Will this ever end?
Put forth on September 19, 2006 by XicanoPwr
Posted in Racism
I have been sitting here for last couple of days i’m feeling pretty nauseated and drained by feelings of powerlessness as I see our humanity slowly starting to drain away. The only problem, people don’t seem to mind that it is leaving them, causing them to harden their hearts, grow callous, becoming apathetic, afraid, not wanting to lose the little bit that we have in the process of that fight.
I know I am not really in line with some of the more popular bloggers. It is beginning to look that the only thing that seems to interest a lot of these bloggers is power, whether you define that in terms of site traffic, the ability to sell advertising and gain access to the media by establishing themselves as an alternative until they are co-opted and absorbed. Like anyone else that acquires power the first thing people want to do with power is to abuse it. Just last week a dust up occurred within the blogosphere, it seems Peter Daou, blogger and blog advisor to Hillary Clinton organized a bloggers lunch where 20 Democratic bloggers met with Bill Clinton.
I still feel mentally drained about this, it has really made me sick by the disgusting tripe hurled at minorities by so-called “liberal” gringos, so I will just provide the links to those who really gave the best overview of the white liberal/progressive bloggers vs people of color bloggers BS.
brownfemipower: White feminists re-center themselves & the internet, racism and women of color
Bint Alshamsa: Sometimes It’s The Best You Can Do & Why FireDogLake Is No Innocent Party & The Hypocrites Abound
It is sad to see that people of color are unable to ask questions without being seen as an enemy of Democratic principles and the purveyor of hatred and bigotry. It really begs the question, how far have we come from the overt racism that was fought during the civil rights movement?
Not very far indeed, when it comes to race, like the leaders of the Democratic and Republican Party, A-List bloggers tend to pull their wagons into the same circle. It is becoming clear, gringos are having the final say on what is and is not racist.
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This is the blog of Edmundo "XicanoPwr" Rocha, a social worker, an activist, freelance writer and founder and editor of The Sanctuary. My interests include: immigration reform, critical race theory and it's interaction with equality/inequality and freedom/oppression as they relate to the experiences of people of color in the Americas.
Para Justicia y Libertad is a Latino-centered political blog focusing on the humanistic perspective of politics, history, and society as they relate to the Latina/o community throughout Texas and the United States.
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8 Responses to “Will this ever end?”
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I wish you were wrong, but you’re not. Many of the big blogs seem to have sold their progressive souls to be more popular and sell more ads.
Some also seem to think that being a Democrat and being a progressive are the same thing - they’re not. I’ve seen many Democrats[especially in Texas] that have never had a progressive thought in their lives.
That’s why I’ve removed most of the big blogs from my blogroll, and no longer call myself a Democrat.
I can’t help but appreciate moments like this when the hidden dividing lines of race & class show themselves.
& i do think this is about class as much as race, or the issues thereof.
andy young had no problem pulling up a chair to the clinton table, fer instance
Maybe we’re a victim of our own success… what I mean is that those of us who stick to a “niche” are victims of the same tendancy to consolidate and “rationalize” any new product.
The “big timers” probably don’t see Latino issues — or North Texas issues — except through their own notions of how the world works. If they do look at any of our blogs, it’s only to bolster their own arguments.
I never particularly set out to create a “progressive” blog… if I look back through it, mine is as much on just the joyful weirdness of Mexico — and my life — as anything.
Hell, all I wanted to do was give English speakers access to the Mexican POV — in English. What was available was filtered through mostly main-stream Republocratic U.S. thinking, though some “Progressive” publications once in a while had something from Mexico, but it was always “spun” to have some relation to the U.S., and to whatever agenca the writer’s website had.
OK, I’m back in the U.S. now, and my blog deals more with the border. It’s what I know and what I can write on. Screw the “big guys”. I’m not particularly writing for them anyway.
Yeah, it was nice getting twice as many hits a day when I was mentioned in DailyKos, or other big-time blogs, but I started to notice those folks weren’t going to come back… they were people with their agenda already in place, looking for confirmation. They knew nothing, and really cared less, about Mexico… what they wanted was confirmation of their own prejudices about the Republican Party.
I don’t know what to do sometimes. Think locally, and leave it up to the rest of you to act globally, I guess.
It would be nice to eat, and pay the phone bill though.
It’s called the Dominant Culture for a reason.
Don’t lose hope, XP. La unión hace la fuerza, Eh? We gonna have rainy days. We both know this.
I must admit I’ve never liked the DLC Democrats like Hillary Clinton or Joe Biden. No me gustan en absoluto.
They seem to be basically Republicans with the same sort of corporate slavishness and kowtowing to power, the same warmnongering as the GOP. So this doesn’t surprise me. I and others have been strongly urging the Democrats to not nominate any of these people for 2008. If they do, we will not be supporting them.
Ademas– just thought I’d let people know that there’s a little movement sprouting on some of the college campuses down in NM, AZ and of course CA to finally get the history textbook publishers to write in more detail and accuracy about the Mexican War. Even now the stupid textbooks still tend to portray it as a great American victory in a just war, like those “meanie Mexicans” were somehow so inferior– with such crazy and inferior ideas as abolishing slavery, which Mexico demanded in the 1820’s– that they deserved to be invaded by the Anglos.
This stupidity on the Mexican War still contributes to the entitlement mindset that so many Anglos have in the Southwest, where they believe that Latinos have to kowtow and submit to them rather than accepting the cultural and linguistic importance of the Latino population that’s been there for centuries.
I still have to explain to some stupid Anglos every now and then that the US signed treaties guaranteeing the rights of Latinos in the Southwest as well as in Florida to private ownership of land (from which we were uprooted), to basic legal customs both in statutes and common law, and to the use of Spanish in public places such as government, schools and offices. After the Mexican War, the US knew that they could never incorporate the territories if the Latino population was enraged, so they made these guarantees to help pacify the Latinos– before they were betrayed in subsequent decades. The original provisions still stand nonetheless.
Ojala que los Anglos finalmente reconozcan esta verdad. Increasingly in recent years I have had more and more Anglos understand this– heck, they’re learning Spanish these days for economic reasons themselves, and some of them have even done their work and studied history.
Pero la gran mayoria todavia se revuelca en ignorancia. Si los anti-inmigrantes quizas levantarian un libro de historia algun dia, podrian entender lo que jamas aceptarian el estado miserable que quisieran imponer a nosotros! Mas educacion es esencial.
It will end, mainly because there’s a new beginning… I am heartened to say that I have seen and read more bloggers of color in recent days than ever before, thanks to fallout from the Harlem Bubba/blog brouhaha. Let the liberal blog bigwigs sneer all they want… their relevance is not guaranteed, and in fact, having gone unchallenged for so long, they are ripe for the upstaging. Blog away, brothers and sisters, and don’t worry about the misspellings. Aquí viene la tormenta!
jobsanger - you are right about the Dems, it seems once Richards lost, a lot of Dems started showing their true colors, such as Perry turning in a Rethug and Bob Bullock really giving into Rove and Company right before he retired. Although I thought Gary Mauro was an arrogant ass when he ran from Gov, but was Bullock did to him was just plan wrong.
I like your idea about the blog roll thing, I have re-evaluate mine.
Arcturus - you are correct that is does have to deal with class. I find it strange that we hardly ever talk about class in the US, but I think it is part of the divide and conquer becayse it is easy to keep the poor divided when it comes to race.
Richard - the big boy blogs are just a reflection of the media, what ever issue is hot and sexy in the news, that is what is being blogged. Although the Mexican election was not reported daily, it was being covered. Those who were covering AMLO at dKos are also suffering the same thing as you. So Mexico is now a non-issue. And you are correct about that they are only using us to “bolster their own arguments.” That is why a don’t participate at dkos it just seems to feel like reliving your high school days.
As for generating funds, it is probably easy to do it by forming our own blogads network.
NLXJ - haven’t all hope, just needed to clear my head and re-think and re-focus.
Raquel - I know there are others who also feel the same way, however, I think we are so isolated it seems we are just a few. So we are forced to go back to the status quo blogs. The not supporting them is the only way to knock down the big boys off their high horse really. The reason many of them are repeat offenders is that they know nothing will happen to them. I believe in giving people chances, but there comes a time you have to stop giving in. Like now with Liza, who will continue to participate with Kos and company, knowing how easy it was for them to spout off those hateful things and this was not first time it happened.
I will be writing soon about my thoughts about the US and Manifest Destiny soon. The US clearly took advantage of Mexico’s newly independence from Spain. That is obvious when they came over to Texas. Mexico was going through the same growing pains as the US did right after US declared independence from England. During the War of 1812, the US were going through the same growing pains, however, England never took back the US right after the they got their ass beat in the War of 1812. That is why that war is hardly ever talked in the history books. Ever since Texas, Mexico has never been able to recover and they is why they lost the rest of the Southwest. Even with this there is a big disconnect between Xican@s in Texas and the Southwest, which is something we most take care of fast.
Beast of Bourbon - their time will come because people are realizing they are just another mouth piece of the current power structure of the DNC. Sure they may say how awful they are, and that
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