Photo by Manny Becerra
For my new play, “The Conductor,” I’ve learned how Chinese immigrants from Shanghai and Beijing became pawns in a nationwide effort to destroy public education and suppress different interpretations of American history and culture. Proof that this was part of a national effort is that some of the same money that elected a far-right candidate in the Ohio primary, and supported the Gov. of Virginia, who won by defaming Toni Morrison’s novel, Beloved, contributed heavily to the recall of three San Francisco Board members, A Black, a Latina and a Samoan who wanted to give Blacks and Latino children a quality education.
The Blackboard member Alison Collins was singled out. She received death threats due to demagoguery from the press, including The New Republic, The New York Times, Fox News, and astroturf organizations financed by white nationalist billionaires who made their fortunes in the Tech. Industry. They insist that American education be Anglo Centric, which is a problem in the West. The West is heavily influenced by Spanish culture. The descendants of families whose lands were granted to them by Don Pablo Vincente de Sola, the last Spanish Governor of Alta California, are in court from time to time with claims that the invading Americans stole their land. The town where I live, Oakland, California, was owned by the Luis Maria Peralta family, who came to California in 1776. His family was granted 44,800 acres. “In 1851, Edson Adams, A. J. Moon, and Horace W. Carpentier, without paying the slightest regard to the rights of Peralta, the land owner, squatted on the Rancho San Antonio near the foot of the present Broadway street. They did not attempt to buy or lease any of the lands but seemed to have adopted the resolution of possessing themselves of it by means other than right and justice. They boldly assumed it was Government land and proceeded to parcel it among themselves. Other squatters soon followed them, and the lawful owners found themselves hemmed in on every side by the trespassers. The thousands of cattle belonging to Peralta, roaming among the oaks and feeding upon the plains, were stolen and killed.” After having stolen the Peralta’s land, the American Carpentier became mayor of Oakland.
Despite the attempt to eradicate the West’s Spanish culture, it remains a force.
Unlike the Anglo-Centric East, the West is bi-lingual and multicultural, with Spanish literature dating back to 1619 when Gaspar Perez de Villagra published his epic poem,”Historia de Nuevo Mexico.”Because of an enforced Anglo-Centric school curriculum, many Hispanic students and their parents, are unaware of this heritage.
Ignorant of American history, San Francisco students, whose parents are Chinese immigrants, taunted Black students with imagery from racist popular culture. Alison Collins, a New York University graduate, explained to these Chinese kids that the Ku Klux Klan was a terrorist organization. The immigrant Chinese are also unaware of the history of atrocities committed against the Chinese since the Gold Rush, which includes the largest mass lynching in American history, which occurred in 1871 in Los Angeles, and the selling of Chinese girls as sex slaves as early as the 1850s. For now, Chinese Americans are members of the Democratic coalition. White Nationalists aim to rent this coalition.
Another big fear among the white settler population is an alliance between Black Americans and the group they call Hispanics, many culturally distinct groups lumped together by the media. Using the slaveholder’s “one-drop rule,” millions of “Hispanics” are Black. A Chinese American avant-garde led by writer Frank Chin opposes the Anglicization of Chinese Americans and their use as pawns by the white right, but unlike Black writers, who are part of the canon, their voices have been barely noticed. White Americans prefer their Chinese to be docile and agreeable. White writers coined the term” model minority,” stereotyping Asian Americans as “hard-working” and assimilable instead of idle non-achieving Blacks who resist assimilation.
The following are some recent comments by spokespersons for the settler population; all meant to depict Hispanic defections from the Democratic coalition:
Stanley Greenberg writes in The American Prospect, “The party is also losing support from working-class Blacks and Hispanics.”
A New York Times Op-ed by Mike Madrid added sarcastically, “While Democrats Debate’ Latinx,’ Latinos Head to the G.O.P.”
The Times’ David Brooks, who, with Bret Stephens, never misses an opportunity to denigrate Black people in their New York Times’ Op-eds, wrote:
“In this country, the phrase ‘people of color’ sometimes covers a wide array of different ethnic experiences. It contributes to a simplistic oppressor/oppressed narrative in which white Republicans are supposed to be on one side, and P.O.C. are supposed to be on the other.
That made it harder to anticipate that Trump would make the impressive gains among Hispanics in 2020 that he did.”
Though President Biden would not have won without the support of Black men and Black and Latino women, in 2020, some Black men favored Trump by eighteen percent. He’s seen as a “gangsta” and a “playa,” so some Hip Hop stars like Kanye West supported him. Rapper Luther Campbell of “2 Live Crew” said he attended a Trump party that was so “wild” that he left!
“Me, Mike Tyson, and Eddie Murphy were invited to his mansion in West Palm Beach one time. And he had all these women running around. It was so much going on to the point that I couldn’t take what was going in that room, and I left.”
Luke would not say exactly what occurred at the mansion, only offering, “It was some wild things going on. It was some things I can’t even say over this radio.”
These Blacks and Hispanic men, thirty-nine percent of whom voted for Trump in 2020, who view Trump as a blown-up Macho Man toy must not be acquainted with how authoritarian regimes work. They should look at how Trump’s heroes and dictators operate in the Philippines, Turkey, North Korea, and the Russian Federation. Trump wanted to shoot the members of Black Lives Matter demonstrations so that future protests may be met with live ammunition under a second Trump presidency. Those arrested under a second Trump administration might disappear, and the relatives who show up with photos of the missing might disappear. The police will have full powers to treat Black and Brown citizens in any way they desire, given members of the supreme court nominated by Trump recently ruled that the police aren’t required to read suspects their Miranda rights. Thousands of police show their hatred for Black and Hispanic Americans through posts on social media.
What else should we expect from Trump 2, a man who showed dominance over the Republican Party by his hand-picked candidate, J.D. Vance, winning Ohio’s primary? Merciless and lacking compassion, Vance is your ideal Republican candidate. When his mother needed help, he wrote in his book Hillbilly Elegy “J.D. visits his mother in Middletown. At his time in the story, she is homeless but sleeping in a decrepit hotel. J.D. contemplates his mother’s situation, his situation, and his Christian faith. He also thinks about the parent-child relationship, even though he remained emotionally detached from his mother. He decides not to help her financially.” What other goodies can we expect from Trump 2? This man wanted to lead an armed insurrection against the government on Jan. 6, 2021.
Junior vigilantes encouraged by white nationalist hero, Kyle Rittenhouse, armed with automatic weapons, will be hunting for left-wing demonstrators. They might invade Black neighborhoods to murder, rape, and pillage, which was the habit of white mobs during the 19th and 20th centuries. Given the fratricidal mass extinction event among young Black males resulting from Reagan’s administration giving the Contras the green light to market crack in our neighborhoods, who would be left to defend these settlements?
Those Hispanic males attracted to Trump’s phony Strongman posturing are probably unaware that one million Hispanics were deported under the Herbert Hoover administration, whether they were American citizens or not. Hoover blamed Mexican Americans for the Depression and accused them of taking American jobs.
“Working-class Blacks and Hispanics for the G.O.P.?” You can forget about unions, and strikes will be met with lethal force. You can forget about The Bill of Rights. If some Black and Brown men go over to Trump, they will join most Gentile white women already there. They voted for Trump twice, choosing race over gender.
They succumbed to Trump’s promise that he’d save them from rapists pouring across the Mexican border-Juan Horton- when they’re more likely to be raped by an acquaintance. They are suckers for a Republican version of the protection racket, and the fact that white women’s vote for Trump led to Trump judges overturning Roe Vs. Wade was not mentioned by T.V. commentators.
The reaction to the slaughter of Hispanic children and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas, by the Republican Governor, shows that the Governor and his party are more loyal to the gun lobby than devoted to the safety of Hispanic children.
Will this dissuade some Hispanics from voting for Republicans?
Maybe not. Two leaders of white nationalist groups are Hispanics. Henry “Enrique” Tarrio, a Cuban American, is the leader of the Proud Boys, a far-right fascist group that led the attack on the Capitol. The founder of another white nationalist group, the Groypers, is Nicholas Joesph Fuentes. Even though thousands of immigrant children claim that they have been sexually molested in detention camps, and even though
The Republican party is suppressing the Hispanic vote in Texas, the Hispanic vote is trending more toward the Republican Party.
I solicited the views of three influential Hispanic authors about why some Hispanic voters are going Republican. Historian Paul Ortiz says that those who migrated to the United States in the early part of the 20th Century harbor racist and classist attitudes about recent arrivals from Central America.” So like, I have a lot of elders who, you know, they’re, you know, my, so my grandparents, you know, literally what Mexico, 1914. Revolution, they all fought in the revolution. And so when they got here, I mean, they were screwed over terribly and, and very few of that generation ever became citizens. And so I have elders, my father’s brothers who are pretty racist about immigrants, even Mexicans. They inherit the racism brought by the Spanish, Portuguese or Dutch empires, and those empires were built upon the idea of racial prejudice.But at the same time,Mexico, Chile and The Dominican Republic have anti-racist traditions as well.
Alejandro Murgia is a leading Latinx poet and filmmaker. He is a former poet laureate of San Francisco.
One: Latinos tend to be very patriotic and very religious. Therefore, they can be super-patriots, stand up for the flag, the war, etc., to prove that they belong. Religiously—they have affinity with anti-abortion groups, hence the right-wing appeal as well as with El Trompudo, as he’s known on my block, because he too is anti-abortion.
Two: There’s that old immigrant versus new immigrant prejudice, though that doesn’t apply if you think in a continental way. But everybody knows that old prejudice, the F.O.B. target, as ridicule and subject to violence, runs across all immigrant communities. There’s also racism—the refugees at the border are dark, foreign-looking, and sometimes don’t even speak Spanish but an indigenous language. A Latino on this side of the border, one that’s already very assimilated, might say—they don’t look like me. I’m going to be anti-immigrant (just like trumpism). I’m an American—I don’t even call myself Mexican, or,_________fill in the blank with your favorite country.
And then there’s admiring the strong man, tough guy posture, and often, sadly enough, disenfranchised people, the poor, those with little in their lives, including hope, see the so called powerful and want to emulate them, and believe that by following that flag, they will become like them. The truly sad part is that El Trumpudo doesn’t care tres cacahuates for them, so they live in an illusion that they are part of something bigger than themselves, but they’re just the sawdust the horses of the powerful trample on.
As the U.S. Hispanic population grows, many of the residents that were born here or have been raised here have assimilated the English language, customs & values and in U.S. Census Surveys, 60% of those born in the U.S. self-identify as “White-Hispanics”. As for the Mexican American population, particularly in the Border States of California, New Mexico, Arizona, Texas, history reflects their indigenous/native roots, their Mexican heritage, Cultura de La Raza.
Although the majority of the Hispanic voters vote for Democrats, a number of them have chosen to elect Republican candidates, reflecting that party’s appeal to elders that distrust the Democrats, due to disinformation, that they veer left or Socialist because of “The ideology of defunding the police, of destroying the oil and gas industry and the chaos at our border is disastrous for those of us who live in South Vargas reply arrived two days after” the worst human smuggling event in United States history.”
53 migrants from Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico were found baked alive as they entered Texas, a state that invading slaveholders declared after they overthrew the Mexican abolitionist government.
Yet it’s the proslavery invaders who are honored in American textbooks.
The British taught colonizers that the way to maintain control is to divide and conquer. The British brought this strategy to North America- a strategy that was used successfully against Native Americans. It still works.
Ishmael Reed’s second jazz album, “Hands of Grace” has been released by Reading group. Click here for a sample.