“I Charge the White Man” … Immigrant’s Death Exposes Tensions
“It’s no wonder Americans are beginning to associate the word “Latino” with illegal invader! It’s people like you that are turning American citizens against all Latinos and causing the so called hatred of Latinos, no matter whether they are legal, ilegal…. Your defence of this criminal illegal alien is doing nothing but adding to the anger of more Americans against all Latinos.”
So-called hatred? Criminal illegal alien?
Okay, aside from his ignorance of the actual law (i.e. that violation of immigration law is not equivalent to a felony crime warranting restraint), it is frightening just how mainstream racist, anti-immigrant sentiment has become. The sanctity of our nation’s laws is only a pretext, a cover, in which people can now spout their racist venom in this so-called post-civil rights era (I’m sure some of his/her best friends are non-white, right?)
But laws are only man-made creations. They do not drop from the heavens, nor are they like the laws of science. Laws are inherently social, and in this country, they have historically reinforced white supremacy…sometimes dealing with race explicitly (the Greaser Act, the Chinese Exclusion Act, Plessy v. Ferguson, etc.) and at other times implicitly (like, say, Bill Clinton’s recent “end-welfare-as-we-know-it” disaster called the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act). The real question, therefore, is not merely the matter of a violation of laws, but instead what values underlie our society and are expressed in our law? After all, when one thinks about it, if it was only about respecting the sanctity of laws, the Civil Rights Movement in the Deep South would have been much different.
So its not about law; its about race, about power. Its about how this country is changing. They often use the highly-charged term “invasion” to describe these dynamics. They even believe that mainstream, reform-oriented organizations like the National Council of La Raza (NCLR) are somehow separatist organizations seeking to reclaim Aztlan (the US Southwest). In response, many Latina/o politicians and pundits make an effort to dispel such notions. And, indeed, NCLR is nothing of the sort. But, ya know what, we are taking over, and I welcome it. These changes, no matter how much they attempt to stop it, are going to continue. Their lily-white ideas about who or what this country is are dead. And it goes well-beyond salsa outselling ketchup.
So it isn’t about the facts (any junior high student, with access to the web, could have told you the NCLR wasn’t radical or separatist), or…as I mentioned above, about the law. It is straight-up about white supremacy and real hatred of Brown folk. [well, hatred for them/us as human beings, that is, not as the nameless, "things" that are there to pick their fruit, serve as nannies for their children, etc.]
Is it a democracy when a woman is chained for what amounts to a civil offense? Is it a democracy when, as reported recently in the Fresno Bee, a Mexican truck-driver can be arbitrarily pulled over, and when his English just doesn’t seem good enough to the Alabama police officer (well-known as they are for their racial progressiveness), he can be fined upwards of $500? As Chicano historian Rudy Acuna wrote a number of years ago in relation to Los Angeles: it increasingly seems like its better to be “anything but Mexican.”
And now this following story from Pennsylvania:
Immigrant’s death exposes tensions
SHENANDOAH, Pa. | Luis Ramirez came to the United States from Mexico six years ago to look for work, landing in this town in Pennsylvania’s coal region. Here, he found steady employment, fathered two children and, his fiancee said, occasionally endured harassment by white residents.
Now he is headed back to Mexico in a coffin.
The 25-year-old illegal immigrant was beaten over the weekend after an argument with a group of youths, including at least some players on the town’s beloved high school football team, police said. And despite witness reports that the attackers yelled ethnic slurs, authorities say the beating wasn’t racially motivated.
Hate crime or not, the killing has exposed long-simmering tensions in Shenandoah, a blue-collar town of 5,000 about 80 miles northwest of Philadelphia that has a growing number of Hispanic residents drawn by jobs in factories and farm fields.
An investigation continues, and no charges have yet been filed, but police say as many as six teens were involved in the fight, which ended with Mr. Ramirez in convulsions and foaming at the mouth. He died early Monday of head injuries.
Crystal Dillman, the victim’s 24-year-old fiancee, who is white and grew up here, said Mr. Ramirez was often called derogatory names, including “dirty Mexican,” and told to return to his homeland.
“People in this town are very racist toward Hispanic people. They think right away if you’re Mexican, you’re illegal, and you’re no good,” said Ms. Dillman, who has two young children by Mr. Ramirez and a 3-year-old who thought of him as her father.
On Ms. Dillman’s fireplace mantel hangs a medallion of Jesus that Mr. Ramirez was wearing the night he was beaten. Mr. Ramirez had an imprint of the medallion on his chest, marking where an assailant stomped on him, she said.
Police Chief Matthew Nestor acknowledged there have been problems as the community – the birthplace of big band musicians Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey and home of Mrs. T’s Pierogies – has tried to adjust to an influx of Hispanics, who now comprise as much as 10 percent of the population.
Teenagers have sprayed racially tinged graffiti and yelled racial slurs at the newcomers, he said.
“Things are definitely not the way they used to be even 10 years ago. Things have changed here radically,” Chief Nestor said. “Some people could adapt to the changes and some just have a difficult time doing it. … Yeah, there is tension at times. You can’t deny that.”
Police are interviewing suspects and witnesses. Preliminarily, though, they have determined that Mr. Ramirez, who worked in a factory and picked strawberries and cherries, got into an argument with a group of youths that escalated into a fight in which he was badly outnumbered.
“From what we understand right now, it wasn’t racially motivated,” Chief Nestor said. “This looks like a street fight that went wrong.”
Retired Philadelphia Police Officer Eileen Burke, who lives on the street where the fight occurred, told the Associated Press she heard a youth scream at one of Mr. Ramirez’s friends after the beating to tell his Mexican friends to get out of Shenandoah, “or you’re going to be laying next to him.”
Shenandoah Valley High School Principal Phillip Andras said he knew little about the purported involvement of any football players. A call by the AP to the athletic director was referred back to the principal.
But the players’ possible involvement has added to interest in the case. Football, along with the town’s many block parties and festivals, is a major attraction. Home games typically draw thousands of fans.
Arielle Garcia and her husband, who were with Mr. Ramirez when he was beaten late Saturday, said they had dropped their friend off at a park but returned when he called to say he had gotten into a fight.
She saw someone kick Mr. Ramirez in the head, she said, and “that’s when he started shaking and foaming out of the mouth.”
Despite the witness statements, Borough Manager Joseph Palubinsky said he doesn’t believe Mr. Ramirez’s ethnicity was what prompted the fight: “I have reason to know the kids who were involved, the families who were involved, and I’ve never known them to harbor this type of feeling.”
So let me get this straight: the guy is actually saying that there is no way these boys could have been involved in such an atrocity because, hey, after all, I know them and they come from “good” families?!! [for an interview describing more] As a historian of sixties social movements, I can’t help but cringe at the parallel to the many arguments that authorities in the segregationist South gave to dismiss crimes against African Americans. Many of those involved in those horrific lynchings were, indeed, church-going folk that supported the local high school football team.
So what do we do? For starters, its well past time to be upset, its time to be outraged and organized. And, coming full circle, in light of all these recent developments, I believe its time we took another serious listen to this man:
…and to the powerful ideas he articulates below: part of the lesson being that we not allow the struggle of immigrants and Latinos/as in this country to be defined narrowly within a domestic framework, or as only a matter of civil/legal rights, but as Malcolm indicates here, the burning issue of race in “America” is much larger and deeper, it is global and a fundamental matter of human rights. And lastly, oppressed groups need to develop a real and meaningful and lasting solidarity.
c/s
