The Presumed Alliance : The Unspoken Conflict Between Latinos and Blacks and What It Means for America

Rating:
Summary: Lots of ethnic activists don't want you to read this book
Review: California lawyer Nicolas C. Vaca got his start as an ethnic activist by listening to Malcolm X lecture at Berkeley in 1963.

But by the end of the 1960s, Vaca had discovered that, in the civil rights struggle, all minorities are equal, but one minority is more equal than others:

"Before arriving in Washington I expected to encounter other Mexican Americans at the [U.S. Commission on Civil Rights], but I discovered that I, a summer intern, was the highest ranking Mexican American there."

Eventually, more Latinos elbowed their way into the lucrative business of being professional minorities. But they found that the dominant blacks weren't willing to allow them places at the table in proportion to their burgeoning numbers.

Vaca became fascinated by how the black-Latino political conflicts that he saw all around him were swept under the rug in the media:

"For years I discussed these issues with close friends and fellow attorneys-Anglo, Latino, and Black-as I waited for a book to appear that would address the conflict or at least go beyond pat analyses like 'Interethnic conflict can exist, but it is believed that there is more of a basis for cooperation than there is for conflict'-and then drop the subject."

He eventually realized he would have to write the book himself. So he has: The Presumed Alliance: The Unspoken Conflict Between Latinos and Blacks and What It Means for America.

Vaca recounts some fairly well-known tales: for example, how in Los Angeles in 2001, South Central blacks teamed up with San Fernando Valley white conservatives to defeat Antonio Villaraigosa's bid to become the first Mexican mayor since LA was a dusty pueblo. He also gives the once-over to the convoluted story of how Fernando Ferrer's attempt to win the 2001 Democratic mayoral primary in New York City with a Latino-black coalition foundered upon his protracted and frustrating courtship of Al Sharpton.

More interesting are the fresher stories-about how baldly Hispanics in Miami disdain blacks; and how dismissively the black ruling class in Compton, just outside of L.A., treats that suburb's Chicano majority.

As the refuge for Batista Cuba's upper and middle class, Miami has the best-organized, wealthiest (and whitest) Latino community in the U.S. In contrast, it may have the most degraded African-Americans. In both 1982 and 1989, Latin American immigrant policemen shot African-American citizens under suspicious circumstances, triggering major black riots.

Florida blacks with anything on the ball quickly wise up and head for Atlanta, where the white business class is a lot easier to shake down. (Vaca, however, points out that even in Georgia there are expected to be more Hispanics than blacks by 2010.)

As white as Miami's Cuban powerbrokers are, they feel no white guilt whatsoever. After all, they hadn't oppressed American blacks (which is certainly true-before 1959 they had been busy back home oppressing Cuban blacks).

Compton, the spiritual home of West Coast gangsta rap, is notorious for its corrupt and dysfunctional black-run government. Still, a lot of people south of the Border have been down so long that even Compton looks like up to them.

By 2001, 59% of Compton's residents, but only 15% of its voters, were Latino. Chicano activists routinely demand that Compton's black elected officials share power with its voteless illegal aliens. But the African-American leadership responds with ringing endorsements of the sanctity of citizenship that would warm the hearts of VDARE readers.

Of course, in the long run, the American-born children of Compton's illegal immigrants will vote their own Latino hacks into the city job sinecures (as recently happened in nearby Lynwood). In the meantime, however, Compton's black political class is getting while the getting's still good.

Few of Vaca's stories are edifying. In some, it's as hard to figure out who morally deserves support as it was during the Iran-Iraq war.

Not surprisingly, most black and brown activists wish Vaca had never written the book. (One longtime ally in the Chicano movement stomped out of the bar when Vaca described the subject of his work, and hasn't talked to him since.) And in fact it wasn't very discreet of Vaca to document for us "gringos" that the modern civil rights movement is just another pork-snorting contest over who can shove the most snouts into the taxpayer-subsidized trough.

Occasionally, though, Vaca's narrative rises above war stories about the tawdry ethnic jostling for taxpayer-supported jobs and discusses legitimate issues. Unlike the economic illiterates at the Wall Street Journal Editorial Page, who proclaim that immigrants do the jobs Americans don't want, lawyer Vaca simply takes it as one of his seven axioms that "Immigrants Will Compete for Unskilled Jobs with African Americans."

In this dispute, Vaca's allegiance lies with his fellow co-ethnics. My loyalties, however, have to rest with my fellow American citizens. Nobody asked African-Americans if they wanted to come here. They got dragged here in chains. In contrast, immigrants chose America, presumably warts and all so it's hard to understand why they should get special privileges based on their ethnicity.

Rating:
Summary: Timely book, but...
Review: I am mindful of the editing and marketing processes; I would argue, however, for "truth in titling." The corollaries to "black/Black" would seem to be "brown/Brown" or "white/White" or "red/Red" or "whatever color/Whatever Color." Similarly, the corollaries to "African-American" would seem to be "Latin-American" or "Asian-American" or European-American" or "Whatever Continent-American." The corollaries to "Mexican-American" would seem to be "Nigerian-American" or "Chinese-American" or "Italian-American" or "Whatever Nation-American." Non-parallel construction in titling, while understandable from a marketing standpoint, is in fact mis-leading - whether deliberately or mistakenly so. Those of us who hope for genuine change and conflict resolution need to be very diligent in our commitment to teach the truth; otherwise, we risk keeping the waters muddied - and the people pliable and ignorant. So, if the folk referred to as "Latino" (Mexican-Americans, as I am given to understand) merit a capital-letter designation, then the people referred to as "black" (such an obvious diminutive!) similarly merit a capital-letter designation. One would think that, after several decades of wrangling over this, that major publishing houses would have taken the intellectual lead on this - or that writers with a seriously progressive vision would be insistent in this matter. No writer/editor in the nation would publish a title wherein Latino people were referred to as "browns," especially with a lower-case b; similarly, references to "yellows" and "reds" have fallen off the radar screen. Contrary to popularized belief, seriously concerned African-Americans (Africans in America?) did NOT ask to be reduced to an innocuous adjective. "Black" was to be just that, an adjective, not an improper noun. A la Greider (Who Will Tell the People?), intellectuals, writers, editors and publishers certainly are teaching the people; are they (we), though, teaching them the truth? Are they (we) teaching them well?

Rating:
Summary: Finally
Review: I'm surprised to see that this book hadn't yet been reviewed. It's an important work which documents the tensions that have arisen in the past thirty years between the black and latino minority communities, and shows that the presumed alliance between the two groups is really more of a liberal fantasy than anything. As the author notes, this isn't to say that blacks and latinos are always at each other's throats. Just that they don't really have much more in common than any other two groups, and, in addition, often compete for the same set of jobs.

My main complaint with "The Presumed Alliance" is that it suffers from some presumptions of its own. For example, it is mentioned that latinos are much more pro-life than the majority of Americans, yet it passes without comment that polls repeatedly show that blacks, despite their high abortion rates, are overwhelmingly pro-life as well. Does the author presume that blacks feel the way pro-choice white liberals want them to feel in regards to this issue? Also, as a white man, I didn't really appreciate the author's presumption that all whites wrestle with guilt over the enslavement of blacks. Sorry, but my ancestors came here from Italy in the 1920's, never owned slaves and, so far as I'm aware, never even looked at a black person sideways. And even if I were descended from Anglos who were present at the Revolution, what's to say that my ancestors weren't among the numerous whites who fought and died for the abolition of slavery? For all the author's expertise regarding latino immigration and culture, he seems to have little understanding of European immigration patterns or European-American traditions. Of course, the response to this is that the book is focused on African-American and Latino relations, not white/black relations. But still, it's disheartening to find such sloppy thinking in an otherwise good book on what remains a largely unexplored and increasingly important topic.

Rating:
Summary: Important if not always focused...
Review: Mr. Vaca's book is best when it focuses directly on tensions between the Black and Latino communities. For example, focusing on the overwhelming support Latinos showed for a Latino Republican candidate in Houston when a Black Democrat also who ran who had ostensbily done more for the Latino community is a topic worth even further examination. Also, raising the question of a Latino monolith is extremely important, especially when one looks at past instances of Latino cooperation, such as that noted by Felix Padilla in "Latino Ethnic Consciousness." All of the research then plays into questions of how 'minorities' (a contentious term to say the least) will approach political power in the coming decades as the 'non-minority' population decreases as a percentage. It is an important question, one that is discussed at length in "The Miner's Canary," and will likely increase in importance in the coming decades.

Mr. Vaca does overstate the case for Mexican-Americans somewhat in relation to African-Americans, particularly in claiming parity for the racial oppresion experienced by each group. Without a doubt, Mexican-Americans did experience a great deal of oppression at the hands of White Americans. However, I, as well as others, are willing to concede that it does not quite equivocate with the centuries of slavery endured by the ancestors of African-Americans. This, however, does not mean that Mexican-Americans (and other Latinos, though Vaca focuses primarily on Mexican-Americans) are somehow exempted from achieving equal rights in the face of what was systematic discrimination. Just because one group did not suffer as much as another group doesn't mean that the group is suddenly part of the establishment or somehow undeserving.

Mr. Vaca also spends a bit too much time focusing on the Latino question explicitly, and, while I completely acknowledge the importance of the question of Latino numerical supremacy, I think the far more interesting questions come from the examinations of political alliance between Latinos and Blacks (or lack thereof). In a sense, Mr. Vaca is attempting to answer questions raised in "Bridge Over the Racial Divide," and "The Miner's Canary," while at the same time trying to examine the growth in the Latino population (which does absolutely lend weight to his argument, but doesn't need to consume as much of the book as it does). The two topics should be (and really are) two separate books that can then by synthesized in a third.

Ultimately, though, despite its shortcomings, I find the book to be of importance. The question of Black-Latino (and even Asian) political alliance is extremely important as we head closer and closer to a population in which 'White' is no longer the dominant category (and, believe me, I understand the race v. ethnicity argument, but we have to face the fact that for many Latinos, the very terms associated with them have become racialized). 'Minority Politics' has too often seeemed to be a monolithic term, when in fact tensions have always existed between the groups that comprise it. Mr. Vaca points to these tensions, and expounds upon them with examples. I wish I could say that I am absolutely satisfied with the conclusions of the book. I do agree that Latino numerical supremacy is something that is important, but I do believe that interests can align between various groups. The structure and eventual destruction of racial hierarchy is one area in which the groups should agree and make attempts to address it. There will not always be agreement, something that this book shows well, but we cannot leave it at let bygones be bygones and self-interest rules the day when put in situations where the question is conflict or cooperation. Groups must use common ground to assess what potential gains are to be made in the face of American Racial Hierarchy. If this can't be done, then racial hierarchy will continue to exist, and these groups will continue to fight for the scraps instead of working together to get more for everyone. Of course, the last statement comes from the optimist within. In the meantime, the struggles will continue and Mr. Vaca has just started with the tip of the iceberg regarding future tensions that may arise. By viewing the problem, we can hope to assess it and address it, and, for that reason, along with others of less importance, Mr. Vaca's book is timely and worth a look.



Rating:
Summary: What "Latino" culture?
Review: Mr.Vaca is obviously a group politics liberal or socialist who wants government hand-outs for Latinos. He constantly over-looks crucial facts to make his flawed points.

First, he over-generalizes who Hispanics are. Hispanics come in different races and different country origins and is census created and categorized for having similar sub-cultures for group politic purposes.

He speaks as if all Latinos are the same race, like his Chicanos are the same as black Cubans and Dominicans. Blacks have different relations with different Latino sub-groups. Despite occasional friction, blacks often get along better with afro-Latinos than Chicanos, who they can find commonality in roots.

Second, He makes asinine claims that mainly his Chicanos have had the same level of historical suffering as blacks. He uses past and very weak civil right cases between Chicanos and whites that are little known. No one questions Chicanos have suffered racism, but what he doesn't want to truthfully admit is that Chicanos haven't had the same extreme level of racism. They were categorized legally as white and were allowed to go to school with whites and have the same public facilities. He doesn't want to talk about the favoritism Chicanos were given over blacks in Texas, California and the southwest historically. Where is the history of Chicano slavery in America, and where is the terrible oppression of white Hispanics? Of course Vaca deceptively behaves like white Latinos don't exist and don't have different experiences. All Latinos are just magically monolithic and victimized by white racism. His complaint is weak & invalid.

Third, He is nothing more than a Chicano version of Al Sharpton. He constantly whines that since Hispanics are disingenuously and artificially created as "the largest minority", they deserve just as much government attention and hand-outs by playing the victim card. They deserve the attention and hand-outs by being viewed like blacks as poor little victims of mean old white people. He says, since they have the largest census numbers, that the government should cater to them and make his illegal alien brothers all citizens and give them hand-outs.

I'm against all group identity politics. Everyone deserves to be treated equally, with no preferences, regardless if they are Latino or Black. Nicolas Vaca and Jesse Jackson playing the suffering Olympics and victim whining is just plain pathetic. They should tell their people to stop having children out of marriage, stop joining gangs, and stop not taking education seriously, and stop the victim mentality and value hard work ethics. If they do that they will succeed and it won't matter who's "the largest minority" (OXY-MORON).

Rating:
Summary: Some valid points, but some Intellectual dishonesty
Review: Nicolas Vaca is right for wanting the same attention and position as African Americans, all Americans deserve equal treatment. I have no disagreement about that. The problem I have with the book is that he misrepresents who Latino's are, and is simply wrong with equating Chicano history and experience as being the same to African American History.

Mr. Vaca never goes into relevant details about a sizable number of Mexicans here are not legal citizens and they can't vote, and also that Latina's have a high illegitimacy and teenage birth rate, that and the illegal aliens have contributed to the Latino population growth. Mr.Vaca is obviously excited and emboldened by this. But He shouldn't be, this is worsening the morality of the Chicano underclass and it's poverty.

Vaca wants to equate the levels of Chicano historical oppression to African Americans, now there's no doubt Chicanos have suffered racism and we should be sensitive to that, but Vaca is wrong on history. Chicano's were not slaves like African Americans were in the U.S., Chicanos have not had the same severe level of race stigmatism like African Americans have. For example, Latinos have the largest interracial/inter-ethnic marriage rates of 50%, African American's rate is 11%. Many Chicano's and Latinos are white.


Vaca mainly talks about Chicano's, and sometimes other Latino groups, but he wrongly speaks of all Latinos as if their homogeneous, this is simply dishonest. Latinos are racially and ethnically diverse, there a hodge-podge created on pan-ethnic similarities like Arabs are. There is racial divisions, and problems among different Latino groups. So far there is no significant Pan-Latino unity between his Mexican Americans and different races of other Latino groups.

What's very telling is since the release of his book, many Latino activist have criticized Mr.Vaca for being inflammatory and divisive. But there has been tensions between Latinos and Blacks, the worst is usually Chicanos and Cubans against African Americans, and on average Blacks get along better with Puerto Ricans and Dominicans, even though there's been some minor tension occasionally.

But lately, there have been meetings between Black and Latino organizations to create alliance. Not all Latinos feel minority groups should fight over government crumbs and be destructive and bigoted. There is hope for alliance's.

Nicolas Vaca's book has a positive quality. It is a blessing because it warns us how not to behave. We must respect each others equal rights and be mutually sensitive to each others pain. We must view each other as fellow human beings and Americans. Mutual respect and friendships based on morality can prevail with educated discourse, emphasizing similar social circumstances and similarities. If we don't, we will live in a even worst hellish racial future.

Rating:
Summary: What "Latino" culture?
Review: This book is flawed from the begining. Nicolas C. Vaca is wrong right off the bat when he says "latinos" are the largest minorty (oxymoron). "Latino" is not a race it is an ethnicity it can be of any race white, black, indian, etc. "Hispanic was not even put on the census until 1980! Before 1980 Mexicans were counted as white! Even now during the last census most people who marked "Hispanic" MARKED WHITE FOR RACE!!!

I have yet to run into someone who said that they were "hispanic, or latino" they always say Mexican, Puerto Rican, Dominican etc. Also what about Afro-Latinos according to the last census 1.7 million are Afro-Lations although you wouldn't know that watching Spanish language T.V. And why don't Afro-Cubans live in Miami with the white Cubans. The reality is Afro-Lation's are treated like second class citizens by thier white "Hispanic" counterparts. Much like white Americans treat black Americans. No wonder why Afro-Latinos have a higher intermarriage rate than even white "Hispanics" with white non-Hispanics.