Autonomy & Solidarity: KKK numbers in Sask growing, member says

Going over my listings, I came across a piece from the LA Times earlier this year that took a long, hard look at the strife in California between Latinos and American Africans.  The Latino community does its very best to downplay the issue, but the empirical evidence is there that if the United States "Goes Latin" from any Spanish speaking country as Glenn Beck, Lou Dobbs, Ann Coulter and the myriad of other intolerant White supremacist groups and individuals fear, American Africans can expect more of the same and perhaps worse from who used to be our brothers and sisters in struggle.  A conscious observer could reasonably suppose that as Latinos gain in socio-political power in the U.S. by adopting American class identity paradigms, ethnic intolerance is a natural result.  I think this explains gmony714's contradictory animosities, aimless ideological biases and clearly that he is not alone.  Well, one can see that along the border when former illegal Latinos are actively working with The Minutemen to keep out their own people doing the same thing they did to get here.   -  The Angryindian

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 LA Times - 1/7/2007

Roots of Latino/black anger

THE ACRIMONIOUS relationship between Latinos and African Americans in
Los Angeles is growing hard to ignore. Although last weekend's
black-versus-Latino race riot at Chino state prison is unfortunately
not an aberration, the Dec. 15 murder in the Harbor Gateway
neighborhood of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American, allegedly
by members of a Latino gang, was shocking.

Yet
there was nothing really new about it. Rather, the murder was a
manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing
of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods. Just last August,
federal prosecutors convicted four Latino gang members of engaging in a
six-year conspiracy to assault and murder African Americans in Highland
Park. During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that African American
residents (with no gang ties at all) were being terrorized in an effort
to force them out of a neighborhood now perceived as Latino.


For example, one African American resident was murdered by Latino gang
members as he looked for a parking space near his Highland Park home.
In another case, a woman was knocked off her bicycle and her husband
was threatened with a box cutter by one of the defendants, who said,
"You niggers have been here long enough."

At
first blush, it may be mystifying why such animosity exists between two
ethnic groups that share so many of the same socioeconomic
deprivations. Over the years, the hostility has been explained as a
natural reaction to competition for blue-collar jobs in a tight labor
market, or as the result of turf battles and cultural disputes in
changing neighborhoods. Others have suggested that perhaps Latinos have
simply been adept at learning the U.S. lesson of anti-black racism, or
that perhaps black Americans are resentful at having the benefits of
the civil rights movement extended to Latinos.

Although there
may be a degree of truth to some or all of these explanations, they are
insufficient to explain the extremity of the ethnic violence.

Over
the years, there's also been a tendency on the part of observers to
blame the conflict more on African Americans (who are often portrayed
as the aggressors) than on Latinos. But although it's certainly true
that there's plenty of blame to go around, it's important not to ignore
the effect of Latino culture and history in fueling the rift.

The
fact is that racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a
pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America
and the Caribbean. More than 90% of the approximately 10 million
enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were taken to Latin America
and the Caribbean (by the French, Spanish and British, primarily),
whereas only 4.6% were brought to the United States. By 1793, colonial
Mexico had a population of 370,000 Africans (and descendants of
Africans) — the largest concentration in all of Spanish America.

The
legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is
similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European
features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while
having darker skin and African features severely limits social
mobility.

White supremacy is deeply ingrained in Latin America
and continues into the present. In Mexico, for instance, citizens of
African descent (who are estimated to make up 1% of the population)
report that they regularly experience racial harassment at the hands of
local and state police, according to recent studies by Antonieta
Gimeno, then of Mount Holyoke College, and Sagrario Cruz-Carretero of
the University of Veracruz.

Mexican public discourse reflects
the hostility toward blackness; consider such common phrases as
"getting black" to denote getting angry, and "a supper of blacks" to
describe a riotous gathering of people. Similarly, the word "black" is
often used to mean "ugly." It is not surprising that Mexicans who have
been surveyed indicate a disinclination to marry darker-skinned
partners, as reported in a 2001 study by Bobby Vaughn, an anthropology
professor at Notre Dame de Namur University.

Anti-black
sentiment also manifests itself in Mexican politics. During the 2001
elections, for instance, Lazaro Cardenas, a candidate for governor of
the state of Michoacan, is believed to have lost substantial support
among voters for having an Afro Cuban wife. Even though Cardenas had
great name recognition (as the grandson of Mexico's most popular
president), he only won by 5 percentage points — largely because of the
anti-black platform of his opponent, Alfredo Anaya, who said that
"there is a great feeling that we want to be governed by our own race,
by our own people."

Given this, it should not be surprising
that migrants from Mexico and other areas of Latin America and the
Caribbean arrive in the U.S. carrying the baggage of racism.

Please, read on...