pps. i forgot to mention that it was latinos who won a court case against segregation, which later set the precedent for brown v. board of education.

also, look at the rainbow coalition and the support rev. jackson got from all kinds of peoples. in l.a., villarraigosa got elected because brown, asian, and black joined together. lots of veterans against war, non-governmetal organizations, community grassroots groups, do include black and brown coalitions.

it is true that blacks and browns are ofted pitted against each other, there is a lot of youth violence, and racism going on from both sides. but a good question to ask will be, what good does it do blacks to joing whites against brown and asian folks? latinos are already the larget people of color group, why not join together to demand civil and human rights.

we often live in the same neighborhood and go to the same schools, why not fight class and racial oppression together, fight for environmental justice. this is already happening, but we have to go beyond mainstream media to find brown and black coalition work.

On Charles’ note, it is very interesting, and I too have been struggling daily with the issues presented in the letter (I work at a historically African American focused/run/staffed organization, that is beginning to reach out to the Latino community, but not without some major growing pains in the process). First off I have to say that while I see where he Charles is coming from (very strongly), I disagree with the examples he used (kanye was the only one to speak out against Bush?!!!? what?! Ludacris suffered at the hands of O’reilly? just him? Ever heard of the dixie chicks. Kanye & Ludacris’ careers are still going strong. gays have moved on?! HA, when was the last time that you had a bill passed against you being able to marry, father a child, be considered as a force of history? Cuz that is currently happening. Like, right this second.) not that there arent strong ass forces of society that work to push against (down on) black men (and women and children) EVERY DAMN DAY in this country, BUT that doesn’t mean that there isn’t fear and hatred and bigotry and evil being worked against others as well. And that doesn’t mean that you should just watch it happen to others.
I fear that any group of people that has been oppressed has the risk of falling into a trap that is dangerous. More dangerous than the actual oppression? No, but dangerous to the soul of a people. We see it in Israelis, we see it in the Balkans (yes I’m talking about my Serbian people here), and we see it in this current struggle between black and brown. The idea is that since I’ve been oppressed, I can by definition never be the oppresor. I will always be the victim, never the victimizer. There will never be another silent, marganilized underclass of workers in this country who are expected to keep their mouths shut, know their place, be beaten to death, sodomized with a pipe and bleach pourn all over their body because someone thought they were looking at a white woman the wrong way. Oh wait, that is the current state of many immigrants in this country, especially undocumented immigrants from the south. That happened to a 16 year old Latino boy a couple of weeks ago.
IMAGINE if black and brown people around the world joined forces. DAMN. that would be a fucking strong ass movement. Unstopable. UNSTOPABLE. You don’t think that the Rick Santorums and Bull Connors of the world are just rubbing their grubby little hands together that this isn’t happening? You don’t think that its not doing their will to NOT unite in that powerful, unstopable way? If you want the power to change shit you have to think pragmatically, or get lost in the shuffle and in your own rage.

Thanks for these forums Elena, you really put the real stuff out there for discussion, I can’t wait to see what other people say about this topic.