An African-American reply to Hispanic scorn
Below is an email received from "Braveheart", a long-time Chicago political activist, published with his permision. It is a comment on a report here of Sept. 29 about derisive Hispanic attitudes towards blacks.
For non-American readers of this blog, I thought I might enlarge a little on the point below that African-Americans share their DNA with white Americans. There has been and continues to be considerable mating (mostly ex-nuptial) between blacks and whites in America, so that about 25% of "black" DNA is usually estimated to be of Caucasian origin. Many American blacks are in consequence much more light-skinned than the blacks of Africa:
"Hispanics have no definitive authority over African Americans. Obama won the nomination WITHOUT them. The only thing they can collectively use as a self-legitimitizing agent is a false sense of superiority based on their strange color issues. I say strange color issues, because they accuse every American of racism who tells them to go home. Yet when you ask them what race they belong to, some of them say they are white, the rest don't know what they are.
The difference between Mexicans and African Americans is, black Americans are citizens of this nation whose African American culture has provided the skeleton of American popular culture. The history of this society was built on the backs of black people who were forced to provide the false bottom in this ship of state beneath which the lowest immigrant white man couldn't fall.
Mexicans are foreigners who are invading our nation and demanding the rights to work, social support and citizenship, against the will of the overwhelming majority of Americans. Black Americans have contributed far more than any other identifiable ethnic group to this society, certainly more than Mexicans or any other so-called Hispanics. They have no authority as far as black Americans are concerned. Most black people don't trust them because they are constantly either trying to sidle up to African Americans to try and make coalitions that would allow them to use black association to further their own grab for power; or they are stupid enough to say out loud that they (as a group) are the better nonwhite minority to have on the side of whites than black Americans.
What they don't understand is the intra-cultural relationships between whites and black people. First, whites do not consider black Americans foreigners. Mexicans force their way into our society, then celebrate the independence of MEXICO while in AMERICA. Do they celebrate the 4th of July in Mexico!
Secondly, black people have a more in common with whites than most people are willing to speak about. But in a sentence, we have their names, their blood, their DNA and we worship the same God. We have been here so long that we collectively have no memory of any other land. Mexicans/hispanics have no history here.
So, to present the concept that these hungry foreigners can come here and launch a grandiose attempt to catapult themselves to the forefront of American society by promoting their delusional, racist ideologies, is just outrageous and pitiful. They don't understand the nuances of the historical fabric of American life -- they don't know what it means to be American.
2 comments:
"What they don't understand is the intra-cultural relationships between whites and black people. First, whites do not consider black Americans foreigners."
How true.
Some years ago, I had a flash of insight, in the form of a day-dreamed scenario. I imagined that I, a white American man, had been arrested for some crime in a foreign country. In the holding cell with me were a white British man, a white Frenchman, a black American, an ethnic Turk, and several others from Asia and the Middle East.
I imagined that I'd have a lot in common with the Brit, not the least of which was because he spoke English, too. Not the Frenchman, again because of language, and less so of the Turk or others, because of English and general culture.
But then, I realized that I'd have the most in common with the other American: same food likes, same basic set of cultural references, same speech patterns, and even the same political give and take, including racial issues. He's like me more than anyone else in the cell. Even when he'd give a political or societal opinion that irked me, at least his issues were American, and he liked hamburgers and milkshakes, and understood what the Infield Fly Rule meant--even if he couldn't actually apply it! :-) .
What about the hispanic descendants of Mexicans living in the SW states that were formerly belonging to Mexico - they can claim to be more native citizens that white "settlers" ??
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