Speaker 1: I feel like covering this. There's really only one appropriate
Speaker 1: song that none of us have the licensing to play,
Speaker 1: but it's to Live and Die in l A. The
Speaker 1: only one that can save us now is Tupac, because
Speaker 1: I don't know nobody that spawned black and brown unity
Speaker 1: in Los Angeles. Better, there's nobody we agree on over more.
Speaker 1: He is the patron saint of all of our streets,
Speaker 1: and the man ain't even bored here. But to Live
Speaker 1: and Die in l A is is is the only
Speaker 1: appropriate song right here. It's city of angels and constant dangel.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, Like, Uh, we might fight
Speaker 1: amongst each other, but I promise you this burning bitch down,
Speaker 1: get us piste to live and die in l A
Speaker 1: my angels soon. It's just it's only POC right now.
Speaker 1: And I'm landing on this last quote. It wouldn't be
Speaker 1: l A without Mexican kids, Black love brown right in
Speaker 1: the sets again, it's l A. It's been a long
Speaker 1: forty years to figure out how to really live on
Speaker 1: top of each other and to live well. And in
Speaker 1: one fail swoop, we saw streets, immigration, and politics merge
Speaker 1: into one nasty ass. Tape from the l A City Council.
Speaker 1: Let's talk about it hood politics, y'all. All right, So
Speaker 1: obviously this particular story hits home in ways that many
Speaker 1: of these stories don't, because this is my hood, this
Speaker 1: is my home, this is not far away. When directly
Speaker 1: connected to these people, to these cities, to these areas,
Speaker 1: and to the power of these people, were brokering if
Speaker 1: you don't know, which is crazy, because I can't believe
Speaker 1: how this mug has really made national news. So l
Speaker 1: A City Council Chair Nouri Martinez was on this call
Speaker 1: with Gil Sadillo and Kevin de Leone, who was like,
Speaker 1: and Kevin de leon was really hurts it like he's
Speaker 1: he's he's the like quasi progressive one out year. You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying was on this tape that were
Speaker 1: secretly recorded, and we could do another thing about like
Speaker 1: was this snitch in appropriate? Important? But um, when they
Speaker 1: were just speaking freely about consolidating Latino power and Latino votes,
Speaker 1: and you know when you speaking freely. Now, look, this's
Speaker 1: gonna sound like I'm giving her a pass, but I
Speaker 1: trust me, I am not. Because of how personal I
Speaker 1: have no choice but to take this. But you know
Speaker 1: when you with the hums. Sometimes you kind of put
Speaker 1: a little extra southside on your tacos, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like my mom will say, ask some mustard,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean to your story, and you
Speaker 1: might speak a little more reckless than you normally would
Speaker 1: when you just know, you know what I'm saying, You
Speaker 1: just with the homies, and you know they're supposed to
Speaker 1: know you don't mean it, or even if you do,
Speaker 1: they're supposed to go, uh, you are? Are you nasty?
Speaker 1: You're supposed to just laugh it off, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, But no, for real and not saddio like.
Speaker 1: But it's cool because it's like, you know, you would
Speaker 1: never say this stuff in public because that would blow
Speaker 1: the whole ship up. But maybe it is inside your heart.
Speaker 1: Who knows. But anyway, they were discussing their plans about
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard this already, their plans about consolidating
Speaker 1: Latino votes in South Allet. Right, they're bringing up certain people,
Speaker 1: and Miss Nourri Martinez made a couple offhand comments about
Speaker 1: other council members who you know, one dude, she was like,
Speaker 1: funk that guy, Like he's with the blacks, right, And
Speaker 1: this man has adopted a young young black bands to
Speaker 1: which she called a unito, which is like a little monkey.
Speaker 1: And then she made these other comments about indigenous people
Speaker 1: in Mexico, like what howking uh? Indigenous people? And I
Speaker 1: don't know if, again you're not from this part of town,
Speaker 1: so maybe you don't know. I don't know how often
Speaker 1: you've been in Mexico. But like they are in fact
Speaker 1: very little, like just just in stature they are. They're
Speaker 1: just small. But there is and I'm gonna get into
Speaker 1: a lot of this this later because again I've been
Speaker 1: around this culture from like anybody else in that like
Speaker 1: for around our whole life. But there is a lot
Speaker 1: of like colorism and racism towards the more indigenous looking Mexicans.
Speaker 1: Among Mexicans, you know what I'm saying. There's even a
Speaker 1: phrase called, oh, it's Indian proof, Like it's Indian proof,
Speaker 1: which basically means it's like it's like a child safety lock,
Speaker 1: like it's too hard to been basically like Indians are
Speaker 1: too stupid to be able to open this, so it's
Speaker 1: like it's Indian proof. Like that's just a saying among them,
Speaker 1: there's something that's obviously there's like an internalized racism. Now,
Speaker 1: don't get me wrong, I ain't gonna poke only a them,
Speaker 1: because black people got our own colorism we gotta deal with.
Speaker 1: But she used a bunch of terms that unfortunately are
Speaker 1: not unheard of among the Mexican community. You know, the
Speaker 1: thing about this and then being with the blacks. Anytime
Speaker 1: you say the blacks, it's like, nig you're right. There's
Speaker 1: no way to cut that one yo, say it like,
Speaker 1: because that's just this is right anyway. So it leaked,
Speaker 1: and to my joy, my absolute joy, the l A
Speaker 1: Latino community went ham and was like, nah, homie, fuck
Speaker 1: that nigga. Fuck do that's an old Kendrick reference. Uh
Speaker 1: section you say, But they were just like, nah, fam
Speaker 1: she gotta go all y'all gotta go that shi. We
Speaker 1: don't let that ship ride no more. We've evolved, which
Speaker 1: is like such an amazing thing to say that l
Speaker 1: A Latinos confronted their own racism among this okay future
Speaker 1: me here. So for most of this recording, I don't
Speaker 1: do a lot of like switching between Latino Latina Latina Latina. Yes,
Speaker 1: I don't switch that because mainly I was just kind
Speaker 1: of just talking. I don't mean anything by it. I
Speaker 1: want to make sure I'm speaking to y'all with the
Speaker 1: respect level that y'all deserved, as far as your gender
Speaker 1: neutral terms. Also understand and obviously the same no excuse
Speaker 1: that there is still discourse around what you'll prefer. My
Speaker 1: wife says that, like, if you're a native Spanish speaker,
Speaker 1: Latin X just doesn't dramatically make sense, like it don't
Speaker 1: roll off things. It's a much more academic term. That
Speaker 1: being said, Yeah, you you you tell me what you'll prefer.
Speaker 1: But anyway, I just wanted to point that out here.
Speaker 1: And she stepped down as chair, which means she ain't
Speaker 1: lead the council. The thing about you gotta understand again,
Speaker 1: going back to Tupac, we might fight amongst each other,
Speaker 1: but I promise you this. She he was making a
Speaker 1: reference to the l A riots. We will burn this
Speaker 1: bit down when I tell you the city rolled up
Speaker 1: to that city council meeting and was like one of
Speaker 1: my favorite or my favorite clips is this chill. I
Speaker 1: was like, I just would like to say basically like
Speaker 1: fuck you, fuck you, fuck you, you're cool, fuck you.
Speaker 1: Like she just lit them all up and was like
Speaker 1: this whole ship is a sham. How dare you talk
Speaker 1: about our community like this? You only got the power
Speaker 1: we gave you. She just lit them nigs up because
Speaker 1: you have to understand, I won't play that ship no
Speaker 1: more so anyway, the tape league city and the uproar
Speaker 1: calling them to resign, but it brought up a number
Speaker 1: of things. That is the perfect cross section of the
Speaker 1: Black and Latino coalition that has taken a good thirty
Speaker 1: or forty years to develop, and really just how fragile
Speaker 1: it is, how far we gotta go to make this
Speaker 1: thing really crack. So that's the context of this. Let's
Speaker 1: talk about black love, Brown pride. All right, let's go
Speaker 1: So obviously I'm black, but I don't know how familiar
Speaker 1: you are with my work and my backstory. Maybe this
Speaker 1: is the first podcast you jumped into. But my wife
Speaker 1: first in Mexican, grew up on you know, Huntington Park,
Speaker 1: which is South l A on the east side. I
Speaker 1: also born in South Central, but on the east side
Speaker 1: of South Central. I grew up on the borderlands of
Speaker 1: the Black and Latino neighborhoods, and then I moved to
Speaker 1: an area called the San Gabriel Valley city called Valenda.
Speaker 1: It could have you could have called it Valenda La
Speaker 1: Poente City if you're familiar with l A. It's like, basically,
Speaker 1: I grew up in a when I say, one d
Speaker 1: percent Mexican space, sprinkle with a Filipino community like I
Speaker 1: just like the part of town I was in was
Speaker 1: it was. I grew up in a Mexican environment, you know,
Speaker 1: that's just it's where I'm from. You know, I did
Speaker 1: high school in the suburbs, you know, which was very diverse,
Speaker 1: very multicultural. But then my parents were split by then,
Speaker 1: and I kind of lived half the time with my
Speaker 1: dad back in La One, and you know, my grandmother
Speaker 1: was still in South Central, still on the east side.
Speaker 1: Either way, the point I'm trying to make is this
Speaker 1: is coming from lived knowledge and marital experience and historical
Speaker 1: I wanted to have my wife come out here and
Speaker 1: actually do this part, but she's on a hike and
Speaker 1: she just got promoted, uh at her job, so she's like,
Speaker 1: I'm busy, But anyway, here we go. I'm trying to
Speaker 1: give context to history for these types of statements that
Speaker 1: Miss Martinez had made. When you come from Los Angeles,
Speaker 1: like the experience as a person who's non Latino looking
Speaker 1: at the Latino community in relation to the rest of
Speaker 1: the world, if you will, Like there's no strata of class,
Speaker 1: education power that Latinos not in. It's not like they're
Speaker 1: only poor, does that make sense. It's like sometimes you
Speaker 1: go to places and it's like the only ones, like
Speaker 1: they are not the only ones working, but they don't
Speaker 1: leave working class, like in the sense that, for example,
Speaker 1: the dude standing out in front of the home depot
Speaker 1: that are down to be a day laborer, the people
Speaker 1: picking the strawberries, but also your school principle, but also
Speaker 1: your college professor. There's an area and Downey you know
Speaker 1: what I'm saying, which is mostly Cuban, if you will,
Speaker 1: But like that's like Hollywood level, Beverly Hills Latinos. You know,
Speaker 1: you have East l A Latinos, gang banging, cholo low rider,
Speaker 1: you know what I'm saying. You have that, But then
Speaker 1: you also have Mona Bello, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: which is right next to East l A, which is
Speaker 1: on a hill, and their doctors. Like, so you have
Speaker 1: this full stratification of Mexico, and so you don't just
Speaker 1: they're not just these hidden migrant farm workers in l A.
Speaker 1: There everybody that's just there, are just a normal part
Speaker 1: of your society, like as it should be. That being said,
Speaker 1: if you black, that's the same as black people. It's like, yo,
Speaker 1: majority of us are poor. We know we're facing racism.
Speaker 1: But also miss Williams was my third grade teacher. But
Speaker 1: also you got the King Drew Center, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. You also got Thomas Dorsey, you got all
Speaker 1: these like other examples of where we have stratified culture.
Speaker 1: But we know we've done it because it's our own
Speaker 1: experience in spite of all of the hindrances and history
Speaker 1: of redlining and racism. But we're like, but but because
Speaker 1: of that, we know why we're in South Central. We
Speaker 1: know why we're in Watts Like we understand that. I'll
Speaker 1: get to that. Let me stay here and talk about
Speaker 1: the Latino experience. So outside looking in their gang bang
Speaker 1: and they corporate just like us. So day in jail,
Speaker 1: right next to us, day in the projects, right next
Speaker 1: to us. You feel me. They do the jobs that
Speaker 1: don't nobody else want to do. You know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: You were looking out and you're like, yeah, nobody work
Speaker 1: harder than Mexicans, like you know that. So when you
Speaker 1: hear stuff about like them stealing your jobs, like when
Speaker 1: you black, you like, ain't still in nothing. You don't
Speaker 1: want to do that job. Nick, Neither do I though.
Speaker 1: So you're looking again, I'm gonna going through history here, right,
Speaker 1: so you you you this is your this is your
Speaker 1: experience with them. Now, what you don't realize if you're
Speaker 1: not in their culture is that first of all, all
Speaker 1: of them ain Mexican, some of them nigging itself Salvadorian.
Speaker 1: You just don't know that because if you again, if
Speaker 1: you outside, you know, if you outside of their culture,
Speaker 1: they just look the same, speak the same language. You
Speaker 1: don't know, no difference. You don't realize that the pop Saudia,
Speaker 1: that's a whole lass other country. You feel me like
Speaker 1: you yo know that, right, I'm laughing because it's funny
Speaker 1: in the sense of from a black perspective where you're like, oh,
Speaker 1: y'allre different. You know, I'm saying it's ridiculous. Of course
Speaker 1: there are and also some of m R first gen
Speaker 1: immigrants now again visually speaking, you know, and sonically again,
Speaker 1: if you're looking into the community, it's like in in.
Speaker 1: In your experience, you usually growing up with somebody. If
Speaker 1: you my age, the person you're growing up with is
Speaker 1: like second third, fourth Gin. They speak Spanglish you know ya,
Speaker 1: which are like phrases that don't exist in Mexico, or
Speaker 1: or your homies don't even speak Spanish, but they understand it.
Speaker 1: You feel me because their grandmama only speak Spanish because
Speaker 1: their grandma was the one that migrated. Or they got
Speaker 1: a cousin, you know what I'm saying, who dressed a
Speaker 1: little funny and it's a little funny to us because
Speaker 1: he's not American. And because they pour, you feel me
Speaker 1: like so so, and they have a different sense of style.
Speaker 1: These foods don't listen to like low riders. They don't
Speaker 1: listen to low rider. They don't listen to old soul.
Speaker 1: They're not listening to Oh these you know, rest in
Speaker 1: peace are lebau. You feel me like you do your googles. Right.
Speaker 1: So they're not singing I'm your puppet, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, They're not from that. They're singing China there
Speaker 1: into Gloria Tevine because they from Mexico. And on top
Speaker 1: of all that, your homie make fun of his own cousin.
Speaker 1: He called him trunthy and pice side. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, like they got their own jokes about people
Speaker 1: who like, you know, who's just recently here and then
Speaker 1: and talk like a little more Mexican and culture. You
Speaker 1: feel me like I'm saying that he's a pye side,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, like Whi's like this food's got
Speaker 1: like a cactus on his forehead, basically like he just
Speaker 1: got here, like y'all got your own jokes. So there
Speaker 1: there's this full sort of gambit of type of Mexican
Speaker 1: if you will, that exists in California, and unless you
Speaker 1: out there with him, you kind of just don't know.
Speaker 1: Now within that community is you know, you got Telemundo
Speaker 1: television stations, you got Vicon and if you add as
Speaker 1: anybody who's got a little bit of social awareness or
Speaker 1: consciousness among the Latino community whose family had that TV
Speaker 1: on those channels on all day, those channels are full
Speaker 1: of colorism. They're remarkably prejudice. They only got they put
Speaker 1: the light skinned ones up front. They make they they're
Speaker 1: understanding and and my wife attested this, the way that
Speaker 1: they're covering the news, especially about black people is from
Speaker 1: an outsider perspective, So all they know is the stories
Speaker 1: that are piped into them from mainstream American media. Right,
Speaker 1: and when they come here as a people Mexican, when
Speaker 1: they come here as a people, they land in the projects.
Speaker 1: So they only understanding of black people is this. So
Speaker 1: they begin to map on their understanding of American black
Speaker 1: people to the same colorism that come from their own country.
Speaker 1: Because again, anti blackness is a global situation here, so
Speaker 1: you map on a lot of those prejudices that come
Speaker 1: from Mexico, like you do. You remember the slave trade
Speaker 1: was went everywhere, it went all over up and down
Speaker 1: the America's Mexico and Central America got black people, of
Speaker 1: course it does. And again you're indigenous Mexican Maschka, you
Speaker 1: feel me Like I said earlier, the Wahak and Jalisco,
Speaker 1: like these natives, they're very small and they're very dark, right,
Speaker 1: So they already have this colorism that exists in their
Speaker 1: culture that they come from, and it's easy to map
Speaker 1: that colorism onto the black community when they get here.
Speaker 1: Is that I'm checking up for understanding as if you
Speaker 1: actually uh in the room with me. But I'm a
Speaker 1: pause for a second to see if that makes sense
Speaker 1: to you now having said that, when you're the again,
Speaker 1: your mama, your grandmama come in here and they land
Speaker 1: in the Imperial Courts projects and Watts on the border
Speaker 1: of Watson Compton. You know what I'm saying. When you
Speaker 1: got here in the sixties, in the seventies, like understand
Speaker 1: that Los Angeles, especially South Central, was eighty percent black.
Speaker 1: This was a hub for us. Now get to why
Speaker 1: that was in the next segment, because I'm still speaking
Speaker 1: about the Latino community. But when you get here, you know,
Speaker 1: they had to work their way through and had to
Speaker 1: deal with their own internalized colorism and racism and stuff
Speaker 1: like that, and no signs in their language. And people
Speaker 1: who who were here already, you know, Latinos who were
Speaker 1: here in Mexicans who were here already, who are now
Speaker 1: fourth and fifth generation that don't speak their language, you know,
Speaker 1: don't speak the language of a mother tongue. You feel
Speaker 1: me and on purpose because again going back to you
Speaker 1: know again with the Latino experience, if you had an accent,
Speaker 1: just because this was a white dominant world, if you
Speaker 1: had an accent, you were treated like a second class citizen.
Speaker 1: So they didn't want their kids to have accents, because
Speaker 1: why the hell do you come to America anyway except
Speaker 1: for you to have greater opportunities. You're gonna lose your
Speaker 1: opportunities if you sound like you can't speak the language.
Speaker 1: So parents would purposefully not teach their kids Spanish, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, to give them a leg up.
Speaker 1: Not only that, so they could keep talking amongst themselves freely,
Speaker 1: you feel me, and their kids don't know what they're
Speaker 1: talking about, you know what I'm saying, So like you
Speaker 1: can talk about your children and talk right in front
Speaker 1: of them. They don't understand the language, which feels like
Speaker 1: a superpower. You know. I see why they did it.
Speaker 1: But you know, full five generations later, you know, you
Speaker 1: have people that they're like, we're Chicano, like we are
Speaker 1: from Los Angeles, Like Chicano is a whole different experience
Speaker 1: that is Mexican American. You feel me, So it's the
Speaker 1: same and the same to me. It's like black people
Speaker 1: in Africans like y'all are different people. I know we
Speaker 1: are the it's the diaspora. I know I come from that,
Speaker 1: but let me not pretend. You know what I'm saying
Speaker 1: Black people used to pick a language like it's Swahili. Okay,
Speaker 1: that's one everything at Swahili. Dog that's one region in Africa. Well, no,
Speaker 1: we're just giving y'all our best guests as to where
Speaker 1: we are, where we're from in Africa. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like your people may not even speak Swahili.
Speaker 1: It's a cante cloud. What part of the can'tec cluth?
Speaker 1: What part of Africa that from? You don't know? You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. It's because we don't know, like
Speaker 1: we're so separated from our history. It's not it's different
Speaker 1: than Mexican experience, which is like a lot closer unless
Speaker 1: you like four or five generations later, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. Then you you know, you may know your
Speaker 1: great great great great grandma from Dudogo, but you ain't
Speaker 1: ever been unless you have because probably your cousin is
Speaker 1: still there and he come every song or to come
Speaker 1: work right, or you mess around get in trouble, which
Speaker 1: is having all the time you mess around, start getting
Speaker 1: in trouble, they send you to stay with your theo
Speaker 1: in Chia. You know what I'm saying, And so the
Speaker 1: homie Poco be gone all summer. Why because he got
Speaker 1: to go back to Mexico to work with his because
Speaker 1: he start getting like this, this was our experience, you
Speaker 1: feel me. Um. So that being said, they already have
Speaker 1: their colorism in there. So when you go back to
Speaker 1: the statement that miss Martinez made about the Natives for
Speaker 1: that generation, for like our parents, our grandparents generation, they
Speaker 1: say racist ship like that, yeah, ship like myat just
Speaker 1: rolls off these food's tongue which is more like a
Speaker 1: cuss word. And then ship like this like I vivid
Speaker 1: memories of foods, you know, referring to me like in
Speaker 1: the streets as like Yanta, which is tired. Why do
Speaker 1: you call him tired? Because you black like this, Like
Speaker 1: it's wild, man, Like real racism used to sit like
Speaker 1: for real, be in their community, you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Like they do it, and they have for a while.
Speaker 1: It's taken just like white people, it's taken generations to
Speaker 1: be like man, y'all can't like that's some bullshit, like
Speaker 1: you can't be talking about your own people like that,
Speaker 1: you know, And and it's and it has, like I said,
Speaker 1: it has changed. That's some ship. They're like my wife
Speaker 1: and our kids. They don't stay for ship like that.
Speaker 1: It's a whole other conversation about Mexican people saying nigger.
Speaker 1: That's a whole other conversation. That's about hip hop and
Speaker 1: stuff like that's a whole other talk. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying, Like, that's that's different. This isn't which is
Speaker 1: it's also different because this ain't New York where you
Speaker 1: have Puerto Ricans and Afro Latinos like we that that's
Speaker 1: not something that happens in l a Dominican like, that's
Speaker 1: not something that happens out here. That's different anyway, a
Speaker 1: whole other conversation. Now as far as the Chune thaw,
Speaker 1: which just means again little monkey. Now when me and
Speaker 1: my wife got married, calling your kids in Mexican culture
Speaker 1: like oh a little it's it's a ko meaning it's
Speaker 1: just a sweet thing you would just say to your
Speaker 1: children and you call them that because they're ripping and
Speaker 1: running like black people say, bouncing around off the walls,
Speaker 1: just bouncing around, getting in the mischief, like acting like
Speaker 1: little monkeys. You know what I'm saying. It's even it
Speaker 1: even hurts me. My my stomach just jumped even saying it, right,
Speaker 1: So separate from the African American slave experience them on
Speaker 1: their own is something that they call their children. I
Speaker 1: tell my wife before we had kids, if you ever
Speaker 1: refer to my child as a jungle as we fight.
Speaker 1: Obviously not physically, of course, but I'm like, that's gonna
Speaker 1: be you. You are not allowed. You gotta let that die. Baby,
Speaker 1: that's got it. She's like, that's our culture, that's not mine.
Speaker 1: You are not allowed. You cannot call my child a
Speaker 1: little monkey. And I had to explain to her, these
Speaker 1: are racist. These are these are racialized terms among black people.
Speaker 1: So you might hear among Latinos like they call their
Speaker 1: kids gorda gorda like you know what I'm saying it,
Speaker 1: and go like they're talking to their own children in
Speaker 1: a sense that it's it's it's ambiguous because in a
Speaker 1: sense that like that's just a term of endearment that
Speaker 1: they use for each other, right, Like how we would
Speaker 1: say like hardhead, you know, a little hardhead, where it's like, um,
Speaker 1: you know, big head, hey, big head, Like you know,
Speaker 1: it's a little less racist, but uh, it's a term.
Speaker 1: It's a term of endearment for them, and they're calling
Speaker 1: us monkeys. So in this scenario, she's using the term
Speaker 1: knowing full well you know you're talking about monkeys, you
Speaker 1: feel me. But the reason why it can roll off
Speaker 1: your tongue so easy is not as well, she's just
Speaker 1: openly racist. You're not certain words, uh, and phrases just
Speaker 1: sound like either harsher or less harsh, depending on the
Speaker 1: language you use. Like it's just you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Some stuff just sounds worse when it's translated. There's there
Speaker 1: are those moments kind of happening among like like you know,
Speaker 1: shagging like this, just what does that mean us? You
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. It's like it's a carpet, you know,
Speaker 1: unless you and you know, learning fancy a fact, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying, like you're talking about a cigarette,
Speaker 1: like it just you know, obviously it's not a cuss word.
Speaker 1: But like this, the context can either make something more
Speaker 1: or less offensive. That being said, you might have an
Speaker 1: argument that would say that given just that phrase, it
Speaker 1: sounds worse in English, and I don't. I mean, I'm
Speaker 1: not a native Spanish speaker. But given the rest of
Speaker 1: the context, Nah, she knew what she was saying. She
Speaker 1: was being racist, don't get it twisted. But the thing is,
Speaker 1: if you're not careful, you might miss, especially if you're
Speaker 1: mom Latinos, you might miss what was being said around there,
Speaker 1: unless you've been around enough black people to know that, like, Yo,
Speaker 1: this is this is unacceptable. Now if you Kevin del leone,
Speaker 1: do you check her if this is supposed to be
Speaker 1: like an off Mike discussion about coalition, do you be
Speaker 1: like yo, or do you know? All right? Whatever? She
Speaker 1: just she being an extra. I don't know. There's been
Speaker 1: times that I've been in situations where some of the
Speaker 1: homies is being an extra and I'm like, I feel
Speaker 1: like I know you better at the same time, like
Speaker 1: you can't be saying this. In my scenario, it's when
Speaker 1: the homies be making like homophobic statements and it's like,
Speaker 1: all pause, you know I'm saying where anything you do? Pause,
Speaker 1: It's like, all right, nig you know we have to
Speaker 1: like let that die on me. Like you can't just
Speaker 1: be like, I know it's slang it, Like I need
Speaker 1: to start being like hey, homey, like what if it
Speaker 1: is gay that you know what I'm saying? Like I
Speaker 1: have to learn how to like retrain the group text
Speaker 1: to be like, you can't just be ayo. You can't
Speaker 1: just be making like these inferences to like gay stuff.
Speaker 1: That's like, uh, that's gay. I'm not gonna do that,
Speaker 1: Like nigo, we can't talk like that no more. We've evolved,
Speaker 1: you feel me now? So you have this uh misunderstanding
Speaker 1: I'm trying to get into, like the tensions among black
Speaker 1: and brown communities, have this misunderstanding of these people don't
Speaker 1: understand us. We don't understand as Latinos. You like, I
Speaker 1: don't understand why y'all y'all figured it out yet, you
Speaker 1: know what I'm saying. You got all these opportunities here
Speaker 1: and you're still in these projects. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1: They're like, we nigga, we can't speak the language. That's
Speaker 1: why we stuck, you know what I mean? From their perspective,
Speaker 1: And at home, you're watching this television also that's clearly
Speaker 1: colorist and racist, and it's only reporting on black people
Speaker 1: in a certain way. And if you live in the
Speaker 1: projects when you're working outside, it's like that's all you
Speaker 1: see in too. And then on top of that, you
Speaker 1: bringing your own colorism that came from you know, Mexico.
Speaker 1: You know, have you ever heard the phrase, like it's
Speaker 1: basically it's called advance the race, Like, you know, I
Speaker 1: didn't see that side, Like, so it's the idea of
Speaker 1: like you have to marry white, you marry light, light skinned.
Speaker 1: That is among one of latinos because it advances the race.
Speaker 1: You feel me. So because again, anti blackness is global,
Speaker 1: you know what I mean. So, like this is already
Speaker 1: in their community and at the same time, somebody's gonna
Speaker 1: have enough sense to say, how is it, you know,
Speaker 1: Malcolm X and stuff like how is it like power?
Speaker 1: Or have you thinking that another poor person is your problem?
Speaker 1: You feel me? Did you wake up and you go,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, y'all can't possibly be the problem because
Speaker 1: you struggling the same way we're struggling. Maybe we should
Speaker 1: work together. You're getting beat up by the police. People
Speaker 1: started seeing the way we started getting treated by the police,
Speaker 1: the way it was like, damn, they treat you'all like
Speaker 1: they treat us, and we're stuck in the same Its
Speaker 1: the Willie Lynch theory. You know what I'm saying. You
Speaker 1: you're stuck in this and we're fighting over the same
Speaker 1: little mud pies. This ship ain't working this can't work.
Speaker 1: But then they also see how black people organized. You
Speaker 1: have to remember, like I'm going back thirty forty years.
Speaker 1: You find out about the Civil rights movement, you find
Speaker 1: out about the Black Panther Party, and then you get
Speaker 1: the brown berets. You know, you see what's happening all
Speaker 1: over the world. How the way we was talking was
Speaker 1: a lot more like listen, black, brown, Indigenous. You're seeing
Speaker 1: on the other side of the country. You know, the
Speaker 1: way the Puerto Rican community was bonding. You feel me.
Speaker 1: You seeing how we're organizing and we're getting rights for everybody,
Speaker 1: because it seemed like all the power and privilege was
Speaker 1: only going to the white and the wealthy. At some point,
Speaker 1: you like, okay, this ship, this this starting to make sense.
Speaker 1: These black people telling us, hey, nigg they're not gonna
Speaker 1: sell to you. You start seeing signs around the community,
Speaker 1: which was true during segregation. At this time, it would
Speaker 1: say in this restaurant, Black Mexican and Jews prohibited. You
Speaker 1: started seeing like, oh, ship, they think we them, oh
Speaker 1: that were getting treated the same. Maybe we should do
Speaker 1: something about this. But before you were fighting over the
Speaker 1: same resources. Right now black perspective after this, so the
Speaker 1: black migration into l A. Uh, post civil rights movement.
Speaker 1: You know, I've mentioned this before. My family came because
Speaker 1: of the Watts Towers projects, because of things like redlining
Speaker 1: and laws around city zoning and who would sell the
Speaker 1: black people. All kinds of prejudice created this mecca in
Speaker 1: south central Los Angeles. And I mean like Harry Belafonte
Speaker 1: had a house over you gotta remember that was Hollywood.
Speaker 1: You got Earth the Kid, you had Lena Horne. All
Speaker 1: these people had houses in l A. You know what
Speaker 1: I mean, right, Obviously they were mega stars, So that's different,
Speaker 1: you know, And that actually what's crazy. It's like that
Speaker 1: black community now is where the ten Freeway is, which
Speaker 1: is you know what they do. But this hub of
Speaker 1: black culture was developing because people post Jim Crow specifically
Speaker 1: from Texas. You know, Oklahoma and Arkansas all came west, right.
Speaker 1: And if you know black people, most of our families
Speaker 1: from l A. Our families are usually if you're in
Speaker 1: San Diego in l A, you in the Bay like
Speaker 1: our families are oftentimes you know, they're from Texas. Just
Speaker 1: like statistically, so for the most part, south central Los
Speaker 1: Angeles South l A was black right eighty and it
Speaker 1: was hard fought. Like you have to think about how
Speaker 1: hard we fought to gain political power, right, power in
Speaker 1: the streets, power in this you know, our own issues
Speaker 1: that we had among poverty and you know, and just
Speaker 1: just just street life like this is l A like
Speaker 1: it was black. Now South l A is eleven black.
Speaker 1: Like we just whether it was gentrification that did the
Speaker 1: housing vouchers because we got priced out, or it's just
Speaker 1: so many of them, like and I don't say this
Speaker 1: is like a disk. I'm saying no, literally, there are
Speaker 1: so many Los Angeles, South l A. Los Angeles, the
Speaker 1: percentage of Latino is fifty Latino. That means everybody else
Speaker 1: is split among the other fifty. There's just so many
Speaker 1: of them. So these areas, whether it was a fluent
Speaker 1: all the way down again because black people stratified the
Speaker 1: entire things of class two was you know, from from
Speaker 1: nikoson garden projects all the way to Beverly Hills. Were
Speaker 1: in every part of culture. Also, we was in the streets.
Speaker 1: We created this sound, We made treasure out of trash.
Speaker 1: What black people do everywhere we go, you know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. And then you get this influx of Latinos
Speaker 1: and you're in the same hoods we are. At first
Speaker 1: we was fighting over the same again, fighting over the
Speaker 1: same resources, fighting over the same jobs. And then eventually
Speaker 1: we started realizing in like, damn, they just like us
Speaker 1: right now, that wasn't happening in the streets. Here's where
Speaker 1: the streets meets the politics. Who's fighting for power, who's
Speaker 1: fighting for space representation, who gets to control the street corners?
Speaker 1: And a lot of that spilled out, spilled into and
Speaker 1: back out of from jail, right, because you know, jail
Speaker 1: if you, if you, jail is very racially divided. Right.
Speaker 1: A lot of our relationships in the streets were symbiotic
Speaker 1: in the sense that, like the weight comes from Mexico,
Speaker 1: It's coming from whether it's the Cocaina or the Mary Jojana,
Speaker 1: it comes from down South. So it's like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: we can make money together, you feel me, But I
Speaker 1: don't trust you. I don't sunk with them, like you
Speaker 1: see some of these O g s they like, oh well,
Speaker 1: don't funk with the essays because they their own world.
Speaker 1: That's day side of town. There's our side of town.
Speaker 1: And that's how you kept the peace. You know what
Speaker 1: I'm saying. We just lived segregated at first, but there's
Speaker 1: just so many and black people started seeing our space shrink.
Speaker 1: And you have to remember, like how long it took,
Speaker 1: whether it was redlining, zoning, all this stuff to finally
Speaker 1: have space and political power, Like it was hard fought
Speaker 1: only to finally get to the table. To see now
Speaker 1: that the PTA meetings is in Spanish, and it's like,
Speaker 1: nigked ship, Like what have we been going through? So
Speaker 1: now we can't get no jobs? Now everybody talking about
Speaker 1: y'all situation, It's like, I mean, I get it. And
Speaker 1: then y'all got the nerve and then for black people,
Speaker 1: y'all got the nerve to be racist against us too.
Speaker 1: It's like, well, ship man, how the funk you got
Speaker 1: something to say about us? Nicky? You just got here.
Speaker 1: You don't even know what you don't even know what
Speaker 1: we've been through, Like you want the same projects it's
Speaker 1: us where you think you better than us because it
Speaker 1: just wasn't working, you know what I'm saying. So like
Speaker 1: you had this these tensions that like forty years of
Speaker 1: coalition building behind the scenes to create the type of
Speaker 1: beginnings of unity that here I'm gonna argue, had a
Speaker 1: lot to do with the l A Riot. You know,
Speaker 1: the LA riots created the peace treaty among the crips
Speaker 1: and blood for a little bit, and of course it
Speaker 1: fell apart, of course, right, but there was a light
Speaker 1: bulb that turned on among our communities that was like, oh,
Speaker 1: you know why that lightbulb turns on because watch this.
Speaker 1: Because the police they put their cars right north of
Speaker 1: the Tian Freeway. Because once you get north of the
Speaker 1: Tian Freeway, you where the money is at least if
Speaker 1: you if you're looking at South Central Corridor, you on
Speaker 1: your way to Melrose in the Hollywood. So they was
Speaker 1: like they could burn themselves down. People not stupid. You
Speaker 1: start realizing, like we are underrepresented. Now you fast forward
Speaker 1: to now it's true the majority of local government is black.
Speaker 1: We're we are now what you would call by the
Speaker 1: numbers overrepresented. We're only but we make up two thirds.
Speaker 1: Like we make up most of the political power in
Speaker 1: Los Angeles. Why nig it took us a hundred fifty
Speaker 1: years man, but by sheer numbers of Latinos while they
Speaker 1: only make up one third of political power. And so
Speaker 1: the question was how do they get equal representation but
Speaker 1: not at the cost of black people. Right. There's a
Speaker 1: story in the l A Times about this young man who, uh, dude,
Speaker 1: this is Gorge Yeah, Jorge Nuno. He was gonna run
Speaker 1: for city council representing the ninth district. It was actually
Speaker 1: he built this like graphic design business really close to
Speaker 1: where I'm from, Vernon and Maine. It's it's long story anyway,
Speaker 1: that's the side that my family is from. But when
Speaker 1: he decided to run for the ninth district, you know,
Speaker 1: a Latino dude grew up on that side of town.
Speaker 1: He heard a resounding you can't run for that district.
Speaker 1: And who he heard it from was from his own
Speaker 1: O geez, the Latino power brokers, like the power brokers
Speaker 1: inside the city and say now you can't run for that.
Speaker 1: He was like why, and there was like we have
Speaker 1: an agreement to keep South l A black, which is
Speaker 1: like what it's because over forties years, this coalition building
Speaker 1: of understanding that listen, we need each other. The city
Speaker 1: is both of us, and you understand that, like our
Speaker 1: places to live or shrink y'all everywhere. Joe said, and
Speaker 1: there's this understanding again because black people are now overrepresented
Speaker 1: though we understand end that it can't just be about us.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying. Our liberation is connected to
Speaker 1: everybody's right, not to say that these black people are
Speaker 1: altruistic in this situation. We ain't always innocent, you feel me,
Speaker 1: But historical places like look in my own watch this, dude.
Speaker 1: When I first started dating my wife, there's a city
Speaker 1: called Lynnwood that's in south Gate. It's this uh sort
Speaker 1: of the Southern Corridor, right next to Compton that, from
Speaker 1: what I knew, was a black neighborhood. Yeah, I hadn't
Speaker 1: been there in a lot of years. And when I
Speaker 1: started dating my wife, she said she was gonna introduce
Speaker 1: me to her nephew. I was like, where does he live?
Speaker 1: It's like Lynnwood. I was like, Yo, we live and
Speaker 1: live Wood with all those black people. She was like,
Speaker 1: what did you talking about. I was like, we're talking
Speaker 1: about the st Lynnwood Dog. I got off that freeway.
Speaker 1: It was a Cardoon sal it was a north Gate,
Speaker 1: it was an else Supair grocery store. Like there was
Speaker 1: no signs in English. It was. I was like, when
Speaker 1: did this place? And for her, she was like, it's
Speaker 1: always been like this and I was like, no, it
Speaker 1: hasn't this was a black neighbor hood. She was like
Speaker 1: when I was like, yeah, I thought my whole life
Speaker 1: just it's just numbers. Right. So for these things to
Speaker 1: work and for us to have like equal rights and
Speaker 1: say among Los Angeles, we had to build these coalitions
Speaker 1: and listen, the same thing happened in the streets. This
Speaker 1: was crazy, Like we built these networks of like, yo,
Speaker 1: you messed with them, We messed with this, that's yours
Speaker 1: part of town, that show it is, and then spilled
Speaker 1: into hip hop right into music and the culture like listen,
Speaker 1: it is embodied in Tupac. I hate to say it
Speaker 1: like this, but Tupacs our patriots, saint like he just
Speaker 1: we all love him. We share Tupac in in styles
Speaker 1: and cultures like listen. I can't tell you who got
Speaker 1: what from who, just even down to the way we dress.
Speaker 1: Nike Cortez them shoes right, the dope man shoes, I
Speaker 1: think they're Mexican, right, dickies who wore dickies first, I
Speaker 1: think the polos, white teas, But who had the flannels,
Speaker 1: who had the gloves on their hand? Like easy he
Speaker 1: had the gloves on their hands? Did he get those
Speaker 1: from the Vatos? Vatos get that from us, like our
Speaker 1: whole style addressed decreased Denhams. You know, the the Levi jeans.
Speaker 1: I think those are the brothers. Those are the black dudes.
Speaker 1: We got the dickies from them. They got to this.
Speaker 1: I don't know. It's symbiotic. Who knows who got what
Speaker 1: from because we've merged our cultures. We outside at the
Speaker 1: taco stand with the Homie Peppe, you know what I'm saying,
Speaker 1: Like our our cultures, I don't know who got what.
Speaker 1: Looks here's here's what's funny when you listen to again
Speaker 1: all these like you know, the shy lights and all
Speaker 1: this stuff that like all these Vatos was listening to
Speaker 1: and a Low Riders. I bet you a million dollars
Speaker 1: they didn't know all the bands was black people. Because
Speaker 1: my wife didn't know. She was like, they're all black.
Speaker 1: I was like, yes, that is soul music. It's all
Speaker 1: black music that's bumping out of these Low Riders and
Speaker 1: that crazy. Like our cultures over the years have had
Speaker 1: this beautiful exchange all to get blown up up under
Speaker 1: the surface. Now finally, let's talk about what this means
Speaker 1: for our survival and especially in this election time. These
Speaker 1: are things we have to really think about. It's difficult.
Speaker 1: I I you know, there's a publication out here called
Speaker 1: l A Taco. It's an independent uh journalism. This is
Speaker 1: a difficult story to cover because you have to be
Speaker 1: like yo, just because you're Latino, just because you latina, Latino, Dad,
Speaker 1: I've been really bad on my pronouns here. Don't mean
Speaker 1: you ain't racist. Down't me, you ain't got some stuff
Speaker 1: you've gotta deal with, right At the same time, you
Speaker 1: should have more presentation, you feel me. But how do
Speaker 1: you do that? That is not at the cost of
Speaker 1: other underrepresented people. But here's where it's complicated. Black people
Speaker 1: aren't underrepresentative, at least in Los Angeles. It's complicated. So
Speaker 1: what did you do? Well? You did what l A
Speaker 1: has attempted to do for the last forty years. Build coalitions,
Speaker 1: do black and brown community community service things. Understand that
Speaker 1: whatever you're provided for us, you provide for them, and
Speaker 1: vice versa. That's why when you always hear me, it's
Speaker 1: always both of us, because that's the experience here. And
Speaker 1: when you look in the streets, a lot of that
Speaker 1: gangship that's from jail, that's the old dude these young
Speaker 1: niggas don't play that unless they just still on their
Speaker 1: ignorance stuff. But there there's an understanding that this coalition
Speaker 1: building has been very fragile and very difficult and very hard,
Speaker 1: hard fought. A lot of blood has been shared physically
Speaker 1: and metaphorically. But the way forward, if you were watching this,
Speaker 1: could not have been just black people going to city
Speaker 1: council and being like, yo, I can't believe y'all doing
Speaker 1: this now. From a black perspective, it was hard. It
Speaker 1: was heartbreak. We thought we was cool. Matter of fact,
Speaker 1: and listen, listen, I'm gonna speak black people period. Like
Speaker 1: when you when you're looking up and down the uh,
Speaker 1: when you're looking up and down the ballot, and you
Speaker 1: don't know who the person is. If you don't know
Speaker 1: if that person black, you just look for the Spanish surname.
Speaker 1: You look for the Rodriguez. You're like, oh, you're probably cool.
Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying, because we're like, well, I mean,
Speaker 1: at least you get it. That's our perspective. It's like, well,
Speaker 1: you know, it's not the same, but I'd rather have
Speaker 1: one of them if it ain't gonna be one of us.
Speaker 1: And this this put all that in question, but it
Speaker 1: also gave us a chance to revisit the types of
Speaker 1: unity among suffering people that could only lead to our success.
Speaker 1: And again, it couldn't have just been black people in
Speaker 1: the uproar. It's been dope to see the Latin community
Speaker 1: come together and say we will not stand for this ship.
Speaker 1: Black love, Brown pride to live and die in that lane. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this is the thing was recorded by Me Propaganda and
Speaker 1: East Low Spoil Heights, Los Angeles, California. This mug was mixed, edited, mastered,
Speaker 1: and scored by Matt Osowski. I can totally say his name, guys,
Speaker 1: it was it was a stick. He's going by Matt
Speaker 1: now again because he got into legal situations with the
Speaker 1: name Headlights. Y'all know, common used to be called common sense.
Speaker 1: You know, Tip t I was tipped Sometimes it happens.
Speaker 1: Executive produced by the one and only Sophie Lichtman for
Speaker 1: a Cool Zone Media and the theme music by the
Speaker 1: one and only Gold Tips Gold Tips d J Shawn p.
Speaker 1: So y'all just remember listen every time you check in.
Speaker 1: If you understand city living, you understand politics, We'll see
Speaker 1: you'll next week