Anti-racism, Dreamstime
The United States is a country symbolically founded on the ideas of liberty and justice for all. Yet it is also founded on the practice of ethnocide of Native Americans, the enslavement of African peoples and their descendents, the removal of Spanish speaking citizens and a harsh and unjust policy to Asians—including exclusion acts.
And so hand-in-hand with its ideals inscribed in the Constitution and other documents, racism is deeply etched in both our roots and current conditions. One nation, divided by racism, with liberty for some, and injustice for many.
I do not plan to discuss classism, genderism or homophobia today—but racism has intersections with them all.
We the people have not been able to eradicate it. That does not either negate or deprecate efforts since the founding of our nation to do so. It is a long struggle, and one, at my age of 64, I won't see the end of.
We are all affected by racism, whether or not we know it.
I often think of words written by Buffy Sainte Marie, Cree Nation folksinger activist, in her seminal work "My Country Tis of Thy People You're Dying," in which she ends the song on the plaintive note:
Hands on our hearts we salute you your victory,
Choke on your blue white and scarlet hypocrisy
Pitying the blindness that you've never seen
That the eagles of war whose wings lent you glory
They were never no more than carrion crows,
Pushed the wrens from their nest, stole their eggs, changed their story;
The mockingbird sings it, it's all that he knows.
"Ah what can I do?" say a powerless few
With a lump in your throat and a tear in your eye --
Can't you see that their poverty's profiting you.
My country 'tis of thy people you're dying.
Until we can all see how racism profits the few and cripples, demeans and impoverishes the many, it will continue to be the most divisive tool in the arsenal of the powerful. Whether or not you personally have ever said anything racist, thought anything racist, participated in maintaining it structurally—you have a responsibility to fight it politically, legislatively, socially, at work, in school, in your neighborhoods and communities, with friends and neighbors and most importantly, in the home, with your family.
Often, we are uncomfortable with this. We stumble, we talk at cross purposes, we point fingers, we excuse, we deny, we ignore or bristle. The end result is that we don't move forward. Often, we see it only as an issue of black versus white. It isn't.
We have to root it out of the rainbow. If it festers in any nook or cranny of the body politic, we wind up with national gangrene.
When I was much younger, I was a member of a movement spearheaded by a young man in the Black Panther Party named Fred Hampton. He organized in Chicago a coming together of disparate groups of many colors, dubbing it "The Rainbow Coalition."
This movement is currently being documented by filmmaker Ray Santisteban.
Rainbow Coalition
RAINBOW COALITION charts the history and legacy of a groundbreaking multi-ethnic coalition that rocked Chicago in the 1960s and forever altered the political landscape of the United States. Comprised of activists from the Black Panthers, the Young Patriots, Rising up Angry, and the Young Lords, Chicago’s Rainbow Coalition (1969-1972) united poor African Americans, whites, and Latinos to openly challenge Mayor Richard Daley’s political machine and protest substandard housing in one of the most segregated cities in postwar America.
What began as a drive to achieve a voice for poor communities quickly grew into a formidable political movement, attracting the support of other disenfranchised groups and the attention of a threatened Chicago political machine determined to destroy it.
Told through rare archival footage and the personal stories of its members and contemporary political leaders, this one-hour documentary recounts the dramatic history of the Rainbow Coalition which collapsed after the assassination of Black Panther Fred Hampton and considers its significant impact on the political platforms and future voter outreach campaigns of Chicago politicians like Mayor Harold Washington, Congressman Bobby Rush, Jesse Jackson, Sr., and President Barack Obama.
A thought-provoking film that sparks new dialogue about the legacy of the 1960s, RAINBOW COALITION considers how young activists today can work together to confront the problems facing their diverse communities.
That Rainbow Coalition grew and embraced radical and leftist groups across the U.S., involving AIM (American Indian Movement), I Wor Kuen (Chinese Americans) and the Brown Berets (Chicanos). Later, Jesse Jackson borrowed it as the symbol for Rainbow-Push. LGBT groups also used the rainbow in their symbolic flag.
We now sit in a symbolic "Big Tent" of the Democratic Party. Where once the Republican Party embraced a multi-racial message, that Party is no more, now dominated by groups of tea partiers who want to white it out and take "their country back." But it isn't their country—they are simply one part of it, and as long as they reject the rainbow, we will reject their warped vision for our future.
But they are not alone in being warped. We too have been affected and infected. We too are often confused about how to build bridges and cross over the rigid lines of "race" and ethnicity, and to root out the dis-ease within ourselves.
We don't get it right much of the time. Anger, rage, guilt, carelessness, talking at each other rather than to each other, and a failure to listen are roadblocks along the way.
Each time we fail, it behooves us to try again, and to keep trying to get it right.
Our future depends on it.
As we sit, together, under the big tent, fractious, and very divided at times, I wonder what we each must do to bridge these divisions. I don't have the answer, but perhaps we each have a piece of it. The question is, are we each willing to meld our piece with another's, to forge a solid enough block to move forward?
Are we going to see that rainbow? Or do we each sit in our own corners, nursing our own little piece of the pie?
Much has been made of racism—those who see it and those who don't and those who avoid what often becomes an obstreperous battle, so they duck out. What complicates the issue is that for the first time in American history, we have a black American man as the leader of our party. We don't really know how to deal with it. "Firsts" by definition are new, with new expectations and new language. They are also uncomfortable. We are comfortable with the idea of black leaders of movements. We all acknowledge "civil rights" and doubtful anyone in this tent denies, or rejects or avoids embracing that legacy. No one here, I think, finds it odd that certain elected officials, especially those from districts with large populations of voters of color, are legitimate in that representation. But those elected officials are not the president.
None of us will deny that there is a large sub-section of the populace who vociferously refuses to accept the right of a duly-elected black man to live in the White House with a black wife and children. Many of those deniers sit in Congress.
But that is a far cry from where we, in the Democratic Party and on the left, are today with this brand new quandary. We all tend to react differently to this phenomenon, based on a point of view we bring with us into the tent.
There has been heated discussion about how and why we support and/or criticize this man, in this position, and rarely is there unanimity. In some cases, there has been flaming hostility.
I don't find that odd. If we had predicted it a few years ago, we might have mitigated a bit of the impact. But frankly, no one predicted it. From the perspective of many African-Americans (along with others), it was something that would never, and could never, happen in our lifetimes.
It.just.wasn't.possible.
But it happened, and we were amazed, tearful, shocked, elated and fearful—all at once.
Imagine that. For me (and many others), only three generations removed from slavery, it was overwhelming. I still pinch myself and wait for the other shoe to drop.
This has nothing to do with my own very leftist politics. This has nothing to do with my political positions on capitalism (I don't forget that every other president was the symbolic leader of global capital and U.S. dominion). I've had this conversation with my long-time comrades and members of that old rainbow coalition. Surprisingly, a majority of them also pulled the lever for Barack Obama, notwithstanding their own agendas for social change.
I do know that his singular election was a major crack in the wall of American racism, and I wanted to apply my chisel to widening the chink in the wall. I will do so again in 2012. As will my former comrades, some of whom are harsh critics of legislative and administration policies. Not one of us is willing to backslide into the hell of a Perry or Romney presidency. Been there, done that with shrub Bush.
The fact that Jimmy Carter was only a one-term president didn't really make a difference to anyone concerned with fighting racism. I liked Jimmy Carter, since I lived in DC at the time, and watched him enroll Amy in a black public school. But when he lost, no white American felt that his loss was an affront to them, nor did they feel that it was symbolic of failure. Black folks simply got up to face yet another day living with another president. Doubtful anyone on the right wept over Bush Senior's loss either. He was replaced with yet another white White House occupant. As per usual. We were pleased, because yes, he was a Democrat. And no, he was not America's first black one.
What is often critiqued, questioned, disparaged about many African Americans and other "minority" groups is their dogged and allegedly "uncritical" support of the Obama presidency, and advocacy for his second term. Notwithstanding the fact that we have been a solid part of the big tent base for many years, and voted in equal measure for those white Democrats who won or lost. But we didn't mourn those losses personally, nor did we weep with collective joy at victory.
Tears of joy
Only three generations after slavery, for some if us, we wept at images from Grant Park on election night, and no one is going to get in our way in pursuit of a repeat in 2012. Because it will become our collective failure if we allow the crack in the foundation to re-seal itself.
We grabbed a rainbow—not just policy, not just legislation, not even our own economic conditions became primary. It has changed history, and we want to keep the book open, including many of us who ultimately want to see another system in place in the future.
Since this issue of historical racism vis-a-vis the presidency often sucks up all the air in the room in our efforts to change systemic power, it masks the real problems that we fail to address.
Let me give you an example. As part of the Rainbow Coalition, I worked in the Puerto Rican community as a member of the Young Lords Party, whose history has just been reissued in a photo essay by Michael Abramson with introduction by Iris Morales, and narratives from party members.
Palante, Michael Abramson
What was of major importance, as the cover photo illustrates, was that the YLP took the first major step to address racism in the Puerto Rican community. Young Puerto Ricans embraced afro-hairstyles and their mixed African-Taino heritage for the first time. We did political education in the community to root out deeply embedded racism, and the effects of that education are still with us. Did we defeat it? No, but we made major inroads.
No coincidence that some of the key organizers for SEIU-1199 today are graduates of the Young Lords. They are still organizing, still educating about racism, and they are working for the re-election of Barack Obama, while continuing to fight for progressive social change.
Three days ago I had visitors on my farm. Two dear friends who are married to each other—one a former Young Lord, and one a former Panther, both doing critical organizing work for SEIU. They wanted to talk about what they are facing today. Some of the news was bad, and some was good. They reported that they had just lost a battle to unionize a hospital. "What defeated the vote?" I asked. My sister-in-struggle replied "racism" and as she sat, with her head bowed in her hands, she looked up at me and said, "Denise, I was so angry. Our own people, Latinos, especially some of the older ones, just won't deal with a union that supports a prieto [black man]. We have more work to do. The same thing happened in Texas, where we ran into people who gladly voted for Hillary simply because she was white." Her husband concurred. "However," she continued, "there was good news in Florida. We met young Cubans, who have broken with the extremist anti-Castroism of their parents, and also discarded the racism that splits Cubans from Puerto Ricans, Haitians and African Americans. We are working to build that coalition." We talked about strategies, and the need for more organizers who can become human bridges. They left to head home—and that discussion prompted me to write this today.
young SEIU activists
The young people in union movements like this one, and the multi-racial coalition of groups like the Dreamers, or the Domestic Worker Alliance, are forging ties that fight both racism and exploitation. Multi-ethnic student groups on the nation's campuses are part of that new coalition as well.
We still need to address divisions within groups who are often lumped together as demographic categories. I spend a lot of time exploring, probing and educating between and among Haitians, Dominicans and Puerto Ricans—and there is a strong component of racism in those divisions. I cannot speak to racism(s) in the Asian community. Perhaps someone will read this who is qualified to do so. I have written about Islamophobia and anti-Arabism—yet another facet in the fractured unity we seek but have not found.
I've written this today from one person's perspective. I speak for myself. As a black Spanish-speaking woman who grew up in a multi-racial family, who went to Hebrew school as a kid, who has Muslim family members, who embraces a flexible sexuality, and who has hair streaked with gray, I represent multiple perspectives within myself. I suppose I was destined to become a cultural anthropologist. My perspectives on cultural relativism inform my goals. To educate, to organize, and to fight racism and division in all their forms. I try to be a bridge builder. To cross borders and boundaries. I don't always succeed, but I have more victories than failures.
I'm uncomfortable a lot of the time. Fine. I'll stick with my sig line.
"If you're in a coalition and you're comfortable, you know it's not a broad enough coalition." Bernice Johnson Reagon
We've got work to do.
Let's do it.
