Case Study in Systemic Racism: Black on Latino

"Muchos negros aqui. Yo no vengo aqui. Negros son malos." We were driving through a relatively modest neighborhood of Maplewood, an upscale, liberal town in suburban Essex NJ. "A lot of blacks live here. I avoid the area. Blacks are bad." Ecuadorian, Luis is a marvelous worker, marvelous! The guy can do anything, fix anything. He works quietly, energetically, efficiently. Speaks very little. He has become a friend.  He is devout in his Catholicism. I did have to intervene, gently but clearly, when he said he planned to live with the woman he loves before being married in the Church. I mentioned that sex outside of marriage is always a serious sin. I did not get into how profound a desecration such is of the woman he loves; or how such masculine lust-outside-of-wedlock is the root cause of most poverty.  He received that calmly. But I did not give him a talking-to about racism.

Clearly there are racist feeling, thoughts, attitudes in the Hispanic community. Not "racist" in the sense of a hard ideology: one race dominating another. It is softer, more modulated. This probably because there was so much intermarriage in the different countries so people of mixed races prevailed in most families. Also, for the most part, there was not the stark, literally black-and-white binary system of our southern slavery. There is surely a widespread preference for more European features, a holdover from the colonial past. I recall a meek, deferential little elderly woman from the Dominican Republic. She didn't speak English; always wore a hat; and spoke softly. One day she was asked about her father's appearance: "he had hair like mine, ugly hair." It became clear his hair was more Afro-like than Euro-like and that she saw that as ugly. But in general there is more a live-and-let-live relaxed attitude. That is the drift of our culture, certainly where I live. But ironically, the BLM narrative of systematic racism is reviving and inflaming this sense of black/white in contrast to the rainbow range of beautiful brown colors that actually is coming to prevail in our country.

In any case, Luis is not racist. I know what he is talking about. Hispanic manual laborers, many undocumented, work for cash. They don't want check, credit card or electronic transfer. He explained to me that he prefers the simplicity of cash: he can never buy anything unless he has cash in hand. He owes nothing, ever. As he spoke, I envied the simplicity: Ivan Illich, of Tools for Conviviality, would have been impressed. So at the end of the work week, Friday afternoon at 5 PM, thousands are walking around with hundreds of dollars of cash in their pockets. Much of this, by the way, is transferred home to families where there is real scarcity and poverty. Black thugs who live in the same areas know that and they are ready at 5 PM to mug the workers, tired after a long week of real work.

This is a simple, clear if less than cosmic case of systemic racism. There is a system to it: a time (5 PM Friday), a place (bus stops, construction locations, Hispanic neighborhoods), a plan (a pack to overwhelm the victim), a victim class (Hispanic male laborers). There is no racial hatred involved: the thugs have nothing personal against their targets; they would do the same to Eskimos or Visigoths; it is strictly business.

It is a "social structure of sin" in that it is a group, a social, a patterned thing. It is gravely unjust: to the guys who worked hard all week; to the families, including the poor in Ecuador, who wait for this money for their food. It is oppression of the weaker by the stronger. The victim is undocumented and probably fears the police. They are often smaller in frame and outnumbered by the predators.

You will not read about this in the NY Times; nor see it on CNN or MSNBC. You will not see "Brown Lives Matter" signs on $750,000 suburban homes. But it is a "life issue" in the broad, innocuous sense favored by liberals who want to minimize abortion, euthanasia and infanticide. The "limousine liberal" who rants against the wall and grieves for "dreamers" (BTW: I myself disapprove of the wall; and care about dreamers) is blissfully unaware and indifferent because it doesn't fit the "white oppressing black" narrative so dear to his heart.

But it is an actual, clear, and vicious if modest case of systemic racism.