As an incoming first year Divinity School student last fall I decided to attend Duke Chapel for Sunday worship on the first weekend of classes. It was a beautiful morning with sunny skies, lush trees and the songs of birds permeating the air. A setting such as this made the gratuitous lunch after the service all the more enjoyable. However after lunch ended, I walked back into the Chapel and saw three Hispanic men sitting in the back pews gazing at the elaborate stained glass windows and intricate stone carvings. Almost immediately after the men sat down, a Chapel security guard walked directly over to the men, snapped his fingers and literally shooed them out saying, “Get up, get out,” and pointed to the exit. The men quickly did as they were told, and began to mumble offensive remarks as they made their way to the vestibule where I had witnessed the incident. As all four men walked towards me, I approached the guard and asked him, “Why do these men have to leave? If there is a communication problem here I can translate.” The guard looked at me bewildered and nervous. “No, they just have to leave because they…they walked down the middle aisle when it was closed,” he responded. I looked and didn’t see signs indicating that the aisle was closed. At the time I did not have words to respond nor time to think, so I walked with the men as they were kicked out of church. Once outside I asked their names, “Ricardo,” “Ramon” and “Angel” they each responded. After I introduced myself they went on to tell me that they were all from Mexico and in fact, Angel was from Mexico City, my hometown. It was then that I realized, as I had originally suspected, that they had not been kicked out because they broke Chapel rules. These men were expelled from church because they were Brown. They were escorted out of the Chapel because they were simply in a place where people like them are generally absent—and ironically by a Black security guard.
Although there weren’t any signs that read “Whites Only” or “No coloreds allowed,” I found myself perplexed and frustrated by a reality in which such class and racial segregation persisted. I share this story not to dehumanize nor victimize any particular group of people, but because I believe it encapsulates some of the present and ever increasing tensions between Black folks and recent Hispanic immigrants throughout the country, especially on the East Coast.
My background as a native of Mexico City and long resident of Los Angeles equipped me well to work with the Hispanic community. Through my experience I noticed that many Hispanics leave behind their country, culture and loved ones, wander through the south-western desert, risk death, **** and deportation and take low-wage, unstable jobs in hopes to obtain a better future for themselves and their children. Most Hispanic immigrants move into historically Black neighborhoods, and in the process of pursuing the American dream, they appropriate racist stereotypes toward Black folks in order to assert that although they are not White, they are definitely not Black. Hence while attempting to obtain social recognition and an American identity they buy into the lies of racist White America.
On the other hand however, some Black folks tend to respond with hostility and condescension towards Hispanics who are “coming into our neighborhoods and taking all the jobs,” as a neighbor once complained. A close friend insightfully pointed out that the way Black folks speak about Hispanics reminds him of the way in which poor White southerners spoke of enslaved Africans during the civil war. Although poor White southerners had little to gain from a Confederate victory, they staunchly believed they were better than a ****** and were willing to die to prove it. So, too, Black folks are willing to support conservative politicians, even to their own detriment, in order to build a wall along the border and criminalize immigration in hopes of proving that they are better than Hispanics. They too buy into the lies of racist White America.
Here lies the paradox. Both groups experience discrimination, segregation, and lack of adequate housing, work and health care as a result of structural racism. Both Black and Brown folks have had to rely on members of their own communities and churches in order to survive in a society that relegates them to an unequal or illegal status. Unfortunately, the struggle for survival has forced Black and Brown folks to contend against each other for the crumbs underneath the table. Is it not absurd that both groups appropriate the racist and destructive mentalities of the hegemonic dominant culture? Is this move not counterintuitive and counterproductive?
Perhaps we have also forgotten to ask, who benefits from such polarization? Sadly, this paradox provides yet another example of the American tendency to ‘blame down and look up.’ It would help us all if we could begin to see churches and neighborhoods, not as battle grounds between Black and Brown, but as fertile nooks and crannies of this broken empire, where people of different languages, cultures and histories live and learn from each other and work together as agents of transformation. In order for this to occur, however, we must humbly engage in conversations with a willingness to recognize our own capacity for error. Without doing so, I fear we will remain divided and mislead by the invisible signs that read “Whites Only.”
