Guest essay by Dr. Alvaro Huerta
While
millions of Americans have suddenly become enlightened about the bleak plight
of racial minorities in segregated inner-cities and impoverished suburbs, especially
with the spate of police killings of unarmed blacks, for those of us who grew
up in ghettoes and barrios, we are all too familiar with the rampant cases of police
misconduct and government negligence.
As
police chiefs, commissioners, prosecutors, politicians and media reporters
commonly portray police killings of unarmed minorities as isolated cases, which
go through self-serving inquiries by the same departments that employ the
responsible parties, how much longer must historically disenfranchised groups need
to wait before justice is served? It appears to me that when it comes to the prosecution
and imprisonment of those guilty of crimes against racial minorities, which
also includes negligent politicians and greedy business leaders, there’s no
justice. At the end of the day, given the high incarceration rates and overall
hopelessness of blacks and Latinos, there’s only “just us.”
In
this country, we are taught from a young age that we must be responsible for
our actions and pay the consequences, when we do something wrong. Thus, when no
one is held accountable for the deadly and abusive behavior by the same people enlisted
to “protect and to serve” the public, there comes a boiling point where those
on the receiving end of injustice demand to be heard on the streets. This is
not a new phenomenon. Fifty years ago, for example, before the disturbances in Baltimore,
we had the Watts Riots. Over twenty years ago, before Ferguson blew up, we had
the Los Angeles Riots. These are not isolated incidents, but collective
expressions of despair and hopelessness found in marginalized communities that push
blacks and Latinos to release their frustration through orderly and chaotic
means.
While
it’s politically convenient and false for the media and politicians to scapegoat
the victims of racial segregation and government neglect by referring to
Baltimore protestors as “thugs” and “criminals,” where even Baltimore Mayor
Stephanie Rawlings-Blake
and President Barack Obama, both African Americans and Democrats, use similar
language, it’s more difficult and true to look at the root causes that led to
the recent disturbances. Why don’t those in power also use these pejorative
terms when describing the civic leaders, politicians, government officials and
business leaders who played a major role during past century in creating
impoverished ghettos and barrios through racist and anti-worker policies, such
as race restrictive covenants, redlining, residential segregation, dysfunctional
public schools, white flight and the exportation of manufacturing jobs to
foreign countries? Isn’t this “thuggish” behavior at a massive and structural scale?
For
me, this is not just a social policy or scholarly issue. It’s also personal. Long
before I received my university degrees, allowing me to become a university
professor, where I study cities and the disenfranchised groups who inhabit them,
I was raised in East Los Angeles’ notorious housing projects.
Like
many of my childhood friends, I was well aware that two gangs ruled the projects:
the neighborhood gang and the police. While I never joined the gang—not because
I felt morally superior, but because I lacked the necessary physical attributes
to defend the barrio—I never experienced abuse or pressure to join from them.
This is mainly because we all attended elementary school together, played street
ball and took different paths in our teens without any conflict. However, as
for the police, I only experienced negative encounters. Growing up, in the eyes
of the police and housing authority, it was clear to me that we—poor project
kids—all looked alike and were up to no good.
While
I became accustomed to being pulled over, frisked and questioned by the police
in the projects, I never expected this harassment to follow me to UCLA, when I first
enrolled as a freshman math major. Call me naïve, but I initially thought that
by being one of the few Chicanos from the projects to pursue higher education,
when most of my childhood friends were dropping out of high school or serving
time in the penitentiary, I learned the hard way as a then 17 year-old kid that
racism would follow me to Westwood and will always be a part of my life with or
without my doctoral degree from UC Berkeley.
Moving
forward, American leaders must stop blaming the victims of an unequal society,
where government seeks superficial remedies for so-called isolated incidents.
Instead, we must tackle the structural causes of inequality and create a more
just society for all.
***
Dr. Alvaro Huerta is an assistant professor of urban and
regional planning and ethnic and women’s studies at California State
Polytechnic University, Pomona. He is the author of “Reframing the Latino
Immigration Debate: Towards a Humanistic Paradigm,”
published by San Diego State University Press (2013).
I enjoyed your article. I wrote about this in my book, "We are Not Field Negros" (Amazon) where I expressed my views from a Chicano point of view. Also, I just wanted to take the opportunity to introduce my blog: Chicanismos.com. Among my various rantings on different subjects, I have a good amount of information (with pictures and newspaper articles) on the Texas Brown Berets from the late 1970's to late 1980's. I hope you are interested, and willing to mention the blog to others. Muchas Gracias!
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