Episode 003 – How does anti-black racism keep police violence from being seen as a Latinx issue?

[0:00:05 Speaker 0] mhm, you’re listening. Toe Latin Experts A podcast of Latino studies at the University of Texas at Austin Latin experts features the voices of faculty, staff and students, as well as friends and alumni of the Department of Mexican American and Latino Latino Studies. The Latino Research Institute and the Center for Mexican American Studies. Join us for this episode of lasting experts. Second Episode three How does anti Black racism keep police violence from being seen as a Latino issue? Our guests today include First Erin G. Fountain Junior Ah Ph. D candidate at Indiana University in Bloomington, Indiana. He has done freelance writing for Al Jazeera, America, Latino rebels, Black Perspectives, the Hill Medium and others. Our second guest today is Marisol LeBron On, assistant professor in the Department of Mexican American and Latina Latino Studies at the University of Texas at Austin. She is the author of Policing Life and Death, Race, Violence and Resistance in Puerto Rico and co author. Along with Adam are bona of aftershocks of disaster, Puerto Rico before and after the storm. Let’s listen, Erin. It’s so great to have an opportunity to be in conversation with you. I’ve been following your work for a really, really long time, and I’m really excited to hear your thoughts about this current moment that they were in following the police murder of George Floyd. We’ve seen uprisings against police violence all across the country and even around the world. This has led to summon easy conversations about how Latinos people fit into these protests and the movement for black lives call toe end police violence. More broadly, police violence in the U. S is often painted as an issue that doesn’t affect Latino people in the same ways that affects black folks. We don’t really see Latino politicians, media or even activists necessarily centralizing the question of police repression and brutality in the same way that we’ve seen immigration, for instance, being squarely positioned as a Latina sex issue. So this is something that concerns me, a scholar of policing and is ah, Latino studies scholar for a couple of reasons. First, I think it ignores blackness within the Latino community and the ways in which black Latinos people are disproportionately targeted by police as well as vigilante violence in this country, not to mention the informal policing of black Latinas, folks that takes place within Latinos spaces and also makes them more vulnerable to surveillance and state violence. Second, I think it ignores the long history of criminalization and police repression the Latinos people have encountered in the U. S. As well as that that they may have been fleeing in their home countries. Latino history has always been intertwined with the history of policing in the United States. We can think of the incredible work of historian Kelly Lytle Hernandez and her books Megara and City of Inmates, which I highly recommend, where she shows how policing is not only central to the creation of the border and the U. S has a settler nation, but also necessary in order to insert Latinos people into a racial hierarchy. Similarly, Monica Munoz Martinez and Ken Gonzalez dei have shown how Mexicans and Mexican Americans were criminalized and lynched in Texas and other parts of the Southwest in order to take their lands and teach them about their place within American society. During the 19 sixties, we saw groups like the young Lords take on questions of police repression and brutality, and today we see the ways in which young black and brown folks are swept up and stop and frisk policing all around the nation. Despite centuries of evidence to the contrary, Policing isn’t understood as a Latino issue. And this, I think, tells us a lot about how Latinos people are popularly constructed and, as a result, how they understand themselves in relation to blackness. So this is what I wanted to dig into with you today, Erin, drawing on your extensive research on these questions and and topics. So I’m really excited toe to get started. So I think the first question I wanted Thio get into with you You’ve written a lot about how you think respectability politics plays. Ah, big role in why police violence against Latinos people doesn’t get more attention from media and politicians, and I was wondering if you could say a little bit more about this.

[0:04:37 Speaker 1] Well, I appreciate the opportunity to be here, and before I go into the question, I should preface it with what people have said. Well, the reason people have stated why this issue doesn’t receive the same amount of attention. So since the Ferguson protests in 2014, there has been journalists and political pundits who tried to investigate why this issue doesn’t receive the same amount of attention, and the reason they cite tend to be pretty similar. So for one, they’ll cite media bias, and that’s inextricably linked. Thio Latin Next four Representation in media organizations So you don’t need a company that’s majority white. That’s gonna limit the perspective of the staff. Others have argued the black white binary, which they argue makes Latin X individuals and invisible and one that’s pretty legitimate is the statistical limitation. So you have Roberto Rodriguez. He’s an associate professor of Mexican American studies at the University of Arizona and his research. He’s looked at how Police Department’s report Latina Chicks, victims of police shootings, and he found out that many of them were classified as white or unknown. So most of the official data we have is actually an under count. And well, there’s others who argue that immigration is just more of a present issue. And then you have a Senate Syndicate columnist, Esther Cepeda, who argue that the next and African Americans just don’t get along and hurt. Her example was largely site in Chicago, which I think is actually quite limited, so my intervention is I argue that while I think all those arguments have legitimacy, I think they do under look respectability, politics and what do we know? Since the 19 eighties, there has been a desire by liberals and conservatives alike Latin X and non Latin X to portray Latin X as upwardly mobile, hard working, family oriented, entrepreneurial, law abiding and inherently conservative. Now most of these narratives are rebuked Thio, the negative portrayals of Latinas in media film as well as in political campaigns. Now this is. It’s not a large group of people, but they do tend to have the largest microphone. So I think of the Latino Donor Collaborative, which is a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting positive images of Latin. Next. Few years ago, they had an interview with Charlie Rose, where they pretty much started all those narratives that I already just Some stated previously and this is this narrative is also purported by non Latin next individuals. So I think of journalist Michael Baroni in his 2000 book to New Americans, where he compare next to Italians and in terms of their pathway to assimilation. And he even condemned the Chicago movement as prohibiting assimilation for Mexican Americans particularly, and his main motivation was to convince his conservative peers that next aren’t and won’t be a burden on a society. So to make the Republican Party a little bit more appealing to Latin X voters. But like all respectability politics, classism is definitely embedded in it. So one thing the political right has done with the police brutality narrative issue is that they have portrayed it as one of pathology. So victims of police brutality or demons, criminals and deemed that they had it coming to them. And with that narrative is pretty hard. Thio incorporate last exit to the narrative without challenge in various respectability, um, narratives in terms of also classism. We understand that while anybody can be a victim of police violence as well as police harassment, this is an issue that disproportionately affects the poor and working class. Since those neighborhoods are police the most,

[0:08:03 Speaker 0] Yeah, I mean, I think this question of how criminality and victim blaming is so baked in often toe how we talk about police violence that it actually, um, incentivizes folks to distance themselves from recognizing these moments of police violence when they occur right and I think the points that you’re making around, you know, a lot of what a scholar Arlene Davila has called Latino spin, right? This notion of Latinos as kind of the new white ethnics, right? The new group that’s going to assimilate, um, and, you know, retain certain aspects of a culture, right? That is kind of decorative, for lack of a better word. But that is going to not be a problem. That is, um, hardworking, contributing all of that kind of stuff, right? I think these air really important points as to like, What exactly is going on with this? Not refusal necessarily. But as you’re saying, an under count, right, that there’s a lot of kind of factors that they’re they’re playing in. And I think in particular, the ambiguities that you’re pointing out also in terms off Latinos racial makeup, right? Like are. And how these questions come into play, right? Are they white? Are they black? Are they brown? Is race is Latino a race or an ethnicity? Right. How are we distinguishing these All complicate? I think our ability thio capture exactly what is going on.

[0:09:30 Speaker 1] Yeah, I will add to that many of the individuals who purported character while I do understand where they’re coming from, the largely represent the middle and upper middle class, and some of them come from middle and upper middle class background. So there definitely is a gap with understanding the issues that affect poor working class people.

[0:09:46 Speaker 0] Right? So one

[0:09:47 Speaker 1] of the

[0:09:47 Speaker 0] things I’ve noticed that sometimes when police violence against Latinos, people spoken about it can actually end up reinforcing anti blackness as opposed toe, challenging it or creating opportunities for solidarity. So, for instance, one of the things we saw during the first wave of black lives matter protest following the police murder of Michael Brown and the uprising in Ferguson, it was a non black Latino. Activists accused black activists of ignoring police violence against Latinos. People. This has come up again with the recent wave of black lives matter uprisings after the killing of George Floyd, so we’ll hear refrains like Lati. Next lives matter. Brown lives matter with the implication being the Latinos people are left out of the movement for black lives and the kinds of police violence that they experience are somehow unique, right? And so I was I was wondering, How do you make sense of this phenomenon? What do you think’s going on there?

[0:10:39 Speaker 1] That’s a good question. Um, this is a pattern I’ve noticed. Whenever African American trauma is in the headline People looking at What about Latin X? Some individuals feel that their issues are being undermined or Dimas insignificant. And I’ve even seen this extend the pop culture. When it comes to like black films, that pretty much gets a lot of rewards. That draws questions like like the next come roles in Hollywood. So I think these attitudes stem from a few areas. One is the perception that Latinos and African Americans are two groups that are inherently in conflict with one another, and the perception that one groups gain is another loss. So I think of the Mitory election in Chicago between you and Garcia and Robin Manu Eri, which the African American vote got divided. Most voted for Rob Emanuel, but there was an undertone, or perception that if Garcia one, he would only cater to the community in Chicago and ignore the issues among African Americans. Of course, Garcia actually was a respected activist in the city, but those so those seeds were pretty much I’m sold between the two groups, and it didn’t help the relationship between two groups in the city. Another area I would argue to is, uh, like the next. Understand that they had at times had a shared and overlapping history with African Americans, and the plight of African Americans are inextricably linked with Latin. Next and we see we see this when sometimes the two groups will collaborate, I think of San Francisco after the police killing of Alejandro Nieto, where a group of activists started a hunger strike. One of the activists did acknowledge the similarities between Latin X and African Americans. In fact, I remember the parents of Alejandro Nieto attended the funeral of Mario was an African American man who WAAS murdered in San Francisco, and both neighborhoods are actually pretty geographically separated. And we saw this in Cicero when there was a game violence among Latin next, trying to protect their businesses during the George florid protests, and community activists acknowledged the similarities between the two groups as well. But on the other hand of this narrative, there is this contingent that tries to distance Latin X from African Americans during protests against police brutality. Um, they often cast Latin X as passive. So in one article I wrote recently, I mentioned Hector Tobar, who argued that Latin X had raised deficit and citing his conversation with students at the California State University of Los Angeles. He promoted its respectability narrative that they resisted, but it just look different. They just got good grades, try to be the breadwinners of their family and take care of the families. I’m a little concerned about the pattern because I think people should be outraged about on our lives and that’s gunned down. No matter whenever the issue is dominated, hands but get it wrong. There is. There is a lot of protests that occurs, but it just doesn’t really receive a whole lot of attention.

[0:13:27 Speaker 0] So, Aaron, I think these points that you’re bringing up about these questions of competence what you know, I think it’s a familiar kind of trope when talking about either black brown relations, black and Latino relations, black and African American relations. Um, this notion of competition versus coalition, right? This is something I think we see a lot of discussion about. It’s been, I think, you know, framed as the kind of Onley frame for understanding. I think kind of questions around blackness and Latina. That and I think, to a tremendous amount of detrimental harm, right for understanding the kind of complexities of these relationships of race, of how race operates and racial embodiment and categorization. And I appreciated you bringing up Alex Nieto. For folks who don’t know the case of Alex Nieto, Alex Nieto is essentially a killed by gentrification, right? He’s in gentrifying area of of San Francisco. He’s on his lunch break, and people kept calling the police and saying he was a suspicious character. Um, and the police came and killed him, right? They shot him. And there’s a really fantastic piece, uh, about this, about Alex CFO being a victim of gentrification, right? And being killed by gentrification, that that I really recommend folks to look up and read. But, you know, Alex, in those case, I think shows us exactly what you’re talking about, right? The kinds of benefits on of thinking about the complexities of relation, ality and and spatial relations, right? And how we kind of think about these issues, right? The fact that African Americans and other black folks and Latino folks of all kinds of ethnicities and races are often in really close proximity to one another, right? And so that creates a number of ways in which Latinos folks might not experience exactly the same kinds of policing right as black folks. Um, non black Latino folks, I should say, will experience the same kinds of policing, but that there are shared commonalities, right? In terms of what we see of over policing, of the ways in which gentrification and policing collide and often make life incredibly deadly and difficult for both kind of black folks and on Latina X folks. Right? And so I think this is really important and I think a point for us to kind of always push back. When we hear these narratives right where it’s zero, it’s often position as a zero sum game, right? If black folks are you, as you noted, right, getting attention over something, then Latinos, we’re losing out right? And so I think that’s such an urgent point that you’re making the we have to always push back on, whether it’s in the media or whether it’s in terms of these questions of police violence and things like that. So one of things I wanted to also talk to you about that. You know, I think we’ve seen a lot in this recent wave of uprisings. Is, uh, what you’ve called right? Shaming. Right And Latinos have been doing Latin X. Folks have been doing a lot of that recently. So, you know, you hear a Latino people saying things like, Oh, we don’t destroy our neighborhoods like they do right at this kind of adversarial notion and relationship. There has also been cases reported in Chicago and New York City as well as Los Angeles of Latinas, folks forming armed patrols to protect their neighborhoods from looting and even attacking black folks who were seen as outsiders on a threat to the community. Right? Once again, I think, obviously ignoring the fact that there are black Latino folks that live in these communities. Right? So you’ve learned a lot about what’s wrong with these perspectives, not just the fact that they reproduce anti black notions of respectability, but also that they ignore Aziz. You’re kind of starting to point Thio a really long history of Latin next riots in the United States So I was wondering you could tell us a little bit about the history of Latinos riots. And why do you think this history is so important for us to know in this moment?

[0:17:32 Speaker 1] Yeah. So this is This is still something I think it’s stories will study in the future and that kind of looking forward to it. I have seen a few studied here in there. So language Rice emerged in the mid 19 sixties coincided with the bulk of African American rights, and it occurred well into the early seventies regularity. And of course, there are definitely some outliers outside of that and similar African American urban uprisings, most of them sparked because of police brutality. There definitely are a few exceptions. They usually cited the same issues unemployment, housing, condition, um, deteriorating police relations. Now one of the reasons why I think these, um, isn’t it are largely for gotten deals with the fact that they mostly occurred in the early 19 seventies, and that falls outside of our peripheral view of 1960 Turpin rebellions, which is understood largely as incidents occurred in African American communities roughly between 1964 1968 There also are some contemporary issues, UM, is reasons why they didn’t receive much attention off one. Some of them were not covered in the press very adequately. So you would have Puerto Rican urban uprisings that, because African Americans like participated, depressed, usually will say like it was the biggest term, like Puerto Rican and Negro Neighborhood, but totally obscures where the incident emerged from. I think of the 1972 South End writes in Boston, Massachusetts, and I looked at the Boston Globe for the newspaper when this incident occurred to see how it’s covered, and it was never covered in the front page. I think it was covered, like on the 2nd and 3rd page for a few days, and it just kind of went away as if it just never happened. Another incident to another reason. Why, because somebody’s occurred in cities like New York, New Jersey and Hartford, where a previous urban uprising among African Americans kind of still overshadows it. So it’s not really remembered as well. I think I think the reason why it’s important to understand these, um, incident because some of the underlying reasons that for why they happen haven’t gone away. Granted, the dynamics have certainly changed, and history doesn’t repeat itself. E never would argue that the same large scale right? And you saw the sixties could happen again. I think that was a unique moment in time. But we still have issues of police harassment, overcrowding, house in poverty, unemployment and underemployment alienated youth. And I think it would be disingenuous to argue that something could never below over again. It might not be as large, and it might be more multiracial in nature. But, yeah, I think the likelihood of it happened again. It’s still pretty high.

[0:20:01 Speaker 0] Yeah, I think about, for instance, the division Street riots right in Chicago, which are rides that occur in on Division Street, which is a predominantly Puerto Rican area of Chicago, right? And the fact that outside of the Puerto Rican community, right and really outside the Puerto Rican community in Chicago, the fact that that is not seen as a major part of kind of what we identify as the long, hot summers of the sixties and seventies right? It’s seen as kind of these completely unrelated forms of riot or uprising when in fact they were much more diverse. I think, as you point out, right, there was participation by kind of different groups, and we’re responding to many of the same kind of, um, issues of structural and systemic and inequality I just finished reading. Joanna Fernandez is excellent book about the young Lords, and I think she gets into really great detail about precisely how much Ah, lot of these kind of radical movements of the 19 sixties were responding to these questions of over policing and being under resourced, right? And that’s kind of what made this kind of potential for these really interesting coalitions, right between groups like the Young Lords and the Black Panthers or the Brown Berets, which is a Chicano kind of power group. All of this. So I think you know these questions of how do we kind of recuperate this history and what does it teach us is is really interesting in in a moment like this, where we see Latinos saying things like, we don’t riot, that’s what they do, right? And

[0:21:41 Speaker 1] e can ask of it. So the whole thing that we don’t right that’s there is a patch, so there is a historical pattern so before these incidents occurred, he dot understanding among some journalistic government officials was last natural, passive e. I mean, that was set him about Mexican Americans. I mean, one journalist said, There’s no way in the world anybody can travel to East Los Angeles and take a similar incident like what’s could ever happen there. I mean, we’ve seen this among Puerto Is this among Puerto Ricans, where police officers just thought that they were, like, more respectful to the police? They respected law enforcement. But ironically, even when these incidents erupted, there was definitely they’re still in attempt to dismiss them as isolated incidents even when they were happy with regularity, Most famously a. M. I t professor in M. I. T. Said after a right among them White saying A lot of next in Lawrence, Massachusetts, just said Hispanic right in among among Hispanics is highly unusual. Conditions have to be severe when he’s This is kind of happened in the 1984 after, like a Siris of urban uprisings occurred all throughout the late sixties, meant to late sixties and seventies.

[0:22:46 Speaker 0] Yeah, and I think that has to do with the ways in which Latinos and African Americans have been racialized right, and in this country, right? So we we hear these kind of narratives that play on aggresive ity on the one hand and passivity on the other right when it comes to black folks and Latino X folks. Right? And this has been something that it has very long routes that lots of historians have kind of tracked. That has a lot to do with how, like Latino immigrants were posed as docile and good laborers in comparison, Thio black workers, right on, deposed in this kind of middle ground of race and and ambiguity, Right? As you noted. So I think that’s a really important way for us to remember that these kind of even the ways that these these things are remembered are so deeply shaped by these histories of racial ization and the ways in which affect right or bodily comportment, as is part of that racial ization process. So I have one last question for you because we’re starting to run out of time. But I know I feel like I could I could, you know, chop it up with you here all day. But, uh, you know, one of the moments where we see a lot of organizing against state and law enforcement. Violence in the Latino community is actually around immigration and attention. But folks that we see these struggles as part of the movement for black lives or the fight Thio, abolish the police or defund the police. So what do you think that we can gain from from seeing these struggles in the same frame?

[0:24:17 Speaker 1] One thing we get is I think it’s probably obviously anybody who knows this thing. Apparatus of policing is broad in nature. Latin X facing on multiple fronts um, think of like immigration, ice agents, Border patrol. Of course, there’s a long history of border violence among the US Mexican border. It’s well, it’s just everyday policing, which affect citizens and non citizens alike. Now you’re correct to point out that the action there are they police among millions of Latin X encounter on a daily basis. It kind of gets glossed over us, but by connected to will acknowledge that blackness is an essential part Latin X identity, and that the marginalization African Americans face is linked to Latin X. And I argue this before that most anti black policies affect Latin X, um, people in some form or fashion, even if it’s not equally severe. So we’ll take police police policy that even like mass incarceration. I mean, there’s more. There’s more, even though African Americans disproportionately affected by mass incarceration, their arm or Latin X, Asian Americans and white Americans in jail than they were in the 19 seventies and regarding, like, coalition. I mean, I think coalitions come out this, But I’m a believer that they have to occur organically and it cannot be forced upon people. And I mostly speak on that from personal experience growing up in a predominantly Puerto Rican community in Pennsylvania.

[0:25:26 Speaker 0] Yeah, I think you know your points around anti blackness, these kind of policies, as you know, obviously disproportionately impacting black folks but also impacting a wide range of folks, right? And so I think about the kinds of insights of black feminist scholars and activists, right, that the number one thing they say is when we fight for black life, everyone everyone’s lives are improved, right? Because thes policies Yeah, they might explicitly target black folks, but they impact everyone, right? Obviously not in the same ways, but they create the door toe make everyone’s lives worse, right? And so this is You know, I think this is one of the things that is really powerful. Um, in terms of the potential of this moment is to really think about, you know, not necessarily. Like when you say black lives, why aren’t you saying Latino lives? But how do we get behind this notion of fighting for black life? Because that makes everyone’s lives better. Right? That is a more just and equal world, right? The kind of world that we should be fighting for, So I think we’re at the time we’re gonna leave it there. But, Erin, thank you so much. This has been really, really wonderful Thio here a little bit more about your work and, uh, definitely encourage folks toe check you out. I know you’re also working on a project about the black Manus Fear, right. So about the men’s rights movement, eso, which is super interesting and definitely incur. E bet, but definitely encourage folks to check out your work on Latinos policing and rights, but also your incredible work on, uh, on the black men’s rights movement and the dangers of that space for black women and women of color. So thank you so much for

[0:27:12 Speaker 1] your work. Okay? I appreciate it. Appreciate the opportunity

[0:27:15 Speaker 0] s hi. All things is Ashley novel. Montero’s the communications associate. A Latino studies. Thank you for listening to this week’s episode. Make sure to check out the Latino studies Instagram page. Follow us at Latino studies. You t to keep the conversation going