Elizabeth Martínez Quotes

We should also recall the exclusively Black-white model of race relations, which makes all other peoples invisible. It is not surprising that two dozen white writers who have been conditioned to see the struggles of Asian/Pacific Island Americans, Latinos and Native Americans as minor would write their books accordingly.

A last gift of the letters should be mentioned. They show how vital is the need, especially though not only, for young whites to take the initiative in changing their consciousness about racism. To seek out a different perspective from the one they have always known. To listen to what Black, Latino, and other oppressed peoples say in one way or another. For a new consciousness does not come automatically but with persistent effort.

...it should be called "push out" rather than "drop out."

The very concept of collective responsibility for human well-being is under attack by neo-liberalism all over the world.

an obsession with self-definition can become a trap if that is all we think about, all we debate. If liberation terminology becomes an end in itself and our only end, it ceases to be a tool of liberation. Terms can be useful, even vital tools, but the house of La Raza that is waiting to be built needs many kinds. (“A Word About the Great Terminology Question ”)

It does not help that former Latino activists themselves have written so little. At least four leaders of white student protest (Richard Flacks, Todd Gitlin, Tom Hayden and Paul Potter) have published books of history and analysis about the 1960s. Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, activists from SNCC, the Black Panther Party and other Black groups have done so. But relatively few such works have come from Chicanos/as thus far. More movement participants at all levels should move to shine some light on our histories of activism.

A term originally created by leftists in humorous self-mockery, "PC" is now used to evoke Stalinist demands for conformity. Thus PC-baiting has become a post-Cold War substitute for anti-communism, and a dangerously reactionary political expression.

From those two books, and others that examine student activism at length, you would never know that during a single week of 1968 at least 10,000 Chicano high school students in Los Angeles walked out of school to protest racist policies. You would never know there was a "Yellow Identity Movement" of Chinese and other Asian students at universities in California and New York City. You will learn nothing of the potent Third World student strikes of 1968-69 in San Francisco. Gitlin's book does not even mention any movement of color except the Black civil rights movement until page 433. There he speaks of "an amalgam of reform efforts, especially for civil rights (ultimately for Hispanics, Native Americans, and other minorities as well as blacks)." Six words, and in parentheses at that, for the thousands of Asian, Latino and Native American people who lived and sometimes died for liberation and social justice in those years.

We will not win our liberation struggle unless the women move together with the men rather than against them. We must work to convince the men that our struggle will become stronger if women are not limited to a few, special roles. We also have the right to expect that our most enlightened men will join in the fight against sexism; it should not be our battle alone.

That struggle points to our need for a politics that recognizes the globalization of racism that today accompanies economic globalization. Does anybody really think the best way to deal with more than 100 million migrants wandering the planet today is by locking doors in the spirit of nineteenth-century nationalism? It is profoundly backward to go on seeing countries primarily as bordered nation-states that can resolve issues like immigration policy unilaterally. It is not only backward but monstrous to think of the world's people as divisible into those who should be dehumanized at will and those who should not. Once again, it must be said: ¡No hay fronteras!

We do not want a few Chicanas to get better jobs, higher salaries, while everyone else continues to be exploited.

That is the true Raza tradition, a communal tradition

All over the country today, La Raza is in motion. A spirit of awakening runs through the big city barrios, small towns, colleges and universities, the countryside. Our people are refusing to be filled with shame any longer, they are refusing to be oppressed, they are demanding liberation and a decent life...They are working on problems like working conditions and pay, education, welfare rights, housing, child care, police brutality. They are forming groups of women with names like Las Chicanas and Las Adelitas.

The fact is, nothing could be more truly Chicana than the Chicana who wants to be more than a wife, mother, housekeeper. That limited concept of women did not exist under our Indian ancestors for whom the woman was a creative person in the broadest sense and central to the cultural life of the tribe. Later in Mexican history, we find that the woman has played every possible role-including that of fighter on the front lines.

Here is a call, a most urgent call, for Rainbow Warriors: something ancient, something new.