Black–brown unity
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Black–brown unity, variations include black-brown-unity[4][5] and black-brown-red unity,[6] is a racial-political ideology which initially developed among black scholars, writers, and activists who pushed for global activist associations between black people and brown people (including Chicanos and Latinos),and Indigenous peoples of the Americas (historically referred to as "red") to unify against white supremacy, colonialism, capitalism, and, in some cases, European conceptualizations of masculinity, which were recognized as interrelated in maintaining white racial privilege and power over people of color globally.[7][8]
The formation of unity struggles among people of color widely emerged in the 20th century and have been identified as an attempt to forge a united struggle by emphasizing the similar forms of oppression black and brown people confront under white supremacy, including shared experiences of subjugation under colonial capitalism,
According to scholars, unity becomes possible when the person of color who is oppressed in a white supremacist society first recognizes their status as a subject of racism and then moves to identifying with a community of other similarly oppressed peoples who are already working towards change. In some instances, such as in the case of forging an understanding of yellow power, scholars have noted that the need to create a pan-Asian identity and dismantle existing stereotypes (e.g. "model minority") are also necessary steps which precede the formation of cross-racial unity, as Asian-American activists, writers, and scholars such as Amy Uyematsu, Franklin Odo, Larry Kubota, Keith Osajima, and Daniel Okimoto have addressed since the late 1960s.[6]
Black–brown unity became highly visible in 2020, fueled by activists, journalists, and people who increasingly recognized the shared struggles of black and brown people in the United States amidst the COVID-19 pandemic.[7][8] Adam Serwer for The Atlantic stated that "the lives of disproportionately black and brown workers are being sacrificed to fuel the engine of a faltering economy, by a president who disdains them."[9] A study found that black people and Latinos were three times as likely to know someone who had died of COVID-19.[10] The George Floyd protests have increased recognition of police brutality affecting black and brown communities and open calls for unity among black and brown people.[11] After being hit by rubber bullets at a Los Angeles protest, actor Kendrick Sampson stated that the police were "only here to terrorize black and brown communities and indigenous folk," who are the most vulnerable.[12] Sampson previously supported Black-Brown-Indigenous unity in 2019.[13] The Brown Berets, a Chicano/a organization, and Black Lives Matter organized a protest in San Antonio.[14] Protests in Milwaukee were described as unifying black and brown communities within the city.[15] In the aftermath of a conflict, activists in Little Village, Chicago, held a rally for black and brown unity to fight white supremacy.[11][16]
Ideology
The racial-political ideology of Black-Brown unity is based on acknowledging the similarities of oppression endured by Black and Brown people. Scholars examining this racial-political ideology demonstrate how the social and economic oppression of Black and Brown people is not isolated from one another, but rather shares many similarities, which may serve "as a major potential resource for greater Black-Brown unity," as described by scholars Tatcho Mindiola Jr., Yolanda Flores Niemann, and Nestor Rodriguez.[17] The range of scholarship regarding Black-Brown(-Yellow-Red) unity is broad, yet works toward emphasizing the common goal of unity in the face of oppression.[18]
First wave: 1960s-70s
The first wave of movements asserting the objective of forming unity or coalitions between people of color and economically disadvantaged whites, began in the late 1960s in the United States and declined by the 1970s. Chicano activists such as
Black-Brown unity
An unprecedented meeting of African American and Mexican American activists occurred in
The meeting ultimately produced the Treaty of Peace, Harmony, and Mutual Assistance, a seven-part pact which acknowledged mutual respect and cooperative alliance. Along with the other representatives, Hopi spiritual leader Thomas Banyacya, who was present at the conference along with many northern New Mexican villagers, also signed the treaty, which began with the following five articles:[24]
Article I: "Both peoples do promise not to permit the members of either of said peoples to make false propaganda of any kind whatsoever against each other, either by SPEECH or WRITING."
Article II: "Both peoples (races) do promise, never to permit violence or hate, to break this SOLEMN TREATY between said peoples."
Article III: Both peoples, make a SOLEMN promise, to cure and remedy the historical errors and differences that exist between said peoples.
Article IV: Let it be known, that there will be a RECIPROCAL right to send an EMISSARY or DELEGATE to the conventions, Congresses, and National reunions of each of said peoples.
Article V: Let it be known that both peoples will have a political delegate to represent his interests and relations with the other.
The treaty concluded with the following statement: "this TREATY, will be valid between the two said peoples, as long as the Sun and Moon shall shine." While this agreement recognized that disagreements and conflicts between Black and Brown people had been present in a society which actively oppressed both groups, it signified an attempt to forge a coalitive liberation movement, and has been noted by scholars in comparative civil rights scholarship to represent the inception of an attempt to forge Black-Brown unity.[23]
Attempts at coalition work between Black and Brown people largely occurred in the
Influenced by the
In Los Angeles, school segregation became a focal point of Black-Brown unity throughout the 1960s and 1970s. In the mid-1960s, 80% of Black students attended schools which were predominately Black. Similarly, 50% of Mexican students attended schools which were predominately Mexican. These schools were often overcrowded and poorly funded whereas white schools were newly built and not filled to capacity. The
In 1983, Black-Brown unity in Chicago led to the election of mayor Harold Washington. After Washington's death in 1987, "when the black base split over which alderman should succeed Washington, Latino supporters were set adrift, and the remnants of the city’s infamous Democratic Machine exploited that uncertainty," as written by journalist Salim Muwakkil for In These Times. Richard M. Daley defeated Washington's successor by "pitting the gains of one group against the other—replacing black officials with Latinos, for instance—in order to forestall the unity."[29]
Black-Yellow unity
Scholars have emphasized how Black-Yellow unity may be found in the shared experience of being subjected to slavery and servitude by European capitalism. Okihiro documents the "coolie" slave trade, in which approximately one-third of Asian enslaved peoples perished en route to the Americas under the forced authority of European and American ship captains, to assert that "the African and Asian coolie were kinsmen and kinswomen in that world created by European masters. For example, over 124,000 Chinese "coolies" were shipped to Cuba to service Cuba's plantation system. Historian Franklin W. Knight writes that the Chinese became "coinheritors with the Negroes of the lowliness of caste, the abuse, the ruthless exploitation.... Chinese labor in Cuba in the nineteenth century was slavery in every social aspect except the name." African and Asian forced laborers "were related insofar as they were both essential for the maintenance of white supremacy, they were both members of an oppressed class of 'colored laborers, and they both were tied historically to the global network of labor migration as slaves and coolies."[30] African American community and political leaders, such as Frederick Douglass and Blanche K. Bruce, recognized this shared oppression openly.[5]
Racism against African and Asian Americans was expressed via American law and proposed legislation. In
The American capitalist system was instituted along racial lines with the intention of creating divisions and preventing racial solidarity through pitting "African against Asian workers, whereby Asian workers were used to discipline African workers and to depress their wages." Ethnocentrism and prejudice between African and Asian American workers often directly developed from "ideas and practices of the master class." However, as Okihiro notes, while some African Americans were opposed to acts of cooperation and solidarity with Asian workers, the majority recognized that "the enemy was white supremacy and that anti-Asianism was anti-Africanism in another guise." In 1925, following the establishment of A. Phillip Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the Pullman Company hired Filipinos, which the Brotherhood initially referred to as "scab laborers." However, by the 1930s, unlike the American Federation of Labor which excluded both Africans and Asians, the Brotherhood recognized the common struggle between Asian and African workers:[33]
We wish it understood, that the Brotherhood has nothing against Filipinos. They have been used against the unionization of Pullman porters just as Negroes have been used against the unionization of white workers... We will take in Filipinos as members... We want our Filipino brothers to understand that it is necessary for them to join the Brotherhood in order to help secure conditions and wages which they too will benefit from.[33]
Challenges
Anti-Blackness
Anti-Blackness is a global obstacle to forming Black-Brown and multiracial unity. Scholars have identified
U.S. media reinforces anti-Black communities within racialized communities by providing biased and selective coverage of Black Americans. The
In regard to non-Black
In the aftermath of the
During the
Asian Americans and the "model minority"
In 1956, social scientists William Caudill and George De Vos initially hypothesized on the commonalities between Japanese culture and "the value systems found in American middle class culture" and positioned Asian Americans as reflecting similarities with white culture or existing as a "model minority." Gary Okihiro notes that, although Caudill and De Vos had attempted to "distinguish between identity and compatibility, similarity and sharing, subsequent variations on the theme depicted Asians as 'just like whites'." Okihiro notes that because of the manner in which race is conceptualized in the United States, as a binary between white and black, Asian, Amerindian, and Latinos are positioned as "somewhere along the divide between black and white." While Okihiro acknowledges that Asian Americans have "served the master class," whether as an oppressed class on a similar status to Black Americans or as a model minority class who presently may be perceived as "near whites," he ultimately concludes that "yellow is emphatically neither white nor black; but insofar as Asians and Africans share a subordinate position to the master class, yellow is a shade of black, and black, a shade of yellow."[50]
In his 1973 essay entitled "Yellow Power," Larry Kubota echoes the sentiments of Frantz Fanon's notion regarding the psychic violence of colonialism and refers to the model minority stereotype as a myth which had conditioned some Asians in the United States to believe that "there was no need for change because their own social and economic status was assured." As scholar Rychetta Watkins notes of Kubota's perceptions on the notion of the Asian model minority, "this myth not only flattened the image of the community to a small group of successful second- and third- generation Chinese Americans and Japanese Americans, it also isolated Asian Americans from other ethnic minorities, hindering the coalitions which would be necessary for creating a revolutionary coalition in America." Amy Uyematsu similarly reflects that "Asian Americans are perpetuating white racism [...] as they allow white America to hold up the successful Oriental image before other minority groups as the model to emulate." Keith Osajima addresses Asians in America who use the model minority myth to uphold white supremacy: "fully committed to a system that subordinates them on the basis of non-whiteness, Asian Americans still tried to gain complete acceptance by denying their yellowness. They have become white in every respect but color."[51]
Mexican Americans and whiteness
Prior to the establishment of the Chicano Movement and the consolidation of Chicano identity in the late 1960s and 1970s, most Mexican American community leaders were fixated on attempting to appeal to the white establishment by claiming a white identity. Lisa Y. Ramos notes that, prior to the 1960s, many "Mexican American leaders were wedded to whiteness, meaning they possessed a strong identification with the white race and especially the idea of white racial supremacy over other racial groups."[27] In the 1930s, legal scholar Ian Haney López records that "community leaders promoted the term Mexican American to convey an assimilationist ideology stressing white identity."[52] Ramos notes that "this phenomenon demonstrates why no Black-Brown civil rights effort emerged prior to the 1960s."[27]
Chicano identity was critical in shifting these perceptions among Mexican Americans towards opening the possibility of Black-Brown unity, as "Chicanos defined themselves as proud members of a brown race, thereby rejecting not only the previous generation's assimilationist orientation but their racial pretensions as well." Even prior to the 1960s, members of the Mexican community who were of darker complexion, recent immigrants, and/or working-class often identified based on their cultural or familial ties in Mexico and not by their race. In the 1940s and 1950s, as a precursor to the Chicano Movement, Mexican youth rejected the previous generation's racial aspirations and developed an "alienated Pachuco culture that fashioned itself neither as Mexican nor American." As a result, some scholars designate a difference between Chicanos and Mexican Americans. According to López, "Mexican Americans refers to the Mexican community who insisted that Mexicans are white, and Chicanos refers to those who argued instead that Mexicans constitute a non-white race."[52]
Notes
- ^ Abel 2010, p. 170-171.
- ^ Wilson, Gutierrez, Chao 2003, p. 9.
- ^ Virtue 2007, p. 10.
- ^ Behnken 2012, p. 6-7
- ^ a b Okihiro 1994, p. 48.
- ^ Watkins 2012, p. 35-42.
- ^ Johnson, Greg (26 May 2020). "COVID-19's assault on black and brown communities". PennToday.
- ^ Kaur, Harmeet (8 May 2020). "The coronavirus pandemic is hitting black and brown Americans especially hard on all fronts". CNN.
- ^ Serwer, Adam (8 May 2020). "The Coronavirus Was an Emergency Until Trump Found Out Who Was Dying". The Atlantic.
- ^ Karson, Kendall; Scanlan, Quinn (22 May 2020). "black Americans and Latinos nearly 3 times as likely to know someone who died of COVID-19". ABC News.
- ^ a b c d Peña, Mauricio; Sabino, Pascal (3 June 2020). "Latino And Black Leaders Unite Across Neighborhoods To Denounce Hate: 'We're Stronger Together'". Block Club Chicago.
- ^ Sinha, Charu (30 May 2020). "Insecure Actor Kendrick Sampson Hit by Rubber Bullets at LA Protest". Vulture.
- ^ Quiñones, Michael (14 June 2019). "Kendrick Sampson: The Activist and Actor Shaping a Celebrity Social Justice Movement". People Magazine.
- ^ Carden, Andrea (30 May 2020). "Protesters gather downtown in San Antonio over death of George Floyd". FOX San Antonio.
- ^ "Milwaukee: Large protests against police crimes". Fight Back! News. 30 May 2020.
- ^ a b c d Garcia, Marlen (3 June 2020). "Latinos and African Americans must unite against racism". Chicago Sun-Times.
- ISBN 9780292778542.
- ^ Eisenstein 2004, p. 55.
- ^ a b Eisenstein 2004, p. 37-39.
- ^ Okihiro 1994, p. 37-38.
- ^ Mantler 2013, p. 5-6.
- ^ Mantler 2013, p. 9-10.
- ^ a b Behnken 2012, p. 1-3.
- ^ a b Mantler 2013, p. 74-75.
- ^ Behnken 2012, p. 8-9.
- ^ a b López 2009, p. 210-211.
- ^ a b c Ramos 2012, p. 19-20
- ^ Martinez HoSang 2013, p. 120-123.
- ^ Muwakkil, Salim (20 January 2015). "The Barriers to Black-Brown Unity". In These Times.
- ^ Okihiro 1994, p. 42-45.
- ^ Okihiro 1994, p. 50-51.
- ^ Okihiro 1994, p. 51-52.
- ^ a b c Okihiro 1994, p. 53-54.
- ISBN 9780415925327.
- ISBN 9780807061015.
- ISBN 9781412837743.
- ^ Jaime, Angie (1 June 2020). "How Latinx People Can Fight Anti-Black Racism in Our Own Culture". Teen Vogue.
- ^ Smith-Matta, Quinn (19 January 2018). "Anti-Blackness in Latinx countries is systemic and reinforced by deliberate cultural policy". AFROPUNK.
- ISBN 9781501738265.
- ISBN 9781317256953.
- ISBN 9780495898313.
- ^ Yam, Kimmy (1 June 2020). "Officer who stood by as George Floyd died highlights complex Asian American, black relations". NBC News.
- ^ Ramirez, Rachel (3 June 2020). "Asian Americans need to talk about anti-blackness in our communities". Vice.
- ^ Yam, Kimmy (1 June 2020). "Officer who stood by as George Floyd died highlights complex Asian American, black relations". NBC News.
- ^ Fuchs, Chris (2 June 2020). "Hmong family whose son was shot by white officer speaking out in solidarity". Yahoo! News.
- ^ Peña, Mauricio (2 June 2020). "Black Chicagoans Being Harassed In Some Latino Neighborhoods, Officials Say: 'We Are In This Struggle Together'". Block Club Chicago.
- ^ a b Malagón, Elvia; Charles, Sam (2 June 2020). "Trouble follows some residents' plan to guard their neighborhoods after unrest". Chicago Sun-Times.
- ^ a b Ramos, Manny (2 June 2020). "Cicero residents accuse police department of letting gangs roam during looting". Chicago Sun-Times.
- ^ "As protests nationwide continue past curfew, tension eases in some cities". Washington Post. 3 June 2020.
- ^ Okihiro 1994, p. 32-34.
- ^ Watkins 2012, p. 39-40.
- ^ a b López 2009, p. 1-3.
References
- Abel, Elizabeth (2010). Signs of the Times: The Visual Politics of Jim Crow. University of California Press.
- Behnken, Brian D. (2012). The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American and Mexican American Relations During the Civil Rights Era. University of Nebraska Press.
- Cooks, Carlos A. (1992). Carlos Cooks and Black Nationalism from Garvey to Malcolm. The Majority Press.
- Eisenstein, Zillah (2004). Against Empire: Feminisms, Racism and the West. Zed Books.
- Haney López, Ian (2009). Racism on Trial: The Chicano Fight for Justice. Harvard University Press.
- Jung, Moon-Ho (2006). Coolies and Cane: Race, Labor, and Sugar in the Age of Emancipation. JHU Press.
- Okihiro, Gary (1994). Margins and Mainstreams: Asians in American History and Culture. University of Washington Press.
- Mantler, Gordon K (2013). Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974. UNC Press Books.
- Martinez HoSang, Daniel (2013). "Changing Valence of White Racial Innocence," in Black and Brown in Los Angeles: Beyond Conflict and Coalition. University of California Press.
- Ramos, Lisa Y. (2012). "Not Similar Enough: Mexican American and African American Civil Rights Struggles in the 1940s," in The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American and Mexican American Relations During the Civil Rights Era. University of Nebraska Press.
- Virtue, John (2007). South of the Color Barrier: How Jorge Pasquel and the Mexican League Pushed Baseball Toward Racial Integration. McFarland & Company.
- Watkins, Rychetta (2012). Black Power, Yellow Power, and the Making of Revolutionary Identities. University Press of Mississippi.
- Wilson II, Clint C., Gutierrez, Frank, and Chao, Lena M. (2003) Racism, Sexism, and the Media: The Rise of Class Communication in Multicultural America. SAGE Publications, Inc.