks have benefited far more from affirmative action than have Latinos. We need to start holding accountable the bureaucratic and employers responsible for these inequalities. The entertainment industry needs an affirmative action program for Latinos.

4. There exists a communication gap between Chicanos and Mexicanos that needs to bridged, since both groups are really part of the same group and, therefore, weakened by the illusion or delusion of separate identities. It is incumbent upon both groups to work together to resolve their differences. Chicanos, for instance, should stop being swayed by American chauvinism and nativism directed at their brothers and sisters from across the border.

5. We have to develop new strategies and tactics for dealing with these and other problems. Boycotts and protests, voter registration campaigns and other traditional devices of direct or indirect action have proved useful in the past, but we have to start thinking of innovative ways of working within the system. This is one reason why we have to come up with our own models of social and political action, in order to develop imaginative ways of promoting our agenda, as we move from the fin de siecle to the new millennium.

6. As the tragedy at Baton Rouge demonstrates, it is not enough to demand from society our equal rights, etc. We have to demand of ourselves, of our own community, that we do what we can to foster nonviolence, that we advocate for peace.

In doing so, we will work toward the betterment of society at large, and we will honor the memory of Mahatma Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez. Before we can change society, we have to first change ourselves. Dr. King had a dream and so do we. His dream has been unfulfilled, but perhaps the second civil rights revolution, El Movimiento, will make that dream a reality.



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