Hello my friends, I am speaking to you all as Jocelyn Gomez, member of La Raza Student Association. So my opinions are pretty biased, I’ll admit.
Last semester Jim Gilchrist was invited to CSULB by our archenemies at the Conservative Student Union. The reason for his unpleasant visit was to talk about La Raza (Student Association) and Racism, as in Raza is racist.
When this happened, we La Raza Student Association, got support from the Women’s Studies Student Association, the Center for Peace and Social Justice, people from UNITE HERE, the other individuals who came to us to show support. But what happened to my Latin@ organizations? What happened to our Latin@ support and unity that supposedly exists?
I thought brown and very light brown faces from different Chican@, Latin@ and Hispanic groups would come out and say, "La Raza Student Association is not racists."
Not that we need this type of defense, especially against clowns like Gilchrist and Haydes, but at least for show and support. To show that no mater the problems that exists in our small community here at CSULB, we will always be united when someone attacks any of us.
All this time I had the hope that no matter what the petty differences we have, the tensions that exist, (yet some refuse to accept) we would still come together and protect each other. But it didn’t happen.
When real problems come. When a conference such as "La Raza and Racism" comes along, with Gilcrhist as the main speaker, no support was there. We have been a target of the Conservative Student Union ever since its creation and no one seems to say, "don’t mess with our people," just to show some loyalty, I say.
Maybe these other organizations didn’t get the memo. They missed the news, twice. Or is it that they thought it was nothing important to get all rowdy about.
But come on, people give support even when they know it’s not necessary just to let the others know they got their backs.
Think of it this way, like when you go to your aunt’s or other family member’s house and you ask, "How can I help you" just to be polite and helpful, but you really don’t want to help and hope he/she says, "Nada. Sientate a comer."
But you still showed some interest in helping.
But I can help but to think that they chose to ignore it and let us take the attacks on our own.
If there is no real, concrete unity between some of us, we should at least be united in moments like these, when we have, what I think is, one common enemy.
I guess what I am asking for is for hypocrisy. Kind of the one we have now, where we talk to each other, expressed our desire to want to collaborate.
No, maybe not.
I want people to actually get mad when some piece of crap comes to our campus and calls our fellow classmates racists, because we are suppose to go through the same experiences and somewhat of the same hardships. Most of us are from the working or low-income class, and maybe we have experienced some sort of racists attacks.
So if an events hurts one of our own, we should all be like "what gives? Don’t mess with our people!" or something.
And I know people talk shenanigans about us.
I sure as hell have done my share of trash talking, but because I don’t like people talking about us!
I know, it still doesn’t make it right. Tsk tsk Gomez, tsk tsk.
And I don’t like the people say about us:
That when we go to certain meetings (LSU) we are demanding and like to go against other groups, that we take ownership of places (Raza Resource Center) that are not ours, that our men are sexist and childish, and other accusations I don’t know about but I can guess are out there.
In my knowledge, they are not true. We just like to be assertive. We like to make our opinions known. Well other Raza members do, I just like writing about them and hiding behind these letters.
The men we have in Raza are the most progressive men I have met, and all of them are open-minded and respect other people. Our women are also the most progressive and really active. Neither men nor women fit the stereotypes and don’t try to conform to gender roles.
This is who we are. We want people to progress; that is our whole deal.
Well that’s what I think. I just hope we can all count on each other like I heard it was in the old days.
I am no longer expecting much from anyone. I just hope things clear up in the future.
So this is how I feel. Maybe others don’t share the same ideas and concerns I do, not even my fellow Raza members. Maybe I am being dramatic.
But it doesn’t matter, at least you read the article.
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