Thread by @PeterGelderloos

Re the #LACityCouncil a brief thought on some emerging dangers of #antiBlackness.

Anglo whiteness is particularly self-referential, unable to recognize the codes of other histories of whiteness. For example anglos read all latines as non-white.
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The xenophobia with which anglo whites try to racialize latine whites is real and harmful, but it is also real that white latines, whether in the US or farther south, have access to powerful, genocidal modes and histories of whiteness and settlerness.
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It's not a repeat of how the Irish & Italians became white, since the upper classes of Latin American countries are already white, some are full on settler states, etc. But the infamous reactionary tendencies of newly white Italians & Irish, for ex., might be a cautionary tale.
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The updated version: identity politics have long ago degraded into representational politics, and white latines in the US are particularly situated to access many forms of white privilege while also being able to hoard or gatekeep resources that the liberal, charity-based
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responses to racism allow to trickle down to racialized people. They will be the chosen representatives for most racialized people, because the anglo whites who hold the most power feel the most comfortable with them (since they share most codes of whiteness).
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We can already see how Republicans and the Right are aggressively courting white latines to maintain majorities and avoid criticisms of racism, and many white latines subjected to xenophobia aggressively want their whiteness to be recognized.
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The shared code that will allow for this is ever more virulent racism and violence towards Black and Indigenous people.

What is the best way to head this off? I don't know. Let's be especially attentive to what our Black, Indigenous, mestizo, and migrant comrades are saying.
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Let's be more forceful in our rejection of representational politics (basically what folks today call identity politics though not in the original Combahee River Collective sense) and let's speak more openly about anti-Black racism and what it means to live in a settler state.
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