Narrow Concepts of Citizenship

Just as the history of African Americans has been rife with exclusion, Richard Rodriguez’s “The Lies We Tell Ourselves” (Opinion, May 27) overlooks how U.S. colonialism, exploitation and discrimination persist.

Rather than pitting Latinos and African Americans against one another, as Rodriguez’s article does, it is an awareness of shared historical and contemporary experiences that we can draw upon to challenge continuing economic inequality, racism, sexism and heterosexism.

While Rodriguez argues that African Americans should be tired of the cha-cha-cha, the salsa and the Spanish phrases used by Bush, these veneers of cultural appreciation should incite anger, not because they demonstrate the displacement of African Americans but because they camouflage the growing inequality in our communities, the high rates of incarceration among groups of color, the emphasis on assimilation, the rampant attack on immigrants, exemplified in the increasing militarization of the border, etc.

Instead of worrying about today’s ethnic and racial and sexual identifications because of how they may threaten a more general citizenship, our time would be better spent challenging the factors and processes that continue to exclude some individuals from the narrow conceptualization of citizen.

Gilda L. Ochoa

Assistant Professor of Sociology

and Chicano Studies

Pomona College

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Rodriguez’s astute essay reminded me that in my youth we proudly answered “American” whenever asked, “What are you?” The change occurred when belonging to a minority meant a government check, preferential acceptance to a university, a favorable government small-business loan or a government contract.

I’m pleased that now in California there is no majority and we are all minorities. Perhaps once again we will just see ourselves as Americans fortunate to live in this great nation.

Jim Bonorris

Los Angeles

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Rodriguez is saying that we live in a zero-sum environment where one people’s progress comes at the expense of someone else. The issue is politics. White America has moved toward coexistence with black America because of the political strength of black America. Absent that political power, nothing would have changed.

African Americans may feel slighted or worse by the rise of Hispanic political power, but that is the nature of politics.

Ralph M. Casillas

Los Angeles

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After Mexican American GIs came back from World War II, they formed organizations to be treated as American citizens. When our Korean War veterans came back, they joined in the struggle and signed up in large numbers at institutions of higher education. By the late 1960s, we were ready to invoke our social, economic, political and cultural equity en masse. This movement led to modern-day organizing toward utilizing our voting power. All this is far from evading our responsibility in general citizenship.

If this is making whites or African American nervous, they need to be reminded that throughout the history of the U.S. it has been through this process that minorities have joined the whole.

Frank M. Sifuentes

Long Beach