Shared Histories, Shared Futures: Embracing Diversity and Inclusion

Are you aware of how much immigrant communities owe to the civil rights movement? Are we truly cognizant of how anti-blackness within our own communities necessitates transformative work? This episode unravels the intertwined histories and shared destinies of these diverse groups. Drawing from the work of sociologist Haja Yazdija, we explore not just the perception gap on racial equality between white and black Americans, but also how the immigrant communities have gained from the collective freedom achieved by the civil rights movement. But we don't stop there - we delve into the uncomfortable yet essential work of reconciling with anti-blackness in our immigrant histories.

On a more personal note, I bare my heart and share my journey towards becoming an LGBTQ+ ally, a journey that began within a rather conservative family background. As we navigate through these difficult times, I urge each one of us to hold on to our ability to love and support individuals from all walks of life. Inspired by none other than Martin Luther King Jr., I dream of a world that is accepting and inclusive, where love is not just an exception but the norm. Let's engage in this conversation together - a conversation that is as necessary as it is transformative.

Chapters

• 0:08 King's Movement & Significance for Immigrants
• 10:40 Embracing Openness and Love

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

I love you because you're you. Who else are you going to be? I don't know. I was just on TikTok and I'm TikTok Bobby, and I just want to thank everybody who came into my TikTok today, tiktok Live, and tell you I love you. But I want to talk about something very, very, very, very important right now what King's movement that's Martin Luther King, by the way meant to immigrants.

Speaker 1: 0:38

The I have a Dream anniversary is the time for communities to grapple with their anti-blackness. Sixty years ago this week. It was written by Haja Yazdija in the LA Times on Monday, but I kept it because it meant a lot to me. Sixty years ago this week, the march on Washington for jobs and freedom and ever indelibly etched the civil rights movement into our nation's collective memory through the Reverend Martin Luther King Junior speech about a dream of injustice Today I'm thumb-faring, I'm sorry a dream of justice for our collective future. Haja's a sociologist and she or he, I don't know who, okay, it just doesn't say has studied the uses and misuses of King's memory over the past 40 years. It witnessed just how deeply immigrant communities like my own my grandparents were immigrants are shaped by and indebted to the legacies of the civil rights movement More powerfully. Powerfully, I found that learning about and grappling with the racial histories of the United States for immigrants new modes of consciousness and interconnection, ending up their wounds in powerful ways. Yet the messy work of learning about the nation's racial past also requires more painful, uncomfortable and ultimately transformative work. Reckoning with our own immigrant communities' history of anti-blackness Horrible Though the image of King and his visionary words have been foundational to the nation's story of redemption and rebirth in the post-Civil War rights era, a recent Pew PEW survey shows that there's a perception gap of the country's racial progress.

Speaker 1: 2:47

While almost 60% of white adults believe there's been progress on racial equality in the last six decades, only 30% of black adults believe so. But almost half of Latino Americans and Asian Americans polled share, white Americans rose to your picture of racial progress. The results are unsurprising in light of the long history of pitting immigrants against black Americans to discredit claims of systemic racism and polls for racial justice. For a scholar and a child of non-white immigrants like Our writer, hmm. Most glaring in the survey is the story that lies within the significant gap between white and black Americans perceptions of just how far we've come and how far we have to go the story of the non-white, non-black immigrants is a story we Californians ought to heed as we witness the anti-democratic politics that creep across the nation and threaten us all now, after all, immigrants have the civil rights moving to thank for the legal and cultural infrastructures that would be adopted to unfold Latino and Asian Americans and the multicultural democracy.

Speaker 1: 4:07

Black Americans fought for the wave of minority rights revolution of the 1970s and the 1980s that included Latino rights and Asian rights. Activism was built on the backs of the black Americans who fought for collective freedom. These immigrant movements would compare themselves to black Americans as a strategy, claiming they were like black to make demands that would resonate with the public to garner the political power necessary to win recognition and political, material and social resources. These movements, however, rarely acknowledged that the black freedom struggle never ended and that, in their pursuit of upward mobility, their own communities had excluded and even harmed black communities. Two decades ago, when labor organizers in Los Angeles began working to raise political consciousness around the exploitation of immigrant workers, they devised an immigrant workers freedom ride, inspired by the civil rights movement freedom ride of the 1961. The strategy would draw public attention to immigrant workers rights as civil rights deserving of political protection, having received the support of black civil rights leaders, 900 riders boarded 18 buses from 10 cities with 100 plan stops, including major cities of civil rights struggles. The ride had a transformative outcome. In learning about and visiting the living histories of the civil rights movement, immigrant activists were better able to see their own experiences of exploitation, discrimination and invisibility through a new lens. Their lives and collective struggles were interconnected with black Americans.

Speaker 1: 5:58

Similarly, in June 2018, the Council on American and Islamic relations, the Muslim American Civil Rights Organization known as CARE CAIR, embarked on a civil rights tour in Alabama. The month long campaign followed 30 Muslim American civil rights leaders and activists from around the country on a tour of symbolic sites significant to the civil rights movement. Through their reflections on social media, muslim leaders made powerful connections between the present day violence, surveillance and day to day discrimination experienced by Muslim American immigrants and the persistent violence and bravery of the black civil rights activists in the 1960s. They were overcome with emotion when they learn the roots of Muslim history in the United States, one rooted into the experiences of black enslaved people, and many people became more aware of their immigrant community, strategic distance from black Americans and their buy-in to the model minority identity. Muslim immigrants activists confront the realities that their communities have also been anti-black, through an honest, emergent understanding of their place and complicity in the racial order. Muslim organizers understood that reckoning with the past provided them a bridge for coalition building with black Americans Ayveh.

Speaker 1: 7:34

Historical reckonings are messy work. They require a commitment to collective reflection and discomfort. Groups have to recognize when defensive postures emerge and examine the roots of their resistance. They must allow for the admission of harm they have caused and a dedication to doing better. Reckonings come with a recognition that change does not come quickly or easily, but with faith and persistence as spirit of the ongoing black freedom struggle. There is no better place for these reckonings in California, where immigrant histories are diverse and deep, where the work to eradicate anti-blackness would yield immeasurable gains in forging a wide solidarity politics across race and class among communities.

Speaker 1: 8:22

As King wrote in his letter from the Birmingham jail just months before the march on Washington, we are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly affects all indirectly. Ejahir Zaheda is a professor of sociology at USC and author of the books the Struggle for the People King, the People's King, how Politics Transforms the Memory of Civil Rights, the Civil Rights Movement, wow, and, as you know, I'm 75 years old, so my generation grew up with the black movement in the 60s and our generation really, and I still do want everybody to get along. Like Rodney King said, why can't we all just get along? I agree with that. I still agree with that. I'm saddened to see what happened in Jacksonville, florida, over the weekend, how such an anti-black Jew immigrant, anything person, could do this to anybody else. And yet we have so much hate in our country. What's happened to all the love, the love of everybody else? What's happened to like giving your hand out to the person next to you and say hi, my name's Ejahir Zaheda. What's your last? Oh, where are you from? Nice to meet you? Tell me what country you're from.

Speaker 1: 9:57

My family came from Poland and Russia and they immigrated in the early 1900s and 1920s, so I'm third generation immigrant. My grandparents came from Europe and immigrated here for freedom. I love to look at different types of people. In fact, I've dated different religions, married different religions, dated different colored people colored people, just so. You all know people of color, excuse me. So I know what it's like to be with other types of people and mesh with other races and be a part of other things happening.

Speaker 1: 10:40

I'm a very open person. I don't know why I am because my family was not. No, they were not. They were very closed and I'm not closed at all. I guess I'm very lucky, I'm very grateful I'm not closed because you know, I'm an LGBTQ plus supporter. I love you, I'm an ally. You know, so many things are happening on a daily basis now to make me want to lose faith in our country, but I'm not going to. I'm going to keep up loving, loving and more loving and being open to new people and new philosophies and being interested in what other people have to say Of all races, creeds, religions, sexual orientation. I am there. Your TikTok Bobby is there. So if nobody told you they love you today, I love you because you are you. And why don't we try and be more like Martin Luther King Jr? You know having a dream. I have a dream too. My dream is that everybody will get along.