The officer in charge shall not bury, or allow to be buried, any colored persons upon ground set apart or used for the burial of white persons. Georgia
No persons, firms, or corporations, who or which furnish meals to passengers at station restaurants... shall furnish said meals to white and colored passengers in the same room, or at the same table, or at the same counter. South Carolina
[The County Board of Education] shall provide schools of two kinds; those for white children and those for colored children. Texas
Let's compare that to Berkeley MEChA's constitution:
Homophobia: We will not tolerate the exclusion of Lesbian/Gay/Bi-sexual/Transgender (LGBT) Chicanas/os. Homophobic remarks, comments, gestures, and/or doctrines will not be tolerated during any Berkeley MEChA meeting or event.Mutual Respect: Disruptions, threats, rumors, slanders, and the pitting of Mechistas against one another will not be tolerated since it breeds disharmony and division amongst the membership.
Racism: Racist remarks, comments, gestures, and/or doctrines will not be tolerated during any Berkeley MEChA meeting or event.
Sexism: Sexist remarks, comments, gestures, and/or doctrines will not be tolerated during any Berkeley MEChA meeting or event. We need the contributions of women and men working together for the betterment of nuestra Raza.
Gender Issues: To address issues of sexism and homophobia within our community by providing Chicana/o and Combined Caucuses throughout the school year which will establish an open forum and creates lines of communication
Berkeley MEChA will not restrict membership based upon race, color, national origin, religion, sex, physical and mental disability, medical condition, ancestry, marital status, age, sexual orientation, citizenship or status as a covered veteran; we will not haze according to California State Law.
I suppose they're almost the same.
As Orcinus says, This smear must stop:
The underlying logic of Reynolds' argument is that the "identity politics" of MEChA (and by extension, that of any mainstream civil-rights organization that vigorously attacks the tenets of white supremacism) is identical in nature to the institutionalized white supremacy of Jim Crow and its attendant ills: segregation, lynching, endemic discrimination.
Article comments
1 - Al Barger
Sho-wee, Brian- I think I smell something. You go on and on kvetching about how ol' Al supposedly does nothing but make personal attacks, and yet here you are on this frankly ridiculous vendetta against Mr. Reynolds. This little post constitutes an unhappy hate crime.
Not that I don't make a personal criticism from time to time, but I always have some reasonable basis for making such criticism. On the other hand, you have called Glenn everything but a white boy here and in other recent posts with absolutely no hint of a legitimate basis. Crikey, Brian, you're starting to make even Bill O'Reilly look fair and balanced.
I know you're frustrated. Democrats count on playing the race card in pretty much every election. You counted on sliming candidate Schwarzenegger with charges of racism, but it simply is not working. Arnold is quite squeaky clean there, despite his Aryan looks and accent.
Thing is, in this case the real legitimate racial issue is swinging the other way with this Mecha group. As their organization has come to broad public attention, a lot of folks don't like the smell of Bustamante's brotherhood.
You can try to argue over the translation of one slogan, but it's a lot deeper than that. They want to give a big chunk of America back to Mexico. They're not just trying to protect voting rights. They've got some considerably uglier things going on, and simply calling them a "civil rights organization" won't get rid of the stink.
Mecha is getting broken off up in Bustamante, as he well deserves, and you're losing your mind. Turns out your racial trump card is working the other way, if anything. Sorry that your cheap racial demagoguing ain't working out so good this time.
So instead, you're going apeshit on Glenn Reynolds. This makes a classic example of shooting the messenger. Glenn didn't make this stuff up. It's Bustamante that was in the racist organization, and still refuses to distance himself from it. Glenn's just pointing it out.
You moaned like you were dying about me criticizing you, because you apparently don't think a blogger should be criticized. [See comment #146] Yet here you go again and again personally demonizing Mr. Reynolds.
Is Brian Flemming a flaming hypocrite? We report, you decide.
2 - Eric Olsen
Honestly Brian, I am very happy right now that I don't live in California because the entire recall campaign strikes me as an absurd waste of time, money and energy. I imagine you basically agree with me there.
So having stated I don't give a dog's dong about the campaign, I will not address the factual issues at hand: I neither know nor care about the REAL Mecha.
But even giving you EVERY single matter of fact, which seem to be very much up in the air anyway, your attack on Glenn Reynolds is beyond the range of even polemic hyperbole as to appear unhinged. Other than his prominence - well deserved, in mine and 70,000 other opinions - I can't imagine why you would call such a person a fascist hatemonger and compare him to Saddam Hussein. This really does call into question your judgment.
3 - Phillip Winn
Brian- I don't really care about MEChA, though it would seem your information about "mistranslation" and the slogan never appearing on the website in the first place is debatable in the first case and plain wrong in the second. Still, I don't really care. I'm posting for this reason:
Al- You can actually link directly to a comment, though right that takes some exciting kung-fu action. For example, your last link can be rendered thusly. I'll add actual comment permalinks to my to-do list. ;)
4 - Phillip Winn
Brian, on further reflection, and after actually reading your post in detail, you must know that you (or Atrios, I guess) are pretty far off the bubble, right?
To compare various despicable Jim Crow laws from various states with one of the least-offensive documents from MEChA is just silly. As an NGO, MEChA has not been in a position to enact laws, so we have no real apples-to-apples possibilitites. However, several people have provided various assertions, such as that swaths of several states ought to revert to the control of Mexico. Including, I believe, the part where you currently live! Maybe the part where I live, too.
The idiots who pushed through Jim Crow laws had the power to do so, but before that they had the desire. MEChA doesn't have the power, and likely never will, but there is apparently evidence (that I haven't examined closely) that at least some of the organizational goals are not as mild and meek as their constitution (which regulates only their own behavior at internal meetings) might suggest.
I don't think that Jim Crow laws and MEChA can be easily compared. Nor, however, do I think that Reynolds was necessarily making that comparison. Hyperbolic? Sure. And silly in that sense. But his statement was specifically about the difficulty of getting elected officials to let go of strange ideas of racial superiority, which seems to describe Bustamante's allegiance to MEChA reasonably well.
5 - Joe
Out of the roughly 80 posts currently appearing on Glenn's homepage, six deal with Bustamante/MECha. On the other hand, with this post, I'd estimate you've committed about 3500+ words to your take on Glenn's opinions. Who's obsessing here?
6 - Dawn
What is even more important to note Brian, is that Glenn most likely doesn't really give a crap what you or 99% of the world speculate about regarding his personal beliefs or agendas.
He is just a man with a popular website who works pretty hard at keeping his readers informed of MANY types of things.
The real enemy is out there somewhere Brian, I challenge you to find them and stop wasting your time on a multi-tasking law professor.
7 - Andrew
Anytime one cites the infamous "atrios" as a good authoritative source for something, one has immediately undercut whatever credibility they might have otherwise attracted. Mr. Fleming's obsession about Mr. Reynolds is increasingly bizarre, but somewhat emblematic of a number of blogmasters on the Loony Left, including the aforementioned "atrios," the alleged substitute high school gym teacher from Philadelphia.
If the assertions of Mr. Fleming and others of his ilk were true, then one is left to ponder why so many Hispanic politicians, NOT including Mr. Bustamante, have publicly repudiated MEChA
8 - Mark
Here is the MeChA philosophy that Bustamante accepts, believes and has never publicly repudiated:
"In the spirit of a new people that is conscious…of the brutal 'gringo' invasion of our territories, we, the Chicano inhabitants and civilizers of the northern land of Aztlán from whence came our forefathers, reclaiming the land of their birth and consecrating the determination of our people of the sun, declare that the call of our blood is our power, our responsibility, and our inevitable destiny.
We are free and sovereign to determine those tasks, which are justly called for by our house, our land, the sweat of our brows, and by our hearts. Aztlán belongs to those who plant the seeds, water the fields, and gather the crops and not to the foreign Europeans. We do not recognize capricious frontiers on the bronze continent “
http://www.calnews.com/archives/contreras164.htm
9 - Chris Arabia
"I dunno. I haven't really thought about it."
Okay, I won't contest that assertion. Mr. Flemming summarizes himself more effectively than I ever could.
I also notice that he avoids a full translation and even a cursory analysis.
At best, the phrase seems to be a call for racialist self-reliance. One on-line service offered the following interpretation:
"By the race all, out of the race swims"
Which proves little more than the ineffectiveness of that service, comic effect notwithstanding.