Working Paper 94-11 February 1994(1)
By David Young
Chicano and Gay Rights Activist
(1) This paper is an edited transcript of a talk given by David Young for the Intractable Conflict/Constructive Confrontation Project on November 6, 1993. Funding for this Project was provided by the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation and the University of Colorado. All ideas presented are those of the author and do not necessarily represent the views of the Consortium, the University, or Hewlett Foundation. For more information, contact the Conflict Resolution Consortium, Campus Box 327, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309- 0327. Phone: (303) 492-1635, e-mail: crc@cubldr.colorado.edu.
Copyright 1994. Conflict Resolution Consortium. Do not reprint without permission.
Buenas tardes. Let me do a little bit of house cleaning first. When I was asked to come and do this, I said I didn't like the model of sitting here behind a panel. I always feel like a monkey in situations like this. But, when we reached that conflict, there was no resolution. It was very clear that if I was going to speak here, I was going to do it this way. So, I had to come up with something else that would help make my point. We can come here today and spend all of our time talking. If we do that, we have gained knowledge, but we haven't gained growth. I am interested in growth. That is the way I teach a group. So, I am coming to you today from a whole different perspective--I hope you will bear with me.
I have been doing some studying over the last 25 years. I come to you as a fellow scholar. I am a psychologist and a sociologist, who, for 25 years, has studied gringos. I want to share with you what I have learned.
I have learned that primarily white-skinned, blond-haired, blue-eyed humans have infected the Northern continent of the Western hemisphere of our planet. Migrating from Europe, these humans used violence, genocide and oppression as their tool for acquiring land that was already inhabited, to establish themselves as another lifestyle in a peace-loving world. They live according to the rules of gringismo.
Let me define gringismo so that you understand it. These are characteristics that are common to gringos, particularly the group that I have been studying for 25 years. It is also a lifestyle. It is a method by which people live and operate their programs here in the United States, their businesses, their institutions. Gringismo is the design under which we live.
But not anyone can be a gringo. You have to be white. You have to believe in the same god. You have to be intolerant, oppressive, aggressive, and violent. You have to have little value for humanity and for other humans. You have to be able to segregate. You have to be patriarchal, yet carry a sense of guilt for all the oppression over the years. You have to be noncompromising, but conforming. Your primary motivation and objective has to be achieving capital, with little sense or no sense of right and wrong. Several years ago, Hitler, a man that was part of sort of a gringismo-type society, left a message that has been adopted by the gringos in this country. That message reverberates. It continues itself, saying that you have to vehemently defend your group. If you do not defend it, then you are ostracized. You can no longer be part of gringismo.
I will talk a little bit about the individuals--about the people involved in this. The individual is very selfish, very "I" motivated, very mean, very greedy, and extremely competitive. The males are noncommunicative except at superficial levels with other males. They are users. They exploit everything around them--humans, nature, animals, other people, women, children, and information. They are non-loyal, untrusting, paranoid, and controlling.
The females tend to be manipulative, selfish, and non- nurturing. They practice some of the male traits and aspire to be like the males. They are very controlling, both with love and with sex. The off-spring hate their parents. They have a tendency to try to be like the adult males. Usually when there are issues of conflict needing to be resolved, they will start by not compromising. They will start by lying and exploiting.
Are you tired yet?
As people of color, we put up with this kind of attack all the time. White people are always talking about us. As long as you call me "minority," as long as you call me "Hispanic," I will call you "gringo." I don't recognize the boundaries that you do. I am a Chicano in a very brown world. I am not a minority. I am very connected.
There was a protest in Boulder this morning. Chicanos were protesting. I protested with them. We stopped traffic on Broadway, absolutely stopped traffic and said, "We will take control of our own lives. We will defend ourselves and do what we have to." We went down the hill and posted our demands at the police station, because the police do not protect people of color.
There was an incident a little over a month ago right here in Boulder, in which Chicanos ended up getting in a fight. There were three whites and two Chicanos. The whites get their butts kicked, so they call the police. So, the police came looking for these two little brown boys. The brown boys walked back to where they were visiting some Chicanas. There were four Chicanos and four Chicanas. But as the two Chicanos were returning to their friend's home, they had to walk by SAE. As they are walking by SAE, suddenly another confrontation happened. About forty white boys ran out of the house--like a gang--and jumped these two little Chicanitos, plus they move the whole fight on over a few houses over to where the Chicanas were. When the police came, they found one of the Chicanos had been knocked out. So they handcuffed his hands, and threw him in the police car. They grabbed the other Chicano and threw him in the car, too, then left. At the station, the nurse said, "Excuse me, this guy needs to go to a doctor." See? What happened there was gang warfare. The white people jumped the eight Chicanos, but the police didn't look at it as a gang warfare. When the police drove up, they decided that the white people weren't the problem, it was the two little brown kids who were the problem. They arrested them and took them off. This is gringismo.
There is a problem when the police come into a situation, and rather than try to assess the situation, they make assumptions, based on where they are coming from. They say, "Ah, the problem is the brown kids. They must be the problem, take them out." Boulder is lily white and that is the problem.
The police have apologized and they said, "OK, we made a mistake." But, excuse me, they continue to make these mistakes. This is not new. I have been in this community since 1972, and it has not changed. I don't care how many times we sit there and try to resolve this with the police. As long as they come from the perspective that we are the ones that are wrong, things won't change.
They say we need to stop carrying the guns in our community, and we need to stop the drugs coming into our community. We don't bring the drugs. People of color don't bring them. White people do. But do you know what? We have to defend ourselves. The kids have no other options. They cannot depend on the police to defend them, so they pick up a gun and say, "I will defend myself." Recently I started carrying a knife, something I have never done--"All Mexicans carry knives." You know that is the stereotype. I didn't (carry a knife).
I did a diversity training. White people, a majority of the people in a particular agency, all sat in one area and people of color sat in another area. I said, "What perceptions do you have of people of color?" "Well, they all carry knives," the white people said. I said, "People of color who are carrying knives, please raise your hand." One or two did. "White people who are carrying knives, raise your hand." A bunch of them did. OK. Let's start rethinking our perceptions. I carry a knife because I have to protect myself because the police will not. As a Chicano, I have to think about those kinds of things. We are going to have to rethink many things if we are ever going to come to some resolution. We need to rethink how we come to the table and deal with that.
I walked away from this institution. I was pushed out of high school, so I got a GED. I graduated with a degree in psychology and went on to do some work in graduate school. At some point I realized that in the School of Education I was not getting an education. I found that what was happening was that I was being forced to believe in gringismo. I had to step away from that and relearn how to teach and how to do things, to go back to my own people, and not to get locked up in this.
We need to come to the table with open minds, recognize that there are differences and stop victimizing, stop thinking that because you are brown, black, or different in some way that you are the problem. No, the problem is not there. The problem is in our American society, in gringismo. We continue to perpetuate this. As long as we are thinking this, then we are not going to make any changes. There will be absolutely no resolution between people unless there is equality in the resolution. If it is all about getting people of color to compromise and do what the gringos want them to do (be good little American citizens), the more we try to do that, the more resistance you are going to find.
What happened in LA was not a riot. It was a resistance. It was a revolution and it was not about Rodney King. It had nothing to do with Rodney King. It had to do with people saying "I am tired of this and I will do something to change it. I will put my life on the line to make these changes." Unlike Martin Luther King, unlike Caesar Chavez, our objective is not peace. Our objective is justice, justice by any means. We need to remember that. Peace will happen when justice happens.