Which one will you pick? Calling out the fallacy of the Black/White Racial Binary Paradigm, Part II.

A native of Puerto Rico, Jessica identifies as a “1.5 generation Queer ESL Latina of Puerto Rican descent.” She works as a consultant and core/organizer trainer for Crossroads. Jessica holds a BA in Criminal Justice and Master degrees in Theological Studies and Divinity.

Today, I am reflecting of the first three dynamics the Black/White racial binary paradigm creates for people of color which ensure the continuous re-centering of Whiteness as the dominant and only valid experience of this nation.

Dynamic 1: The Black/White racial binary paradigm leads to the assumption that the solution to racism and the key to liberation is to invert dynamics of power.

When I started my antiracism journey, I walked around with the belief that racial justice work needed to be focused on ending the oppression of African-Americans by over-turning the power structure which oppressed them and transitioning all social and cultural power to them. There were many factors informing this conviction. Among them was the belief that racism in the United States was exclusively a Black and White issue, and as a documented immigrant with the privilege of citizenship, my job was to help invert power dynamics. With time I came to understand the web of oppression created by systemic racism actively destroys all people including White people and me. I realized that simply being a person of color did not ensure that people would resist the dominant narratives of this nation which normalized and centered Whiteness. In fact if people of color are not actively working to address the ways in which we have internalized racist oppression we can become inadvertent supporters of White supremacy. Thus shifting power from White people to African-Americans specifically or people of color more broadly does not in fact guarantee an end to racial oppression.

Dynamic 2: The Black/White racial binary paradigm seduces people of color who fall outside of the binary into the service of white supremacy.

One of the real dangers of the Black/White racial binary paradigm is that it can trick those of us who fall outside of the binary into believing that racism is not and ought not be our concern. This belief is often accompanied by the illusory conviction that if we work hard enough, if we assimilate quickly and effectively enough, we will achieve the American dream and melt into a pot of Americanness not intended for us. I make this claim because I used to believe this so profoundly that when I turned 18, I voted Republican. I wanted to be American and the GOP represented for me traditional American values I desperately wanted to prove I could embody: hard work, individualism, patriotism, and white picket fences. This is not to say that the Democratic party is not supporting distorting patriotic narratives, but simply to say that as an 18-year old immigrant voting for the first time, the narrative woven by the Republican party came across as truly American in a way the Democrat narrative did not.  It would be years before I would come to fully understand that those values and narrative required I actively participate in the maintenance of a status quo that demanded I nurture self-loathing and contribute to the demonization of people of color communities.

Dynamic 3: The Black/White racial binary paradigm results in dehumanizing Oppression Olympics that obfuscate white supremacy while jeopardizing the possibility of revolutionary collaboration among communities of color.

The most effective way in which the Black/White racial binary paradigm maintains white supremacy is the Oppression Olympics. By this I mean the dehumanizing competition that emerges among people of color communities to prove who is the most oppressed. The competition unfurls often in this way: African-Americans understandably seek to define the conversation of race around the brutal history of chattel slavery while Native-Americans are pushing for an analysis of the problem that departs from colonialism and genocide while Asian-American Pacific Islanders are fighting against a myth that purports they experience no racial discrimination. Into this conversation enter Latin@s, all too often declaring the whole problem of race does not concern us because our countries do not do race and have no racism. This of course is not true. The nations we come from were shaped by European colonialism and infused with racial consciousness, racial ideas, and racial narratives that centered the European experience as normal and best. All one has to do is watch a telenovela to see how racial dynamics are present in Latin America. Moreover, the maintenance of the idea that racism is not our concern falls flat on the face of the active and often violent discrimination our people experience. Finally, at the edges are multi-racial people trying to find a voice. While this is in fact a simplistic articulation of a very complex problem, the result of these dynamics is competition. Instead of building coalitions as people of color, we routinely scapegoat each other and too willingly invisibilize our unique experiences of dehumanization while failing to name white supremacy as our common threat.

An illustration seems fitting. I still remember my first week in Atlanta, GA. I was watching the morning news when they introduced two guests invited to discuss the anti-immigrant legislation the state legislature was considering. The camera panned over to reveal two women of color experts, both lawyers. The lawyer speaking against the racist and xenophobic legislation was South East Asian while the one speaking in support was African-American. As I heard the conversation a knot formed in my stomach. The African-American lawyer convincingly argued that Latin@s represented an economic and cultural threat to African-Americans and society as a whole. I wanted to shake the African-American woman and tell her to stop. I wanted her to see me not as a threat but as someone whose destiny is tied to hers; as someone oppressed by the same system against which she is struggling. After four years in the deep south I am filled with examples of the way both African-Americans and Latin@s participate in the Oppression Olympics.  Consequently, both communities lose the ability to see and name the true culprit dehumanizing us: white supremacy.

Tomorrow, I will reflect on the two remaining dynamics.