Peace and much love.
To further promote, protect and preserve the principles found in the Hiphop Declaration of Peace, which clearly states in the second principle, Hiphop Kulture respects the dignity and sanctity of life without discrimination or predjudice. Hiphoppas shall throughly consider the protection and the development of life, over and before the individual decision to destroy or seek to alter its natural development.
The following post is to further promote our cooperation with other kultures to inevitably strengthen our own. It was once written in ancient proverb... that, without your roots, you cannot grow. Where are the true Hiphoppas in the D.C., Maryland, VA and PA areas. What goes around comes around. We have more commonalities than what is spoken of. However, one thing that is clear, the Oglala Elders obviously have the same interests and conflicts as Hiphopppas.
There it is.
[YouthDCNews] Benefit to Support Traditional Oglala Elders, Sat Feb 3
Benefit to Support Traditional Oglala Elders
Saturday, February 3, 7:00PM
St. Stephens and the Incarnation Church
16th and Newton Sts. NW (Columbia Heights Metro)
Cultural Presentations by:
• Pam Parker and Friends
• Brazilian Trio
• D.C. Guerrilla Poets Insurgency
Hosted by:
• Penny Gamble Williams, Co-Host of the Talking Feather on WOL
Radio
• Jay Winter Nightwolf, Host of the Nightwolf Show on WPFW Radio
This spring, a group of traditional Tetonwan (Oglala) Lakota from the
Pine Ridge Reservation will visit our community to meet directly with
Congress about the unspeakable living conditions on the Pine Ridge
Reservation. (See fact-sheet below) The group is spearheaded by three
Traditional Elders:
• David Swallow, Traditional Spiritual Leader
• Eli Tail, Traditional Elder and Treaty Advisor
• Harvey Iron Boy, Traditional Elder and Community Health
Activist
The Piscataway Indian Nation and a group of area activists will be
hosting the delegation. To cover the gasoline and transportation costs
of the elders, as well as covering the costs while they are here, our
goal is to raise $2,000. Please try to attend the February 3 cultural
celebration and fundraiser. If you can't attend, please consider making
a generous contribution toward meeting the delegations expenses. We
hope to be able to cover gas and lodging costs for the trip to and from
Pine Ridge, as well as hospitality costs while they are here. Your
tax exempt contributions can be made to Gray Panthers Metro Washington,
1426 9th St. NW, Washington, DC 20001. Please note "For Oglala Elders."
PINE RIDGE RESERVATION FACTS
Excerpted from "The Arrogance of Ignorance; Hidden Away, Out of Sight
and Out of Mind" By Stephanie M. Schwartz,
• Roughly the size of the State of Connecticut, Pine Ridge Reservation
is the second-largest U.S. Reservation
• Pine Ridge is home to approximately 40,000 persons, 35% under the age
of 18.
• 58.7% of the grandparents on the Reservation are responsible for
raising their own grandchildren.
• 97% of the population lives below Federal poverty levels.
• Life expectancy on the Reservation is 48 years old for men and 52 for
women, the lowest in the U.S..
• The Pine Ridge infant mortality rate is the highest on this
continent, about 3 times the national average.
• Alcoholism, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and malnutrition are
pervasive, with the rate of diabetes on the Reservation is 8 times the
U.S. national average. The death rate from alcoholism is 3 times the US
average.
• The tuberculosis rate on Pine Ridge is 8 times the national average.
• The cervical cancer rate is 5 times the U.S. national average.
• Many Reservation residents live without health care due to vast
travel distances, under-funded and under-staffed medical facilities,
and outdated or non-existent medical equipment.
• The Pine Ridge school drop-out rate is over 70%, and the teacher
turnover is 8 times the U.S. national average.
• An average of 17 people live in each family home (which may only have
two to three rooms) and at least 4,000 new homes are needed in order to
combat homelessness.
• 59% of Reservation homes are substandard, with over 33% lacking water
and sewage systems, electricity, and basic insulation or central
heating.
• Many residents must carry (often contaminated) water from the local
rivers daily for their personal needs.
• Most Reservation families live in rural and often isolated areas
where there are few paved roads and most of the rural homes are
inaccessible during times of rain or snow.
• Weather is extreme on the Reservation, with summer temperatures
reaching well over 110*F, and winters that can reach below -50*F. Each
winter, Reservation residents, especially elders, die from hypothermia.
• There is no public transportation available on the Reservation and
only a minority of Reservation residents own an operable automobile.
• Much of the water and land on the Reservation is contaminated with
pesticides and other poisons from farming, mining, open dumps, and
mining operations.
• The High Plains/Oglala Aquifer which begins underneath the Pine Ridge
Reservation is predicted to run dry in less than 30 years due to
commercial farming use in south of the Reservation. The Oglala Aquifer
is not renewable and recent years of drought have accelerated the
problem.
Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Friday, January 12, 2007
Si, SE PUEDE!
Peace and much love.
After reading this essay on the sociological perceptions of so called "latinos" and African Americans, I was compelled to add to the discussion. Not to mention Ive been a resident of Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, Riverside to be exact where the majority of the tensions exist.
Originally being from Chicago, these tensions were really familiar due to the ever constant violence between, African Americans and Puerto Ricans, African Americans and Dominicans, as well as African Americans and Africans, etc.
However, after relocating to California, being stationed here as a Navy corpsman, and raising my family here. Attending college at a historically "Hispanic" institution, (UCSB), working closely with Mecha, Panche be, as well as the CLYLP Chicano-Latino Youth Leadership Project, I must share these compelling results.
First it must be underscored, that as a proud Hiphoppa, African/Native American, these divisions must be further analyze and addressed as mentioned by the author Tanya Hernandez.
Furthermore, on a historical note, Mexico is not the accurate terminology for the country just south of the so called United States. Remember, this land was also dominated, plundered and pillaged by European Conquistadors. The Mexican, is more accurately pronounced (Ma-shican).
Similar to their English counterparts, the Spaniards sailed west thinking they were landing in India, thus why many Americans and non-Americans, out of ignorance still to this day, call Natives, Indians. So with this said recall, we are speaking of an indigenous people relatively exterminated for the expressed purpose of imperialism.
Over the centuries, cultures have mixed, and many Mexicans identify with the populations hailing from Spain. Consequently, many still, maintain their ties to the land and the indigenous populations who decend from the ancient Incas, Mayans, pueblos, etc.
In Hiphop Kulture, we are a global kulture, beyond race, beyond religion and beyond ethnicity. Due to this I have been able to pierce the veil of discention and structural violence plagueing our communities.
By doing so, discussions with my indigenous brothers and sisters, alerted me to a distinction and difference in terminology.
After several discussions, it had come to my attention that some call themselves "latinos", while others call themselves "chicanos". Out of ignorance, I thought these terms were inter-changeable. Nevertheless, they are NOT! Latinos tend to identify with the Spaniard lineage, while Chicanos identify with the indigenous North American and South American lineage.
It must also be recalled that during the 1960's and 1970's the Brown Beret's were in fact supportive and second in command in various communities to none other than the Black Panther Party. During the turn of the century professional boxer Jack Johnson fled the US, along with an untold number of Buffalo Soldiers, who were black soldiers hired to kill and torment the pueblo peoples, after the 1851 mexican-american war, to Mexico where they were given asylum for rascist charges by the US government.
In essence our communities have a rich history of cooperation of alliance. This is where I may differ with the author, in that these violent confrontations are the results of structural violence, poverty and indicative of the institutional racism deeply rooted in American society, military and its prison industrial complexes. This isolation and segregation has historically cropped when possible windows of opportunity exist.
Finally, I encourage each of you who have interest in this topic, to go beyond the figures, go beyond the rhetoric and get out there and learn more about our very relative and similar cultures. When I did so, my eyes were open to just how much the strings of disention are being puppeted. In 2008, whatever the political agenda, we must include, chicanos, latinos, and whoever else sees the victory in our unity.
As we think, so Hiphop is!
MalikONE
Global Advocate
Temple Of Hiphop
----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Davey D
Date: Jan 10 2007 11:05 PM
Roots of Latino/black anger
Longtime prejudices, not economic rivalry, fuel tensions.
By Tanya K. Hernandez, Tanya K. Hernandez is a professor of law at Rutgers University Law School.
January 7, 2007
THE ACRIMONIOUS relationship between Latinos and African Americans in Los Angeles is growing hard to ignore. Although last weekend's black-versus-Latino race riot at Chino state prison is unfortunately not an aberration, the Dec. 15 murder in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American, allegedly by members of a Latino gang, was shocking.
Yet there was nothing really new about it. Rather, the murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods. Just last August, federal prosecutors convicted four Latino gang members of engaging in a six-year conspiracy to assault and murder African Americans in Highland Park. During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that African American residents (with no gang ties at all) were being terrorized in an effort to force them out of a neighborhood now perceived as Latino.
For example, one African American resident was murdered by Latino gang members as he looked for a parking space near his Highland Park home. In another case, a woman was knocked off her bicycle and her husband was threatened with a box cutter by one of the defendants, who said, "You niggers have been here long enough."
At first blush, it may be mystifying why such animosity exists between two ethnic groups that share so many of the same socioeconomic deprivations. Over the years, the hostility has been explained as a natural reaction to competition for blue-collar jobs in a tight labor market, or as the result of turf battles and cultural disputes in changing neighborhoods. Others have suggested that perhaps Latinos have simply been adept at learning the U.S. lesson of anti-black racism, or that perhaps black Americans are resentful at having the benefits of the civil rights movement extended to Latinos.
Although there may be a degree of truth to some or all of these explanations, they are insufficient to explain the extremity of the ethnic violence.
Over the years, there's also been a tendency on the part of observers to blame the conflict more on African Americans (who are often portrayed as the aggressors) than on Latinos. But although it's certainly true that there's plenty of blame to go around, it's important not to ignore the effect of Latino culture and history in fueling the rift.
The fact is that racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 90% of the approximately 10 million enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were taken to Latin America and the Caribbean (by the French, Spanish and British, primarily), whereas only 4.6% were brought to the United States. By 1793, colonial Mexico had a population of 370,000 Africans (and descendants of Africans) — the largest concentration in all of Spanish America.
The legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while having darker skin and African features severely limits social mobility.
White supremacy is deeply ingrained in Latin America and continues into the present. In Mexico, for instance, citizens of African descent (who are estimated to make up 1% of the population) report that they regularly experience racial harassment at the hands of local and state police, according to recent studies by Antonieta Gimeno, then of Mount Holyoke College, and Sagrario Cruz-Carretero of the University of Veracruz.
Mexican public discourse reflects the hostility toward blackness; consider such common phrases as "getting black" to denote getting angry, and "a supper of blacks" to describe a riotous gathering of people. Similarly, the word "black" is often used to mean "ugly." It is not surprising that Mexicans who have been surveyed indicate a disinclination to marry darker-skinned partners, as reported in a 2001 study by Bobby Vaughn, an anthropology professor at Notre Dame de Namur University.
Anti-black sentiment also manifests itself in Mexican politics. During the 2001 elections, for instance, Lazaro Cardenas, a candidate for governor of the state of Michoacan, is believed to have lost substantial support among voters for having an Afro Cuban wife. Even though Cardenas had great name recognition (as the grandson of Mexico's most popular president), he only won by 5 percentage points — largely because of the anti-black platform of his opponent, Alfredo Anaya, who said that "there is a great feeling that we want to be governed by our own race, by our own people."
Given this, it should not be surprising that migrants from Mexico and other areas of Latin America and the Caribbean arrive in the U.S. carrying the baggage of racism. Nor that this facet of Latino culture is in turn transmitted, to some degree, to younger generations along with all other manifestations of the culture.
The sociological concept of "social distance" measures the unease one ethnic or racial group has for interacting with another. Social science studies of Latino racial attitudes often indicate a preference for maintaining social distance from African Americans. And although the social distance level is largest for recent immigrants, more established communities of Latinos in the United States also show a marked social distance from African Americans.
For instance, in University of Houston sociologist Tatcho Mindiola's 2002 survey of 600 Latinos in Houston (two-thirds of whom were Mexican, the remainder Salvadoran and Colombian) and 600 African Americans, the African Americans had substantially more positive views of Latinos than Latinos had of African Americans. Although a slim majority of the U.S.-born Latinos used positive identifiers when describing African Americans, only a minority of the foreign-born Latinos did so. One typical foreign-born Latino respondent stated: "I just don't trust them…. The men, especially, all use drugs, and they all carry guns."
This same study found that 46% of Latino immigrants who lived in residential neighborhoods with African Americans reported almost no interaction with them.
The social distance of Latinos from African Americans is consistently reflected in Latino responses to survey questions. In a 2000 study of residential segregation, Camille Zubrinsky Charles, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, found that Latinos were more likely to reject African Americans as neighbors than they were to reject members of other racial groups. In addition, in the 1999-2000 Lilly Survey of American Attitudes and Friendships, Latinos identified African Americans as their least desirable marriage partners, whereas African Americans proved to be more accepting of intermarriage with Latinos.
Ironically, African Americans, who are often depicted as being averse to coalition-building with Latinos, have repeatedly demonstrated in their survey responses that they feel less hostility toward Latinos than Latinos feel toward them.
Although some commentators have attributed the Latino hostility to African Americans to the stress of competition in the job market, a 1996 sociological study of racial group competition suggests otherwise. In a study of 477 Latinos from the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey, professors Lawrence Bobo, then of Harvard, and Vincent Hutchings of the University of Michigan found that underlying prejudices and existing animosities contribute to the perception that African Americans pose an economic threat — not the other way around.
It is certainly true that the acrimony between African Americans and Latinos cannot be resolved until both sides address their own unconscious biases about one another. But it would be a mistake to ignore the Latino side of the equation as some observers have done — particularly now, when the recent violence in Los Angeles has involved Latinos targeting peaceful African American citizens.
This conflict cannot be sloughed off as simply another generation of ethnic group competition in the United States (like the familiar rivalries between Irish, Italians and Jews in the early part of the last century). Rather, as the violence grows, the "diasporic" origins of the anti-black sentiment — the entrenched anti-black prejudice among Latinos that exists not just in the United States but across the Americas — will need to be directly confronted.
Peace and much love.
After reading this essay on the sociological perceptions of so called "latinos" and African Americans, I was compelled to add to the discussion. Not to mention Ive been a resident of Los Angeles and the Inland Empire, Riverside to be exact where the majority of the tensions exist.
Originally being from Chicago, these tensions were really familiar due to the ever constant violence between, African Americans and Puerto Ricans, African Americans and Dominicans, as well as African Americans and Africans, etc.
However, after relocating to California, being stationed here as a Navy corpsman, and raising my family here. Attending college at a historically "Hispanic" institution, (UCSB), working closely with Mecha, Panche be, as well as the CLYLP Chicano-Latino Youth Leadership Project, I must share these compelling results.
First it must be underscored, that as a proud Hiphoppa, African/Native American, these divisions must be further analyze and addressed as mentioned by the author Tanya Hernandez.
Furthermore, on a historical note, Mexico is not the accurate terminology for the country just south of the so called United States. Remember, this land was also dominated, plundered and pillaged by European Conquistadors. The Mexican, is more accurately pronounced (Ma-shican).
Similar to their English counterparts, the Spaniards sailed west thinking they were landing in India, thus why many Americans and non-Americans, out of ignorance still to this day, call Natives, Indians. So with this said recall, we are speaking of an indigenous people relatively exterminated for the expressed purpose of imperialism.
Over the centuries, cultures have mixed, and many Mexicans identify with the populations hailing from Spain. Consequently, many still, maintain their ties to the land and the indigenous populations who decend from the ancient Incas, Mayans, pueblos, etc.
In Hiphop Kulture, we are a global kulture, beyond race, beyond religion and beyond ethnicity. Due to this I have been able to pierce the veil of discention and structural violence plagueing our communities.
By doing so, discussions with my indigenous brothers and sisters, alerted me to a distinction and difference in terminology.
After several discussions, it had come to my attention that some call themselves "latinos", while others call themselves "chicanos". Out of ignorance, I thought these terms were inter-changeable. Nevertheless, they are NOT! Latinos tend to identify with the Spaniard lineage, while Chicanos identify with the indigenous North American and South American lineage.
It must also be recalled that during the 1960's and 1970's the Brown Beret's were in fact supportive and second in command in various communities to none other than the Black Panther Party. During the turn of the century professional boxer Jack Johnson fled the US, along with an untold number of Buffalo Soldiers, who were black soldiers hired to kill and torment the pueblo peoples, after the 1851 mexican-american war, to Mexico where they were given asylum for rascist charges by the US government.
In essence our communities have a rich history of cooperation of alliance. This is where I may differ with the author, in that these violent confrontations are the results of structural violence, poverty and indicative of the institutional racism deeply rooted in American society, military and its prison industrial complexes. This isolation and segregation has historically cropped when possible windows of opportunity exist.
Finally, I encourage each of you who have interest in this topic, to go beyond the figures, go beyond the rhetoric and get out there and learn more about our very relative and similar cultures. When I did so, my eyes were open to just how much the strings of disention are being puppeted. In 2008, whatever the political agenda, we must include, chicanos, latinos, and whoever else sees the victory in our unity.
As we think, so Hiphop is!
MalikONE
Global Advocate
Temple Of Hiphop
----------------- Bulletin Message -----------------
From: Davey D
Date: Jan 10 2007 11:05 PM
Roots of Latino/black anger
Longtime prejudices, not economic rivalry, fuel tensions.
By Tanya K. Hernandez, Tanya K. Hernandez is a professor of law at Rutgers University Law School.
January 7, 2007
THE ACRIMONIOUS relationship between Latinos and African Americans in Los Angeles is growing hard to ignore. Although last weekend's black-versus-Latino race riot at Chino state prison is unfortunately not an aberration, the Dec. 15 murder in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood of Cheryl Green, a 14-year-old African American, allegedly by members of a Latino gang, was shocking.
Yet there was nothing really new about it. Rather, the murder was a manifestation of an increasingly common trend: Latino ethnic cleansing of African Americans from multiracial neighborhoods. Just last August, federal prosecutors convicted four Latino gang members of engaging in a six-year conspiracy to assault and murder African Americans in Highland Park. During the trial, prosecutors demonstrated that African American residents (with no gang ties at all) were being terrorized in an effort to force them out of a neighborhood now perceived as Latino.
For example, one African American resident was murdered by Latino gang members as he looked for a parking space near his Highland Park home. In another case, a woman was knocked off her bicycle and her husband was threatened with a box cutter by one of the defendants, who said, "You niggers have been here long enough."
At first blush, it may be mystifying why such animosity exists between two ethnic groups that share so many of the same socioeconomic deprivations. Over the years, the hostility has been explained as a natural reaction to competition for blue-collar jobs in a tight labor market, or as the result of turf battles and cultural disputes in changing neighborhoods. Others have suggested that perhaps Latinos have simply been adept at learning the U.S. lesson of anti-black racism, or that perhaps black Americans are resentful at having the benefits of the civil rights movement extended to Latinos.
Although there may be a degree of truth to some or all of these explanations, they are insufficient to explain the extremity of the ethnic violence.
Over the years, there's also been a tendency on the part of observers to blame the conflict more on African Americans (who are often portrayed as the aggressors) than on Latinos. But although it's certainly true that there's plenty of blame to go around, it's important not to ignore the effect of Latino culture and history in fueling the rift.
The fact is that racism — and anti-black racism in particular — is a pervasive and historically entrenched reality of life in Latin America and the Caribbean. More than 90% of the approximately 10 million enslaved Africans brought to the Americas were taken to Latin America and the Caribbean (by the French, Spanish and British, primarily), whereas only 4.6% were brought to the United States. By 1793, colonial Mexico had a population of 370,000 Africans (and descendants of Africans) — the largest concentration in all of Spanish America.
The legacy of the slave period in Latin America and the Caribbean is similar to that in the United States: Having lighter skin and European features increases the chances of socioeconomic opportunity, while having darker skin and African features severely limits social mobility.
White supremacy is deeply ingrained in Latin America and continues into the present. In Mexico, for instance, citizens of African descent (who are estimated to make up 1% of the population) report that they regularly experience racial harassment at the hands of local and state police, according to recent studies by Antonieta Gimeno, then of Mount Holyoke College, and Sagrario Cruz-Carretero of the University of Veracruz.
Mexican public discourse reflects the hostility toward blackness; consider such common phrases as "getting black" to denote getting angry, and "a supper of blacks" to describe a riotous gathering of people. Similarly, the word "black" is often used to mean "ugly." It is not surprising that Mexicans who have been surveyed indicate a disinclination to marry darker-skinned partners, as reported in a 2001 study by Bobby Vaughn, an anthropology professor at Notre Dame de Namur University.
Anti-black sentiment also manifests itself in Mexican politics. During the 2001 elections, for instance, Lazaro Cardenas, a candidate for governor of the state of Michoacan, is believed to have lost substantial support among voters for having an Afro Cuban wife. Even though Cardenas had great name recognition (as the grandson of Mexico's most popular president), he only won by 5 percentage points — largely because of the anti-black platform of his opponent, Alfredo Anaya, who said that "there is a great feeling that we want to be governed by our own race, by our own people."
Given this, it should not be surprising that migrants from Mexico and other areas of Latin America and the Caribbean arrive in the U.S. carrying the baggage of racism. Nor that this facet of Latino culture is in turn transmitted, to some degree, to younger generations along with all other manifestations of the culture.
The sociological concept of "social distance" measures the unease one ethnic or racial group has for interacting with another. Social science studies of Latino racial attitudes often indicate a preference for maintaining social distance from African Americans. And although the social distance level is largest for recent immigrants, more established communities of Latinos in the United States also show a marked social distance from African Americans.
For instance, in University of Houston sociologist Tatcho Mindiola's 2002 survey of 600 Latinos in Houston (two-thirds of whom were Mexican, the remainder Salvadoran and Colombian) and 600 African Americans, the African Americans had substantially more positive views of Latinos than Latinos had of African Americans. Although a slim majority of the U.S.-born Latinos used positive identifiers when describing African Americans, only a minority of the foreign-born Latinos did so. One typical foreign-born Latino respondent stated: "I just don't trust them…. The men, especially, all use drugs, and they all carry guns."
This same study found that 46% of Latino immigrants who lived in residential neighborhoods with African Americans reported almost no interaction with them.
The social distance of Latinos from African Americans is consistently reflected in Latino responses to survey questions. In a 2000 study of residential segregation, Camille Zubrinsky Charles, a sociology professor at the University of Pennsylvania, found that Latinos were more likely to reject African Americans as neighbors than they were to reject members of other racial groups. In addition, in the 1999-2000 Lilly Survey of American Attitudes and Friendships, Latinos identified African Americans as their least desirable marriage partners, whereas African Americans proved to be more accepting of intermarriage with Latinos.
Ironically, African Americans, who are often depicted as being averse to coalition-building with Latinos, have repeatedly demonstrated in their survey responses that they feel less hostility toward Latinos than Latinos feel toward them.
Although some commentators have attributed the Latino hostility to African Americans to the stress of competition in the job market, a 1996 sociological study of racial group competition suggests otherwise. In a study of 477 Latinos from the 1992 Los Angeles County Social Survey, professors Lawrence Bobo, then of Harvard, and Vincent Hutchings of the University of Michigan found that underlying prejudices and existing animosities contribute to the perception that African Americans pose an economic threat — not the other way around.
It is certainly true that the acrimony between African Americans and Latinos cannot be resolved until both sides address their own unconscious biases about one another. But it would be a mistake to ignore the Latino side of the equation as some observers have done — particularly now, when the recent violence in Los Angeles has involved Latinos targeting peaceful African American citizens.
This conflict cannot be sloughed off as simply another generation of ethnic group competition in the United States (like the familiar rivalries between Irish, Italians and Jews in the early part of the last century). Rather, as the violence grows, the "diasporic" origins of the anti-black sentiment — the entrenched anti-black prejudice among Latinos that exists not just in the United States but across the Americas — will need to be directly confronted.
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