Response to ‘Racism On Trial: Chicano Fight for Justice’.

I was uplifted by the words of Sal Casto form the little clip that we watched in class on Thursday. His words were inspirational and touching and connect with the book on many levels. Just like the Watts Riots were an importance uprising for African Americans, the Walk Out’s were equally important for the new generation of Mexicans to identify themselves and leave a noticeable mark in history. I connected with the younger generation or Chicano’s especially as they were a group of young individuals who sensed a loss of their own culture and raged against a system to better define them. It surprises me as to why the events of Rodney King were more popular than the two cases mention in the last book we were reading ‘Racism On Trial: Chicano Fight for Justice’.
I felt like the author portrayed the older generation as being seduced into the American dream and the want to be considered white. But I felt a sense of independence and rebellion and like the ‘teen spirit’ in terms of activism in the younger generation that constructed a new term and sculpted a new identity of the Mexican American heritage.
What also intrigued me was the formation of terms and how that developed over years. For example, there are so many terms to associate a person with his/her background. I find it forceful for a person has to identify oneself with a specific ethnicity or race, and the definition of this can get a little complicated. Various terms like Latinos, Chicanos, Mexican Americans, Hispanic, Spanish often leaves me confused as how to address someone if your not sure what they define themselves as. From previous similar parallels can be drawn in the Asian construction of race. It gets a little confusing as you have Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Pacific Islander…etc. Which gets even more complicated with the terminology of the first generation immigrants and their decedents. In art where the artist has full authority to specify his art, I like to think that it is based on the individual what specifics of his/her racial category they do or do not want to define themselves with.
The book ‘Racism On Trial….’ exposes various ways in which Mexican Americans identified themselves with race. I like the way the author viewed the evolution of Mexican Americans as a race and how he constructs his gender-based argument in their search for masculinity. In his chapter sub-titled Gendering Race, Racing Gender on PG 223 he mentions, “ Brotherhood unites us and love for our brother makes us a people whose time has come”
What I also found interesting form the discussions in the class is how minorities united against forces that tried to separate them and this is also mentioned in Lopez’s book. All colored people had to submit to Power, that can be viewed form different angels in terms of authority, the government, race, gender norms...etc “Our oppressions are one. Our dreams are one. Our demands are one. We suffer as one, we react as one, and we struggle as one”. These lines on page 213 brings up a concept of racial Triangulation where it wasn’t about the war against black and white but the grey area that consists of liberation and unity amongst all races.
The battle of Mexican’s to find identity in a racially diverse community is not new. In my previous Blog I mentioned about Ritchie Valnes and his struggles to define himself and find identity during the post war period with the ambiguity of his race. Lopez does an astounding job of writing as an observer as he gathers and places these issues from various prospective. But his book got me questioning as to weather it was triggered towards uplifting the Chicano struggle and fight for justice? Or did it just place issues that as individuals we face in terms of identifying with race, color, heritage? Or was he just questioning race in general?