The True Front of Progressivism
God damn, I love nezua limón xolagrafik-jonez/The Unapologetic Mexican. Why? Why:
SOMETIMES YOU WONDER if blogging is a component of Real Change, done for distraction, provided as a social experience, or is just a game. And of course, it is all these things at different times. In their better moments, blogs can affect people and their views profoundly, just as a Great Book might, when dropped into your hands on a crucial day. In a “blogswarm,” the People are given voice—the computer literate, Internet-connected, and blog-using People, that is—and companies can be informed of how many support or do not support their products and sponsored efforts. Money can be directed to politicians who in turn (at least in theory) are accountable to the views of those who sent them money.
…
A great example of this can be found on any of the comment sections of unmoderated “brown” blogs, or in the moderated (and never made visible) comment junk bins of “brown blogs.” For example, a friend Marisa runs a site called Latina Lista (“Smart Latina”) which is top notch in terms of a News blog that focuses on “brown” issues, Mexican American issues, and does so without the heavy editorial tone you might get from mine. […] you will not see White Males get uglier than when responding poorly to a woman who is smart, educated, otherwise powerful, and especially brown. I have watched the haters at her place for a long time now, astounded that she even gives them room to talk.
…
Do not think that is rare. Do not “Other” that commenter and say he is a sleazy, sick strange individual. Please believe me when I say I could fill this entire post with similar and even worse sentiments. From Left- and Right- wing typists. Just as Jensen said, when the typical invisible structures in place are violated by those who no longer wish to go along with them, the rhetoric gets very ugly, and will eventually turn to violence, when that rhetoric fails to dampen these “transgressions.” Any “mainstream” blog you read that does not bear these vicious tirades simply keeps away from the controversy. The lack of the hate does not equal a lack of racist thought any more than a lack of lynchings in our society indicates the struggle for Civil Rights is over. And this is why we all need to be concerned with this.
…
I, and my friends in the “brown blogosphere” are important blogs to read at a time like this. […] We are connected—perhaps not by data or reams of research, all—but by family, and occupation, and our very histories and lives. My father is a first generation Mexican American author who teaches and writes and has written on these issues for decades. His mother, my nanita, is gone from this world. But she wanted more than anything to become an American, and her Social Security card, once she did, was a document that brought her great pride. My familia fought in America’s wars so that she could come. This was her American Dream, and she lived it. I now live to see the land that she toiled in the fields for, the land she loved perhaps more than Mexico, look at our own people as subhuman. Ignore their plight. This is why you may want to read blogs like mine if you care to understand this “underbelly.” Yes, I burn hot, as many of the “brown blogs” do. Just as the feminist blogs do. Just as the anti-ablist blogs do. But change and truth are not lukewarm entities or processes…
The post is long, I know. But so, so important for you to read. Especially if you’re not a blogger of color. This isn’t the “Preach to the Choir Hour”, this is the time for everyone to understand.
The True Front of Progressivism
Read it, link it.
5 thoughts on “The True Front of Progressivism”
Comments are closed.