Unfortunately, the majority of visible “radical” space and place in Southern California is dominated by the Chicanx communities and their seemingly all consuming legacies. Why is this unfortunate you might ask? Because the Chicanx identity, this hyper-manufactured faux political identity which rests on anti-blackness, positions itself in the center of cities like Los Angeles and San Diego, sucking up specifically black culture, symbols, icons, aesthetics for its own project. Like all relationships to blackness, it is an exploitative one. Now you may say, well of course blkpatch, blackness and black culture is the fuel that keeps mass culture churning along on the endless death drive forward. Every nonblack community uses black culture to prop up their specific “revolutionary” aims. Why not just let them be and keep it moving? But it is not just this with these Chicanx people down here in Southern California. It is especially the ways that they force ideas of “black and brown unity” where it does not, cannot empirically or theoretically exist. They do this, it is my theory, because they want to cover their asses when black people start coming for them (which has largely not happened down here because the majority of black people don’t give a shit about these cultural nationalist, culture vultures, as is their right). Black people do not fight the same fight as Chicanx people. Brown lives do not matter (because such a thing as a “brown life” does not exist of course, it is only there as an ideological prop because nonblack people self reify themselves into an advantageous position away from antiblackness and white supremacy out of shame and guilt and defense), and the majority of Chicanx pride and history is inseparable from the ongoingness of antiblackness. Let us examine a few places.
Here’s an example of antiblackness that has become so commonplace that pushing back against it will surely get you into heat. But blkpatch, you don’t think brown is beautiful? I surely don’t. “Brown is beautiful” can only exist because Black is Beautiful did that work in the ’60s through the non-static movements of black consciousness, black power, black nationalism and the work of the Black Panther Party. Any variation on that then is just a denigration of blackness. And black people actually moved beyond phrases like this (not the liberals), because for one, not everything that is black is beautiful or worth celebrating (the historical cases of neocolonialism after liberation struggles in Africa, neoliberals every fucking where etc. etc.), and it can easily be recuperated as we see it still is today, in phrases such as “Black Excellence. Can “Brown is beautiful,” and other cringe inducing phrases like “Brown Pride” ever go through such an interrogation as this? Of course not, because the identity of “brown” has no stakes, has no unifying principle. Brown functions as a catch all for everyone not white and not black. The minute one starts to interrogate it, it just falls apart completely. But hey, pay $30 dollars for a shirt which doesn’t acknowledge these legacies in any way.
Here of course is the defensive argument that every Chicanx person will leverage against you when you begin interrogating them about the antiblackness of their chosen identity. Chicanx pride is built on shame, guilt and envy for the struggle of black people, especially in the United States (because we know they don’t care about what happens in MX). Because of this, they must position themselves as equal to black people. They long for a struggle with no end, they long to be recognized as fruit pickers just like black people were cotton pickers. They want a slave revolt too, so badly. They want the equation to be 1:1. This speaks generally to much of the disposition of nonblack Mexican people and the ways that their nationalism has had to compete with US nationalism. They position themselves as a downtrodden people, stomped on by their neighbors to the North who (in the Chicanx imaginary) stole their Mexican land. They have to get back what is theirs. They have to overthrow the white US settlers and establish Aztlan or reestablish Mexico or who the fuck knows what they mean at this point. The black power fist becomes theirs, all struggle becomes attainable, endless, conquerable. Don’t worry about the black and indigenous people in Mexico though, who have it the worst.
We don’t know which people are being liberated in Mexico and Palestine, it is certainly not the black people. But all the struggles are the same. Free them all and the specific contradictions and struggles facing black people will magically resolve themselves. Black people for Brown liberation, hurrah! In all of these collectives present in San Diego you’ll find black people tokenized and used for modeling. Another defense. “We have black people in our collective, don’t erase their struggle.” One black person to represent us all. One black person to address “antiblackness in our communities.”
Evoke Dilla and Madlib. Nonblack crate diggers of the world. Wear your dreadlocks and play reggae which is a music of black freedom flying towards the destruction of Babylon. But it’s alright because you make a few instagram posts about how black people are the innovators of all the music you share and play exclusively in your breweries in your hood. Cause y’all are hoodrats. But the only hood you rep is Barrio Logan. Don’t see many niggas down there. But yea, our struggles are the same. Chicanx people showed up to a BLM protest. They are absolved of all critique.
I really wouldn’t give a shit about this if these Chicanx people just stayed in their hood and talked about being brown. But it’s the moment they start profiting off black struggle under the guise of fighting a common enemy that I have to push back. And as a nigga on the warpath, who has gone down to their sanctuary in San Diego (Chicano Park) with my ride or die and verbally battled these reactionaries, I can back my shit up. And if y’all reading this and want to do some verbal war again, I ain’t hiding. Just send me an invite on the gram.