In the struggle for equality in the United States, minorities have had very profound historical struggles that have all taken different approaches to achieve some degree of social change. Each group has used similar methods in order fighting for their own civil rights; some were nonviolent and passive, while others were very aggressive. There were of course limitations in all these strategies, with much resistance, but most of the groups worked together to help one another by using ideas from another group’s strategy. Mexican Americans used ideas of the Black civil rights movement, inspired by their outcome, like boycotting mechanisms which had great success. The Black liberation movement worked closely with the Gay rights movement, having Bayard Rustin’s support and nonviolent strategies throughout the struggle. Asian Americans and radical feminist both attacked the political and social systems through literary work, by criticizing the way the systems operated and trying to empower their own kind to fight back.
In the 1960s, Mexican Americans started fighting against their useless classification of being “just another white American”. Mexican youth started feeling repressed as an effect of the repression by authority, the Zoot Suit Riots of 1943 were formed in Los Angeles as a way to let society know of their visibility while police arrested and harassed Mexican youth. Before 1950, organizations were being founded such as the National Farm Workers Union (NFWO), in California in order to fight the Bracero Program which would lower wages. “Los Agricultores Mexicanos” were formed in Phoenix, Arizona and “La Association de Jornarelos” represented a broad coalition of labor workers which fought against repressive politics. Unfortunately, none of these unions were successful but they did succeed to inspire new unions to emerge in the 1960s. According to Dr. Alvarez’s, the “Chicano Movement” involved Cesar Chavez, a farm worker, who was mentored by Saul Alinsky’s works, became the director of the Community Services Organization (CSO) in 1960, which enabled him to seek agreement at the CSO to begin organization of farm workers. National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) was established with few organizers who went house to house trying to create social awareness of the inequality and poor treatment of farm workers.
Inspired by the nonviolent Black liberation movement, the NFWA organized successful strikes to fight for pay increase, such as the Grape Workers’ Strikes of 1965 which had success in raising the tough work environment the farmers were exposed to. They also gained media attention through these strikes where they were successful in advocating and practicing the boycotting of grape consumption, which was also inspired by the nonviolent mechanisms of the Blacks liberation movement. In order to proceed in a nonviolent movement, Chavez worked under a “Gandhi-King” image to make his union leadership appear pacifist to American’s. In his “Letter to Delano”, Chavez explains that direct confrontation to inherit the land would enable the movement to a social revolution by use of economic pressure of boycott and strikes, in other words, militant nonviolence. To be “free and human”, workers would need to be liberated from the oppression that kept them enslaved in the agricultural business, as Chavez states. The way he achieved this was through organized marches, protests, and boycotts against the agricultural system through a nonviolent approach, which were successful in gaining national attention. He also engaged in a peaceful hunger strike, influenced by Gandhi, where he lasted 25 days and was encouraged by Robert Kennedy, which led to a social movement that led to massive success in the boycotting movement and gaining farmers’ rights.
Limitations of Cesar Chavez movement were very subtle, if his organization would not have been as perseverant and Chavez would have not approached in a nonviolent manner, they probably would have had no success. Some limitations to the Chavez’s strategy also included resistance from many White Americans, who felt that the NFWA was a way to also fight for the citizenship of Mexican Americans altogether. Inspired by the farmer’s movement, the “Plan Espiritual de Aztlan”, seeked to enhance the social position of Mexican Americans by using similar strategies as those used by the Black Panthers because they were fighting for the same things, like “… community organizing against police brutality, better education, and poverty relief.” (pg. 5)
In the initiation of Asian American civil rights, Richard Aoki, a Japanese American was an avid member of the Black Panthers since its initiations; he ultimately used mechanisms by the Brown Berets, Black panthers, and the Women’s liberation movement to promote the Yellow power movement. The Anti-Vietnam movement emerged as a result of many Asian American students coming together to oppose the war in Vietnam because many saw it as American hostility toward ethnic minorities. Asian Americans also had a coalition with the Black Panthers, MECHA, and other protesting against war organization.
Amy Uyematsu was an Asian American activist who also used nonviolent strategies to fight for Asian civil rights. She used the Black power as basis and inspiration for the foundations of the development of Yellow power. She implied that Asians were a small minority that were seen will little visibility in society, due to their quiet “silent Oriental” stereotype. As Uyematsu explains, in “The Emergence of Yellow Power”, there is a grandiose need for Asian powers to unite and imply Yellow Power because other minorities are being more oppressed due to the comparison of groups. Uyematsu argues that “Asian Americans are perpetuating white racism in the United States as they allow white America to hold up the ‘successful’ Oriental image before other minority groups as the model to emulate.” (pg. 56) Uyematsu was aware of the oppression of other minorities and knew that White Americans were criticizing other minorities for not being more like the “silent Orientals” and using this to keep depriving them of equality. The limitations of Uyematsu’s Yellow power struggle included white racist attitudes present in Asian Americans themselves, the ones who tried to assimilate white culture and did not contribute to Asian American civil rights, similar to the limitations of the conforming women in the Women’s rights movement.
In the International Hotel crisis, there was a unification of Asian Americans from various different countries who came together for one cause; this greatly helped the Civil rights movement for Asians. Their nine-year struggle using nonviolent confrontation occurred despite the organizations disagreement on strategy because many had the common goal to protect the elderly and poor. They did so by working as a “multiracial radical party”, being the voice for the unheard, through creating social awareness, as Estella Habal reports. They marched and protested to create pressure on the owner of the hotel to sign another 3-year lease for them and were successful in obtaining it. If it would have not been for their perseverance, motivation, patience, and toleration of each group to one another, this strategy would have had no success.
Homosexuals have long fought for their freedom from the state for the past decades. More homosexuals were “coming out” in the 60s and 70s than ever, they joined in small groups to express their discontentment with society. Like the Black and Brown liberation movement, Gay organizations worked using similar strategies as did Blacks in their struggle. Gays started protests and public demonstrations in order to show to society that they were no longer invisible or hidden. At the beginning of the movement, they took a nonviolent confrontation method to fight against society by protesting in an “appropriate” manner by wearing gender stereotypical clothing and behaving as such. However, these peaceful demonstrations were not very successful, the real success came from the Stonewall riots of 1969 in New York where undercover officers entrapped many gay men and raided The Stonewall Inn. Through combating police oppression and brutality, like the Zoot Suit riots of 1943, they were successful in showing that they were a large population and that they were no longer invisible.
In their nonviolent approach, Gay men decided to influence scientific research to restudy and reconsider its position on homosexuality. Thereafter, in the 70s there was an increase of openly homosexual individuals in legislative positions and the increase for Gay pride. Like the Yellow Power movement, Gays used increase of self-pride in order to empower their community. As the readings explain, the main limitation for the Gay rights movement was the emergence of HIV and AIDS in the Gay community in the 80s. Healthcare practitioners did not want to help out AIDS patients and many saw HIV/AIDS as the “gay plague”, which increased discrimination against. However, once more the Gay community fought back, they recruited Gay doctors to treat AIDS patients and formed many Gay and Lesbian Community centers in the metropolitan cities. Even to this day, the struggle to legalize Gay marriage is in debate, but it persists in a nonviolent manner and will be decided through a judicial process like in past cases like the Goodridge v. Department of Public Health, 2003 case.
The Black liberation movement took on many different strategies, many Black protesters decided to organize marches to express their frustration against segregation. Like the NFWA who boycotted grapes for the farmer’s movement, many Blacks, especially women boycotted bus transportation which resulted in the loss of 65% of the bus company business. They instead, walked to their destinations, organized carpools, and fundraisers to find other means of transportation, as stated in the PowerPoint slides. The main limitations of the nonviolent Black power struggle included doubting from many organizations, like the NAACP, which did not think protests would be effective and the violence it provoked. According to the documentary film, “Eyes on the Prize”, this nonviolent Black rights movement was effective in getting media attention, but it also provoked outrage and violence in people who opposed the Civil rights movement. This was the case when college students from the Northern states joined Black southerners in protesting because they saw there was injustice and inequality in the South. They marched along with people fighting for Black liberation, this then caused many White Southerners to become outraged, as well as police officials, who were predominantly White males.
Martin Luther King, Jr., was the idea behind a nonviolent approach to fight against segregation and inequality. In 1965, after the Bloody Sunday march, Martin Luther King, Jr., symbolized nonviolence as a leader in the movement; he joined in the march to the Mississippi state border in a nonviolent manner by gaining Gov. Wallace’s consent at the time. The march was successful in gaining attention, and also influenced politicians, like the current president L.B. Johnson who used words from the movement as support in some of his speeches. Other non-violent movements included the Freedom rides, which were civil rights activists who rode interstate buses into the segregated southern United States in 1961, and The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which organized to get youth involved in the civil rights movement.
The limitation of the MLK nonviolent movement was that many Black activists felt that the nonviolent strategy was still not being as successful as they hoped, out of this instilled rage there was the formation of the Black Panthers. The Black Panthers used militant activism, by using new methods to show their visibility and anger towards White American society and their lack of care for minorities. The Black Panthers created fear in people because the media portrayed them to be affiliated with gangs and violence (Eyes on the Prize, 1990). Overall the Black civil rights movement was successful in achieving much triumph, like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which made discrimination illegal and punishable by law.
In the struggle for equality for Women’s rights, there were many strategies used to promote justice, some were nonviolent, influenced by literary works that criticized society for being male dominated as well as raising social consciousness. These writings then led to the creation and support for radical feminism. In order to create successful political action, many women set out to find explanations of female oppression in America. Works included, Kate Millet’s “Sexual Politics”, which protested against Freud’s sexist theories on sexuality and women, Betty Friedan’s, “The Feminine Mystique”, which referred to women who are trapped and conformed to traditional gender roles as the “the problem that has no name” as an impediment to freedom. Other works who supported the uproar of feminism were, Johnnie Tillmon’s “Welfare as a Women’s Issue” which argued that being a black woman on welfare was the worst thing to be in the country, she said it was practically like being invisible and less of a human as well as a trap for women. And The Redstockings Manifesto, which tried to create social awareness to the problems being faced by women in gender stereotyping by highlighting women’s second-class citizenship by bringing to the light that men were primary oppressors of women because they only use them for economic, sexual, and psychological pleasures.
Through frustration that was felt in women, they decided they were going to fight to be equal to men, feminist decided to create organizations like National Organization for Women (NOW), which would seek to end sexual discrimination, especially in the workplace, by means of legislative lobbying, litigation, and public demonstrations as a way of civilized nonviolent mechanisms. Other organizations also rampaged to demand the legalization of birth control and abortions. Lesbians were largely excluded from the Gay activist alliance, so they went on to support the women’s freedom movement, which Friedan called the “lavender menace”. Some similarities in the women’s civil rights movement to that of the Asians, is that they both used literary works as a source of motivation and social awareness to combat social inequality. They were successful in obtaining the legalization of birth control in 1960 and the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was passed in 1972. The limitations for this nonviolent strategy for women included the resistance of their own kind, many women resisted to this change and wanted to keep traditional values and remain invisible in society. Many angry and ignorant men also criticized feminist as being “frustrated and unattractive women” who were jealous of attractive ones.
To conclude, Asians, Black, Browns, Gays, and Women have historically been oppressed in similar ways and their ways of combat have been similar. Asians seemed to achieve success far faster than Browns and Blacks; It may have been due to their overall social behavior, since they were seen as the “quiet and obedient minority”. Fortunately, these groups who were persistent had a great degree of success, perhaps through their grandiose unification of large amounts of people nonviolently fighting for the same cause as we have seen in these five groups. Many are thankful for their struggle that has opened many opportunities for minorities in the present and it inspires the continuation of the struggle for social liberation.
No comments:
Post a Comment