Crazed Euro-Centric Whitey Bullshit I Deal With at Graduate School

Cross-posted from The Mustard Seed.

Whitey committing genocide against the Native population...No wait...I need to be "objective." I mean, whitey "negotiating land rights" with the Native population...there we go.

As those of you who have read my About page will know I am pursuing my Masters in Divinity (same as Masters in Theology but one extra year of "pastoral formation" and such) at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley. Here is an example of some of the great fantastic knowledge I have to put up with.

For an online class (in where we meet for discussion once a week) one of the questions was this:

What are some ways the new context of independence and establishment of the United States shaped American religion?

And my very mild answer was this (bold was added for this blog, just me being slightly snarky)...(Click here to read the rest)

John Hope Franklin, Black Scholar and Activist, Died at Age 94

John Hope Franklin, a prolific scholar of African-American history who profoundly influenced thinking about slavery and Reconstruction while helping to further the civil rights struggle, died Wednesday in Durham, N.C. He was 94.

...

In an article in The Atlantic Monthly in 2007, he wrote, “If the American idea was to fight every war from the beginning of colonization to the middle of the 20th century with Jim Crow armed forces, in the belief that this would promote the American idea of justice and equality, then the American idea was an unmitigated disaster and a denial of the very principles that this country claimed as its rightful heritage.” (Read the rest of the obituary here)

ART EXHIBIT - 1968: Celebrating Filipino Artists Commemorate an Era of Rebellion

I am blogging at a new blog called inCOLOR which is about fashion, design, entertainment, music, and the arts from the perspective of people of color.  I will be cross-posting some of the stuff I do for it on here is one post of an upcoming event in the East Bay:

In 1968, the world was aflame with movements for national and social liberation. Wars raged from Angola to Vietnam, Bolivia to Guinea Bissau as the peoples of Africa, Asia and Latin America fought to free themselves from colonial rule, neocolonial dictatorships, and imperial conquest. Politicized by the imperialist repression of both their countries abroad and their neighborhoods at home, Third World peoples living within the borders of the U.S. transformed their anger into militant national movements and organizations like the Red Guard, Young Lords, and Brown Beret, as the Black Panthers had done a few years earlier.

Mumia Abul-Jamal on Thanksgiving

The New President Obama Ushers In A New Patriotism And A New American Identity

Today, the meaning of everything has changed drastically. Today, the face of America has been given quite a new look. Today, a person of color, predominantly recognized as African American, is our president.

Whoever you are, and whatever your beliefs, today I write directly to you with a new sense of American unity. For once, I feel as if America truly does have an exciting and unknown future for the ideas, discussions, and education of our people.

Children in schools all over the world will learn of this historic event and probably feel a sparkle of excitement in their chests at this monumental change in America. Children here in America will be finally given an undeniable and unmarginalized hero and role model--I say this because despite the great figures that are Martin Luther King Jr. and Rosa Parks, they are unfortunately forced into a segment of children's educational experiences. They are always a part of black history, never treated as the very fibers of American history.

But today, America, Barack Obama cannot be sectioned off. He cannot be shoved into a single month, a single decade, or a single category of history. He is inevitably pervasive--his presidency explicitly touches every piece of the world today and for at least the next four years.

Do not deny him. Do not develop double standards for him. Whether he succeeds in your eyes or not, never associate it with his race. He is undeniably an African American president, but just as Bush's failed image has only been attributed to him personally, do not attach Obama's presidential performance entirely to his race.

Please America, do not deny him, but give him the opportunity to show us that a person of color should be seen just like any other president. Yet at the same time, recognize him for what and who he is. He is an historic figure, a man of color who has accomplished a great feat, and who does represent, for many, the voices of the marginalized and disenfranchised.

And finally, I would like to pay my utmost respect to Michelle Obama, who is now the first African American First Lady of America, and their two beautiful young girls, who all come together as the first African American family to take their rightfully earned place in the White House.

This new African American family has publicly and undeniably broken the chains of true patriotism. For those who still resisted diversity in patriotism, now, it has been cemented in the history books. Now it is legitimized in the academy. This is our First Family. They don't just represent African Americans, but they represent diversity unified. It's a great birth of a new face of patriotism.

I embrace each of you as my fellow Americans, and I hope we can all eventually come to make this historic new presidency into a chance to heal the great fissures that have fostered hatred and ignorance for so long. As Obama beautifully asks, let us all redefine patriotism together. Let us listen to one another and be honest to one another. Let us resist partisanship and immaturity, and let us rediscover the beautiful values that unite us.

Peace to you all,
Sara

"I can't be a pessimist, because I am alive."

Time Wise, on his Facebook posted this video of James Baldwin. In his post he stated:

This is an amazing clip of Baldwin, discussing Malcolm and Martin, but especially the last two minutes, in which he poses the ultimate challenge to white America.

I don't necessarily agree with his views on the Black Muslim movement but he was speaking from a different time and a different generation.

"The movement began to devour itself."

Cross-posted from Alas, a blog.


Since everyone seems to be talking about Bill Ayers and the Weatherman Underground here is a short trailer from the 2002 film "The Weather Underground."



Here is a quote from a Black Panther during the time the Weatherman Underground was active:

We believe that the Weatherman action is anarchistic, opportunistic, individualistic, chauvinistic, it's Custeristic. And that's the bad part about it. It's Custeristic in that its leaders take people into situations where people can be massacred. And they call that a revolution? It's nothing but child's play. We think these people may be sincere but they are misguided, they're muddle heads and they're scatter brains.

You can see the entire documentary here and order it here at PBS.

Race is a Lie

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Jasmin blogs:

...race is not real; it is a socially constructed phenomenon based solely on visible physically differences. Race is so fictitious a concept that in the post-emancipation U.S. a man could be considered Black in one state, and White in another!

Although race is not real, the effects of racial differentiation; however, are very real. Not every racial group experiences racism in the same manner or to the same degree. Racialized groups (those who society labels “visible minorities”) continually face institutionalized, racial discrimination based solely on stereotypes attached to our skin tone.

COLTAN: The Other "Blood Diamond"

If you don't know what Coltan is, you really need to find out. Unfortunately, it was something I barely found out about just a couple years ago in college.

I was pleased to randomly come across a little Yahoo article about Coltan, a very unique metal that is essential to all electronic devices. Yes, it is in your phone, your computer, and a lot of other stuff close to us, including our Play Stations.

Unfortunately, the atrocious reality of Coltan is not nearly publicized enough, even though it is essential to the Western world.

From Yahoo:

According to a report by activist site Toward Freedom, for the past decade the search for a rare metal necessary in the manufacturing of Sony's Playstation 2 game console has fueled a brutal conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo.

...the demand for coltan prompted Rwandan military groups and western mining companies to plunder hundreds of millions of dollars worth of the rare metal, often by forcing prisoners-of-war and even children to work in the country's coltan mines.

From Suite101.com:

Every day millions of children are forced to crawl into underground mines on their hands and knees to dig for the essential raw material, coltan, to make electronic gadgets like cell phones, iPods, laptop computers, play stations, wireless systems, DVD players, blackberries and pagers possible.

These technologically advanced toys are given life from capacitors, which are made from coltan, dug up from dangerous mines by children, under age 10.

The illegal trafficking of coltan in the Congo, has made thousands of children labourers. They work from sunrise to after dark digging with their calloused little hands into the earth to remove the raw material to be traded on the black market for US $400 a pound.

This is a really complicated issue--we got race, class, globalization, human rights issues, capitalism, and a whole lot of other stuff implicated in this Coltan business. As controversial as Marx is, right now his Fetishism of Commodities is first on my mind. We really need to know the history that is hidden within our commodified products.

Eugenics and Education

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Bill Ayers reviews Ann G. Winfield's book Eugenics and Education in America:

Written out of the official story as quackery and the handiwork of a few nut-cases, Winfield demonstrates beyond doubt that eugenics was not only respectable, mainstream science but also that its major tenets were well-springs in the formation of American public schools with echoes in the every day practices of today. Formed in the crucible of white supremacy and rigid hierarchies of human value, American schools have never adequately faced that living heritage.

Whiteness is a Trick

Via Zuky via Eric Stoller

Come On America, Arizona's SB 1108 Is A Racist Bill

"I'm gonna show you WHO's BOSS"

To some people it may have seemed like the fight was against undocumented immigrants. They are "illegals," "aliens," "criminals" overrunning our nation.

Well for me that was never true. From my own experience, it's basically a fight against culture, language, and color. The anti-immigrant sentiment that is so strong today, as it has been throughout our history as the United Sates, is about hatred. It's about racism, colonial power, capitalist interest, and everything else you can think of.

Man, I am just sick and tired of this. I am sick and tired of this game that a lot of "Americans" are playing. This is not about immigration.

YOU KNOW WHY? THIS IS WHY: Arizona state lawmakers and their evil SB 1108 bill is about killing Mexican-American/Chican@/Latin@ identity. To say this bill is fueled by merely anti-immigrant sentiment is to confuse the real issue here--because anti-immigrant sentiment has always been about anti-Hispanic sentiment (hey I don't like calling it Hispanic, but that's what it is to them)

You can look up several news articles on the bill, but here's one:

Some state lawmakers are again sticking their noses where they don't belong and trying to tell educators what should or shouldn't be taught in public schools.

The Legislature is attempting to usurp the decision-making responsibilities of local school boards and is perpetuating lies and creating divisions among Arizonans by pushing a bill that seeks to end programs like Raza Studies in the Tucson Unified School District. The bill would deny state funding to schools whose courses "denigrate American values and the teachings of Western civilization."

Whatever that means.

Howard Fischer of Capitol Media Services reported in Thursday's Star that the bill, SB 1108, is aimed at MEChA, the Movimiento Estudiantil Chicano de Aztlán, a student group that state Rep. Russell Pearce, R-Mesa, describes as racist.

Raza Studies has also drawn the ire of anti-immigrant-rights activists and last year was criticized by state schools superintendent Tom Horne, who said the program was promoting "ethnic chauvinism."

Horne investigated the program and then quietly dropped his inquiry.

Pearce, one of the state's most strident opponents of illegal immigration, appears to have bought into the notion that MEChA followers want to take over the southwestern United States, which was part of Mexico.

That's hogwash.

The myth is perpetrated by right-wing anti-immigrant-rights groups like American Border Patrol and their Web sites. The lie gained new life over the last couple of years as the illegal-immigration debate reached a boiling point.

...What lawmakers like Pearce ignore is that programs like Raza Studies and MEChA help many Hispanic students excel.

By learning more about their race's culture, the students become engaged in the education process and go on to become better taxpaying members of society.

OH I'M SORRY AMERICA. I'm sorry that because world history is OBVIOUSLY distorted in every damn aspect of our education to favor learning about white people, I have to oppress my own identity and educate myself about subjects that are not only irrelevant to my culture and diversity, but are also not reflective of true history.

It wasn't until college that I finally came to understand the dimensions of my Latina identity. It wasn't until college that I learned about the atrocities of white America's past and present--the genocides, the school of the Americas, the coups, the SLAVERY, the exploitation, the National Origins Quota, the "treaty" of Guadalupe Hidalgo, the promises of reparations, the diseased blankets, Thanksgiving, Africa, Guatemala, the list goes on...

I AM NOT ANTI-AMERICAN. The REAL anti-Americans are those people who RESIST accepting that AMERICAN MEANS MANY LANGUAGES,CULTURES,RACES,AND HISTORIES. American is NOT CITIZEN--AMERICAN IS PERSONHOOD. I AM AMERICAN BECAUSE I AM A LATINA BORN IN THE UNITED STATES who is an active member of society, respects her fellow Americans (documented or not), and upholds her values of tolerance and human rights for all. I recognize that HISTORY is not ONE STORY, BUT MANY. Our country does not have a history, as our euro-centric society would have it, our country has HISTORIES--good and bad--of peoples from all perspective.

I am tired of being taught one perspective. What Ethnic studies does, let alone Chican@ studies, is give us ANOTHER perspective--one that often reflects that of us "Hispanics" who are trying to learn something other than the white history. LETS KEEP TEACHING WHITE HISTORY BUT NOT WHITE HISTORY ALONE. Let's teach many histories.

With all my heart, with all my soul, I beg others to join me and many others in saying: AMERICA, THIS BILL IS RACIST, XENOPHOBIC, AND UNCONSTITUTIONAL.

Views: Feminism, Appropriation, and Racism

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Some more views across the blogoshpere on the recent controversy surrounding Marcotte and BFP. However, it is not just about one incident but a whole history of appropriating ideas from people of color in order to benefit those white "intellectuals" and "activists. As "Sudy" says, the "demand for writers/bloggers to "stop stealing" far exceeds the events (disasters) of this week or just BFP herself...I'm not talking about one singular instance that set me off into a knee-jerk reactionary post, I'm speaking about a maddening phenomenon of disregarding BODIES of work."

High on Rebellion:

Anyone who reads BFP regularly knows that she has done a lot of writing on immigration and particularly the racism and sexism faced by immigrant women in the US during the current climate of hysteria.

And now, she is understandably upset that Amanda Marcotte from Pandagon has published an article that happens to make all the same points BFP has made time and again and her blog - and yet, at no point has BFP been linked.

Sylvia dissects Marcotte's post on Alternet bit by bit, pointing out each phrase that Marcotte appropriated from women of color and men of color:

THAT’S the sinister nature of appropriation. And in this instance, by not linking to anyone that inspired her viewpoint — forget BFP, even — Amanda tapped into this narrative that has been tapped into by countless folks online and offline. And each leaking into this scheme hurts and makes the victims of invisibility less than charitable once someone white sees us and says, “Hey, what’s wrong? Please write us a book report with cross checks and proper cites, perfect spelling and grammar, and completely objective — that means don’t interpose your oversensitivity into it — yes, please write us a great screed telling us everything very clearly about what’s wrong. One ‘t’ uncrossed, and you lose your argument. And please, make sure you note everyone involved; if you fail to do so, that’s intellectually dishonest and we’ll refuse to engage with you!”

She also wrote:

I can’t keep doing this to my stomach and my health, my consciousness and my emotions, my work and life. And since the woman I did it for has asked for it to stop, I will honor that.

"Sudy" at A Womyn's Ecdysis:

BFP was certainly part of my thought process, but this demand for writers/bloggers to "stop stealing" far exceeds the events (disasters) of this week or just BFP herself. This post vomited on the years of hearing echos in the blogosphere with no visible credit or citation to others' contributions. My links are specific, but my point is wider. I'm not talking about one singular instance that set me off into a knee-jerk reactionary post, I'm speaking about a maddening phenomenon of disregarding BODIES of work . And I'm tired of something that is so deeply problematic being casually normalized by writers and readers of feminism.

Fetch Me My Axe:

Look. It's not that difficult a concept. A woman who's under the radar, relative to you, posts important news stories that are, in turn, under the radar. Both her under-the-radarness and the stories' have to do with, surprise, marginalization in ways that go beyond simple sexism: y'know, racism AND sexism, for instance. She works hard at building community and getting the word out about important stories. You, on the other hand, are primarily concerned with self-aggrandizement.

For a year or two or more, you steadfastly ignore her, on the whole. Certainly you don't bother to link to the stories she's covering; that would be too much like giving someone else credit. No. You wait. Maybe you're even at the same conference as this other woman, not so long ago, wherein she speaks on these same issues. And then, you post the stories and the POV the woman has been eloquently -trying- to get you to listen to for all this time...without a hint that you know who this person is. Kudos rain in. For you. Applause, applause, there's nothing like applause.

Beautiful, Also, Are the Souls of my Black Sisters:

But, as so often happens in the blogosphere, the voices of WOC are suppressed, silenced and downright ignored. Appropriation is the rule of the day, the law of the land, where WOC are concerned. We have been resisting oppression in this world for centuries, for generations, and no one wants to hear our voices. Very few want to give us credit for calling attention to the myriad injustices that exist in this world. As so often happens, when WOC give voice to the many isms that affect women the world over, we are simply derided, castigated, tagged-tarred-and-feathered as “angry”, “bitter”, “mean”, “bossy”, or the worse of all epithets—”hard to get along with”.

Team Rainbow:

In the months that Team Rainbow has been online, I have never once felt the need to get involved in any inter-blogular conflict. However, "X"'s co-opting of BFP's once powerful message is a matter that goes beyond interpersonal/interblog politics. It is a powerful symbol of a larger problem, which is the silencing of WOC writers, activists, and leaders by the more privileged sectors of the feminist movement. I can't hold a candle to BFP's brilliance, her breadth and depth and relevance of knowledge regarding WOC issues. So today I will write about my own people, my own heritage, and where we went wrong.

XicanoPwr writes:

I have read many blogs, but there is something about Brownfemipower. I have never met Brownfemipower personally, nor have I talked to her personally. But her words were powerful to inspire me to think in new ways, especially when it came to women issue. She has not only opened my eyes, but has challenged me.

...

En lucha mi amiga!

Rebbecca of Burning Words:

It’s a bit of an understatement that [X] doesn’t exactly have the best record on race issues. The sort of feminist issues that you’ll see covered at Brownfemipower’s essentially never see the light of day at Pandagon, and she’s been called out more than a few times over the years for dismissing and silencing women of colour when they’ve called her out about offensive comments that she’s made.

The SmackDog Chronicles:

And what does it say for AlterNet, which has never seen fit to allow more radical activists of color to impugne their pages, but frequently allows established A-list liberal feminist bloggers like Amanda Marcotte (and antiporn “leftists” like Bob Jensen and Gail Dines, too, BTW) to claim to represent the entire “progressive” diaspora unopposed and unburdened by actual debate and discussion???

Think Girl:

White feminists (and I am one myself), leave behind your notions of what feminism entails. We need to stop centering feminist work on such things as pop culture analysis, white women’s body images, and abortion. I’m not saying we should never talk about such things, but that feminism must work in step with so many many more movements: anti-racism, anti-classism, environmental issues, immigrant rights, anti-U.S. imperialism, LGBTQI rights, disability rights, anti-prison industrial complex, and so much more than I could quickly list here. Just as importantly, when we link with these movements, we must be careful to give credit when credit is due. We must expand our views to build coalitions, not for any less noble reason, such as to diversify our work. Please, join in this transformation; it is long overdue.

I end with Jessica Hoffmann saying:

you are bigger and more beautiful and insightful and important and revelatory and warm and liberating and transcending than i can even begin to express in words.

wish i could give you a hug and cook a hot, colorful dinner for you.

i'm cooking for some local make/shift folks tomorrow night, and you'd better know there will be many a toast in your honor.

xo

[Many o' Hat Tips: High on Rebellion, ¡Para Justicia y Libertad!]

Tim Wise on White Privilege

A nice short exlpaination on the affects of white privilege in America.



[Hat Tip: Eileen the Episcopalifem]

After Hutton and King

Author Ron Jacobs writes about the murders of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Hutton and concludes with this paragraph that I thought I'd share:

Despite the current campaign by Barack Obama for president, the vast majority of US residents of color are not faring that much better than they were in 1968. Legal apartheid no longer exists and attitudes towards race have progressed, but the economic facts of much of non-white America are appallingly similar to what they were forty years ago. Furthermore, the statistics regarding the imprisonment of black and Latino men in the United States provide concrete evidence that the mechanics of racial oppression still operate in this country. The criminal justice system continues to be the means by which the predominantly white and essentially racist power structure maintains its control over those who are poor and whose skin is darker in hue. Like I noted above, many of the same elements of US political and economic society that were served by the murder of Dr. King and the destruction of the Black Panther Party continue to be responsible for much of what goes on in those arenas to this day. No matter how one tries to portray the past forty years of this aspect of US history, it is clear that we have not reached the promised land.

Steps to Success: Step One, GET ENSLAVED!

Cross-posted from The Blog and the Bullet.

Karnythia blogs at The Angry Black Woman on a recent blog post by Pat Buchanan:

It’s this deliberate misinformation that bolsters the idea that black people are somehow magically getting ahead without merit, and fosters the resentment you see so often from whites that argue so vociferously against the concept of white privilege and against affirmative action. Never mind that the main beneficiaries of affirmative action have been white women. No, let’s just scream about that one time a POC “stole” a job that you really wanted/needed/preferred and ignore the part where you weren’t entitled to that job above all applicants.

It doesn’t help that even in school the history books skim over what Ida B. Wells, the NAACP, The Black Panthers, the NOI and others were doing in support of the black community. Aside from the actual Civil Rights Movement marches and demonstrations that are discussed, there is very little mention of day to day life in black communities.

"We Must Eat Dust"

Cross-posted from The Ghost of Tom Joad.

Found this at my school library's web log. Looks like it will be a good event, professor Dawn Mabalon is a very knowledgable person who I look forward to hear speaking:

Labor Archives and Research Center 22nd Anniversary Evening Program

Featuring Guest Speaker:

Dawn Mabalon
San Francisco State University

“We Must Eat Dust: Filipino Migratory Labor and Labor Organizing on the West Coast and Alaska, 1920s-1970s”



The event will be held at the ILWU, Local 34
4 Berry Street (2nd and King) on the Embarcadero
next to Giant’s Stadium. map

Friday, February 29, 2008 ~ 6 p.m.

Light Refreshments served at 6:00 p.m.,
program begins at 7:00 p.m.

Pinoy Jazz and Blues Music
by Little Brown Brother

Free and Open to the Public

This event is wheelchair accessible

LARC website

When it comes to labor history and race relations many unions were active agents in oppressing people of color during the Jim Crow era and even now. The Teamsters is one example. Looking at the demographics of my work it's made up of primarily people of color. I'd say around 60% or so, mainly Black and Latino with a sizable Asian population. However the locals in my area, especially my local, has mostly white males at the helm of leadership; however, in my local the majority of the nine shop stewards (seven of them) are people of color (but no women unfortunately). The ILWU (International Longshore and Warehouse Union) was one of the few exceptions in this, and has always had a militant and socialist/communist history behind it. ILWU Local 7, for example, was dominated by Pilipinos in the canneries and shipyards and took a militant stance against the government during the McCarthy Red Scare era.

Another aspect of American unions is that they also tend to downgrade people of color in working class struggles. Pilipinos in California and Hawii helped fight back against sugar plantation owners and giant agribusiness and created solidarity with themselves and Latino and Black workers.

I recommend to anyone interested in race relations and labor history to go to this event.

The Struggle

Blatant or subtle,
What's better for the struggle?
A nameless mass of faces,
or Angela Davis?

What's easier to target?
Thousands who sing,
or Martin Luther King?

Maybe both.

Maybe by getting to Malcolm X,
you can impoverish and imprison the rest.

February's Black History Box

Black History Month is a beautiful thing when it's put on by those who are genuinely conscious of the profound role that blacks have had in this country. I respect that. But in light of the manner in which it has been celebrated throughout my twenty years of life in this country...well, from my experience, it's framed all wrong.

We definitely need to teach what contributions blacks have made, but before we teach about that we need to first talk about what it means for those contributions to be absent when it comes to the teachings of History itself. The problem is that our Anglo-centric educational system boxes "Black History" into a month, separating it from "U.S. History."

Everything, I guess, is easier to handle when its in some form of a box. Gender? Check a box. Race? Check a box. Juvenile delinquents go in this 'box,' adult criminals go in that one. And here, let's just draw a nice line around "US" to box them out.

This boxing happens in an infinite number of ways, and everything we box is something that we ultimately have no control over. You can label and incarcerate as many criminals as you want, but you'll never capture Evil itself.

Same with history lessons: all the class worksheets in the world wouldn't capture History. You'd have to have some kind of insane sheet of 'multicultural' paper that is infinite on all sides--where would I begin? And how? So I like my 8.5 by 11 sheet of white paper to study a historical timeline. Hey, why not? It's a way to get History under a false sense of control.

So here we are, in February's Black History Box. It's too overwhelming for the majority of our white educators to even consider history as a multifaceted subject. It's nicer to put it on that 8.5 by 11 sheet of paper where we can treat history as a linear progression of whiteness studded with black and brown featurettes here and there. So we box it up in a book, ship it to schools, and perpetuate history within a false sense of Anglo normativity.

XicanoPwr in Tribute to Oscar Zeta Acosta

I haven't read XicanoPwr's blog in quite some time because I've been very busy with my work and school. However reading this blog right here reminds me of how great this blog truly is:

I originally wrote this post on Scholars and Rogues as part of the Scholars and Rogues’ Scrogues Gallery. When I was asked to do a write-up for Oscar Zeta Acosta, I was happy to do it. As I was doing my research on Oscar, something mystical came over me. It was like I was meant to write his story. I like most people who hear Oscar’s name, know him for his literary works, Autobiography of a Brown Buffalo (1972) and The Revolt of the Cockroach People (1973). What I never realized was that Oscar was not only an author but a legendary and compelling figure in the Chicano movement in the late 1960s. Oscar never really received his due in Chicano history - a history that not remains only in the shadows of the general American culture, but hardly ever mentioned among the younger generation of the Latina/o community. This is my tribute to Oscar Zeta Acosta, “The Brown Buffalo,” and hopefully I am able to shine a light to a man who not only help change contemporary literature along with his good friend Hunter S. Thompson but also put his mark on case law and his role in the Chicano movement. Here is to you Brown Buffalo, wherever you are.

Image From:
Para Justicia y Libertad