Wednesday, October 9, 2019

QOTD: "Pacifism is no longer a noble cause but rather an excuse for inaction."

From the article, "Why the Latino Revolution May Never Happen" by Jonathan Marcantoni at Latino Rebels. The intent of the article is pretty well summed up in another excerpt:
... How do you call yourself Latino but disregard the nation or culture you come from? How can you cling to the “American Dream,” a dream made for white men, by saying this land of apartheid and oppression of brown people the world over is a “nation of immigrants”? How can you proudly wave that American flag next to your true nation in the vast region of Latin America, the nation ravaged, exploited and corrupted by the influence of Yankee interests? The mass migration from south to north, the emptying of our great Latin America to the land of the Yankee is a tragedy, it is surrender.
Well, only a partial surrender. NBC notes that "[s]eventy-three percent of Latinos said it’s important to them to preserve their traditions and pass along their cultural heritage to their children, meaning that bilingualism and family ties are fundamental to understand Latinx’s consumer habits[.]"

      But as far as I can tell, part of this culture is a hatred of white men. Not only would I refer you to Marcantoni's screed, above, but I would hold out as an example a training guide (PDF) from an organization called Juntos. The guide contains instructions for "community organizers" on creating a Community Resistance Zones. Particularly, pay attention to pages 8 through 12 which is a "timeline" of all the horrible things white Americans have done to people of color, which timeline is to be used to indoctrinate activists.

     Revolutions are messy, though, and can go in unpredictable directions. Last year, Reihan Salam, writing for The Atlantic, notes that according to Leftist prophecy, "in the fullness of time, a unified coalition of college-educated white liberals, African Americans, and working-class immigrants and their descendants will vanquish the aging rump of reactionary whites." With the declining white working class, this "rainbow coalition" seems closer than ever. Writes Salam: "Among true believers, every liberal defeat, up to and including the 2016 presidential election, is best understood as little more than the dead-cat bounce of white resentment politics."

     But Salam notes a serious oversight to the rainbow coalition prophecy:
Who will be in control of this bloc when it finally achieves its inevitable victory? Will it be college-educated white liberals, who play such an outsize role in shaping the left’s ideological consensus today, and who dominate the donor base and leadership of the Democratic Party? Or will it be working-class Latinos, whom white liberals are counting on to provide a decisive electoral punch?
He continues:
     Many seem to assume that rainbow liberalism will remain deferential to the demands of avowedly enlightened, well-off people like themselves—yielding a future in which student loans for graduate degrees are forgiven, property values in gentrified urban neighborhoods and fashionable inner suburbs are forever lofty, service-sector wages never quite rise to the point where hiring help becomes unaffordable, and, of course, rural white traditionalists are banished from the public square.

     But what if working-class Latinos aren’t especially interested in serving as junior partners in a coalition led by their self-proclaimed white allies? What if they instead support new forms of anti-establishment politics, rooted in grievances and vulnerabilities that place them at odds with liberal white elites?
He believes that one of the signs of an impending fracture was the primary victory (and eventual election) of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez over Representative Joseph Crowley of New York, at that time the fourth-ranking Democrat in the House.

     While first generation immigrants may be content to wash the toilets of the wealthy elites, Salam believes that it will be unlikely that second- and later-generation descendants of those immigrants will want to do so, particularly if they are locked out of economic advancement. This divide, he predicts, will be further acerbated as the Boomers die off.
But in the near future, such efforts [to redistribute wealth] will be undertaken in the midst of “the Great Wealth Transfer”—in which trillions of dollars in accumulated cash, homes, and other assets will be transmitted from disproportionately white, native-born, college-educated Baby Boomers to their long-waiting heirs. In this context, a brown populism might emerge, one that is sharply to the left of today’s rainbow liberalism. Just as Donald Trump appeals to the ethnic self-interest of rural whites, a tribune of working-class Latinos could call attention to the dearth of Latinos in the uppermost echelons of American society and promise to do something drastic about it, such as redistributing the inherited wealth of privileged whites. In the post-civil-rights era, many charismatic African American politicians—and activists like Fred Hampton—promised to redress the racial injustices plaguing majority-black cities by confronting an ostensibly liberal white elite. Brown populism would pledge to do the same, but from a position of far greater electoral strength. Latinos already outnumber whites in California, and aren’t far behind in Texas; the electorates of the two most populous states will soon have a Latino plurality.
    Another fracture line may well turn out to be between Latinos and other people of color. Salam notes that Latino immigration, overall, is beginning to decline, but immigration from South-East Asia and Africa are increasing, and the future of immigration--at least the young and cheap labor deeply desired by the elites of both parties--will be African and Asian. Thus, it is possible, according to Salam, that a political coalition of wealthy white liberals, Asians and Blacks might end up facing off against Latinos.

2 comments:

  1. Interesting .pdf. It's like they hate the place they are trying to get to?

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I see it as building a group identity by "othering" a different group. Especially important because this group, while Hispanic, is trying to reach out to other ethnic groups as allies.

      Delete

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