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Brown and black

Can a Latino-African American alliance take on social and political issues that affect both communities?

Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard is worried that his office received 750 complaints of racial discrimination in 2006.

He's worried, according to press spokeswoman Andrea Esquer, because he thinks there are many more incidents of racism.

"His concern is that we don't believe we are seeing all the complaints," says Esquer. "We believe a lot of people are not filing complaints with our office."

Recent months saw a rise in examples of blatant racism against African Americans. A White property owner in Litchfield Park refused to rent to the Black president of Glendale Community College. A Tempe police officer tells two Black men they can escape a littering ticket if they perform some rap. An arsonist sets fire to the home a Black couple is building in Scottsdale.

Meanwhile, Latinos wonder if racist motives are behind anti-immigrant initiatives that have been voted into laws in several recent elections.

Some citizen Latinos increasingly worry that they could be racially profiled as undocumented immigrants simply because of their olive skin. For example, a January agreement between the Department of Homeland Security and the Maricopa Country Sheriff's Office had Sheriff Joe Arpaio blustering at a press conference, threatening to stop and question anyone suspected of being an illegal immigrant for as little as "spitting on the sidewalk."

These incidents against Blacks plus new laws against undocumented immigrants have some Latino and African American leaders saying an alliance may be necessary to address not only a mounting anti-immigration backlash that has racist overtones, but wider social and political issues that affect both communities in Arizona.

Younger Latino activists can learn lessons to fight discrimination from African American veterans of the '50s and '60s civil rights struggles, led nationally by the late Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., says Art Hamilton, a former state senator and trailblazer for Black civil rights in Arizona.

"Latinos need not to make the same mistakes Blacks did," he says. "Blacks thought that fighting racism was our exclusive property. Others resented the fact that we did not include them."

And a Brown/Black coalition would flow naturally from a history of mutual support between African American leaders like King and Cesar Chavez's fight for Latino workers rights, advocates for an alliance add.

Both Latino and African American activists say there is common ground between the two communities in areas such as immigration reform, economic equality and improved graduation rates.

On the other hand, there are areas of friction between the two cultures: competition for jobs, Blacks and Latinos pitted against each other in local elections, and recently arrived Latino immigrants moving into historically Black neighborhoods.

"We have built bridges between the Black and Brown communities in the past that still exist," says Alfredo Gutierrez, a former state senator who worked with Hamilton in the '80s to represent Latino and Black interests in the state Legislature.

"African Americans support us today on the immigration issue. The most important thing is for our two communities to have a civilized discourse about what we can accomplish together."


COMMON HISTORY, COMMON FUTURE?

"The immigrant is to Arizona today what Blacks were to Mississippi in the '50s," says Raul Yzaguirre, former head of National Council for La Raza and executive director of the ASU Center for Community Development and Civil Rights.

"I think it's worse for Latinos today in Arizona than Mississippi was for Blacks," says Jarett Maupin, a 20-year-old who's mixed Latino/African American bloodlines and crossover activism typify what the future of a Brown/Black alliance might look like.

"The parallel isn't exact but the effect is the same," says Hamilton.

Phoenix New Times Weekly recently dubbed Maupin "Kid Sharpton" because he has been trained in social advocacy by the Rev. Al Sharpton, the sometimes controversial African American activist.

Maupin is head of the Arizona chapter of Sharpton's National Action Network. In addition, Maupin is an assistant pastor of a Phoenix church, the traditional powerbase of local African American advocacy. He recently won election to the Phoenix Union High School Union board.

Maupin says that his election is proof of a Brown/Black coalition working to effect political change.

"I was careful to have a balance of Latino and African American in leadership of my campaign," he says. "I don't feel I would be in the office I am now if voters in both communities didn't support me."

Maupin unabashedly describes his personal brand of activism as "bold and audacious." He's outspoken and has become highly visible at Latino marches and press conferences. He walked alongside about 500 marchers at an anti-Proposition 300 demonstration in Glendale on Jan. 8, the day of the BCS Championship. Police gave Maupin and seven organizers of the march citations for marching without a permit.

Maupin compares the anti-immigrant laws being pushed by state Rep. Russell Pearce and others to the Jim Crow discriminatory laws of the Old South, "based on fear, misunderstandings and despair."

Older African American activists say that young Maupin's flamboyant approach hurts the chance for progress on social issues. "Persistent negotiations" and compromise work better, say activists schooled in the humbler techniques of non-violence espoused by King.

Roberto Reveles, head of Somos America immigrant advocacy group and a long-time Chicano activist, says he doesn't always agree with Maupin's tactics, but that sometimes bold measures - excluding violence -- are needed when going through the proper channels doesn't get results.

"It wasn't until our first march drew 20,000 people that people began paying attention to our cause," Reveles points out.

REASONS FOR A RELATIONSHIP

Relations between Latinos and African Americans in Arizona and in America are influenced by population increases merging of minorities into a solid majority over Whites. The 2000 Census revealed that Hispanics already slightly outnumber African Americans as the largest ethnic group, while together Blacks and Hispanics constitute the majority population in the five largest U.S. cities.

In Phoenix and Tucson, while the count of Latinos is about 25 percent of total population, and Blacks only 5 percent, the mixing of Latino and African American school-age populations makes these students the majority over White students.

Given these facts, "Black-Brown relations could take on more significance in the decades to come than relations between minority groups and Whites," says Susan Pizzaro-Eckert, who publishes a newsletter and books on Brown/Black relations.

She points out that Latino culture has always included Black blood descended from African slaves in Cuba, Brazil and the Caribbean. Mexico has its own history of a significant Black population, she adds. (See "Art show highlights Africans in Mexico")

Moreover, Latinos and African Americans are marrying interracially at rising rates with each new generation. According to the 2005 report, New Marriages, New Families: U.S. Racial and Hispanic Intermarriage, intermarriage between Latinos and other cultures is increasing, changing how Latinos think about their own ethnicity.

In addition, the roots of today's and future cooperation were seeded in the past.

By the time of his assassination in 1967, Martin Luther King, Jr., had gone beyond thinking in terms of race. He had focused on economic inequity and equal opportunity for all Americans, regardless of race.

"It must not just be Black people," King said, referring to a "Poor People's Campaign" he was organizing just before he was assassinated. "We must include American Indians, Puerto Ricans, Mexicans and even poor Whites."

Coretta Scott King, his widow, came to Phoenix to support labor leader Cesar Chavez during his 1972 protest fast here.

And a King protégé, Jesse Jackson, recognizes that Latinos and Black have to work together to resolve common struggles.

"We are the most likely to be profiled and suspected by police. We face the same racial inequities on a daily basis," Jackson said during a speech at the 34th Annual Rainbow/PUSH convention in June 2005 in Chicago.

"We must reassess our relationship and have a summit and build on our common goals and needs, as we work on a shared destiny."

Jackson's speech also called for working together for comprehensive immigration reform.
Increasingly, activists today believe immigration is the key issue in the battle for civil and human rights and beyond. They also say there are other partnership opportunities for Brown and Blacks to improve education, elect more Latino and Black officials, fix mortgage loan and housing discrimination, end payday loan proliferation in highly ethnic areas, and stop environmental racism in high ethnic neighborhoods of Arizona.

"There is so much more common ground between us that it makes the things people say to separate us seem nonsensical," says Art Hamilton.