2007/11/01 by Lisa Arrastía, Cathryn Merla Watson, Richa Nagar · 1 citation
Social Sciences · #Latin American and Latino Studies
paper · pdf · doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2007.00564.x
openalex publication_date 2007/11/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
Laura Pulido , Black, Brown, Yellow and Left: Radical Activism in Los Angeles Why is it that Proposition 187, ostensibly targeting all undocumented persons in California, was seen by the public as a referendum on the Latinoization of California? The answer, according to Laura Pulido, can only be sought through a comparative framework that accounts for the ways in which the past shapes the present and future, while also making space to delve into the complex processes through which historical geographies and struggles of differently oppressed and marginalized communities become co-implicated. In the case of Proposition 187, then, one needs to consider how, in exerting a downward pressure on the position of Latino/as, it offered temporary reprieve to Blacks and to Asian/Pacific Islanders who were rendered a much less problematic immigrant population relative to Latino/as. As trade liberalization and privatization continue to erode social safety nets and classical philosophies of autonomy and individualism pervade the politics of the global North, a transnational crisis of conscience and socio-political responsibility also deepens. At such a time, Pulido's Black, Brown, Yellow, and Left (Black, Brown) becomes an invaluable tool to remind us of the ways in which neoliberalism essentializes power, politics, and culture to implement and bolster its policies and political philosophy transnationally. The book deploys comparative lenses to rewrite the history and geography of race, capitalism, and grassroots activism in Los Angeles. With unusually rich archival materials and interviews at her command, Pulido presents a rigorous and powerful analysis that makes Black, Brown an essential historical and geographical survey for all students of social movements, anti-capitalist struggles, race, and empire. Pulido compares the historical experiences of African American, Japanese American, and Chicana/o activists who were part of the Third World Left in Los Angeles from 1968 to 1978. With the Black Panther Party (BPP), El Centro de Acción Social y Autónomo/the Center for Autonomous Social Action (CASA), and East Wind as her focus, she intervenes in existing scholarly literature that has often erased the existence of a Third World Left in the United States by either portraying the New Left as an old white male magic, or by focusing on anti-racist and nationalist struggles among communities of color predominantly through the lenses of identity, community, and culture. Pulido defines the Third World Left as organizations that identified themselves as revolutionary nationalist, Marxist, Leninist, or Maoist and at least half of whose membership comprised people of color (p 5). Black, Brown is analytically grounded in the twin concepts of differential racialization and racial hierarchies and how these two processes intersect with shifts in political consciousness to constitute a movement. Racial hierarchies are ever changing landscapes of distinct racial positions, shaped by local demographics, regional economics, local history, and national racial narratives. At the same time, differential racialization produces a variety of racial meanings—in continuous engagement with one another—ensuring differential incorporation of each community of color in the dominant political and economic system. Moments of crisis as well as of grassroots mobilization and activism are pivotal to the transformations of these racialized landscapes of power (p 29). What set the Third World Left apart from the larger New Left, then, was the understanding of the racialized nature of capitalism at the core of its political framework. Pulido is at pains to illustrate the extent to which the unique concerns, ideologies, and cultures of BPP, CASA, and East Wind were produced by specific racial and economic experiences, as well as by selective borrowing from other movements and places at various scales, ranging from the battlefields of Vietnam and Cuba to the local ghettos, barrios, and clusters. Chapter 2 provides a political and economic sketch of Southern California in the years following the Second World War, paying attention to the processes through which the political consciousness of Blacks, Japanese Americans, and Mexican Americans was shaped by such interrelated processes as the nature and degree of employment in various occupations, access to unions, spatial transitions, residential discrimination, and who lived near whom. While the war opened many doors and led to concrete material, political, and social advancements, the culture of the 1950s also placed a premium on white conformity, and the Red Scare terrorized those who threatened such conformity. The frustrations caused by the imposition of such silences erupted in the 1960s, starting with the Watts riot of 1965, which established African Americans as the most problematic of all communities of color in the eyes of many whites. Mexican Americans' greater employment in the formal economy as well as their participation in labor activism through unions militated against their participation in Watts Riots. Similarly, after internment, Japanese Americans had much higher rates of self-employment and participation in the professions than either Blacks or Mexican Americans. In addition, rather than being grounded in workers' struggles, Japanese Americans' economic backgrounds were more fragmented; consequently, their politics focused on the racism faced by the Asian American community as a whole (p 52). Pulido argues that politicization of activists of color was due to both personal experiences that predisposed them to challenge the social order and to the larger historical moment and the opportunities it presented (chapter 3). The Civil Rights Movement, the Watts Rebellion of 1965, the Anti War Movement, the Chicano Moratorium of 1970, and the struggles of students of color for the creation of ethnic studies programs on university campuses were central in shaping the process of radicalization and the emerging critiques of wartime racism, the role of capital, and US imperialism. Although activists from all three communities were affected by the same events, their political trajectories were necessarily shaped by their varying locations in racial and class hierarchies (p 85). Chapters 4 and 5 review the formational histories of several Third World Left organizations in Los Angeles. While Pulido points to a transition from civil rights to Black Power—accompanied by a parallel transition in the geography of mobilization from the rural South to urban centers—she simultaneously posits the rise of organizations across various scales (cultural nationalist groups, territorially oriented groups, Marxist organizations, and revolutionary nationalist parties). She cites important comparative sources that link urban space and cultural politics, such as Komozi Woodward's A Nation within a Nation: Amiri Baraka (LeRoi Jones) & Black Power Politics, for readers interested in exploring the connections between these issues in other locales. With her interest in the knitted yet porous systems of these organizations of the 1960s and 1970s—from the Che-Lumumba clubs to East Wind's Storefront—Pulido sensitively details the histories and ideologies of these organizations and what distinguished them, or forced them to distinguish themselves, from Old Left organizations, often structured along segmented yet well-developed models, such as Communist Party USA and the Socialist Workers' Party. Pulido then turns to the interethnic politics and relations of the Third World, carefully excavating the extent to which East Wind, BPP, and CASA interacted, collaborated and engaged in interethnic activism (chapter 6). The methodologies through which these groups collaborated with each other as well as with other organizations of color lend insights into the ways that grappling with each other's differences and histories is key to building effective multiracial coalitions. As Pulido refocuses her attention on the critical role of race in determining interethnic relations, she is attentive to how each organization's position within the racial hierarchy shaped its relations with other groups in unexpected ways. For example, East Wind, while successful in building coalitions with other Asian groups and providing extensive support to Blacks, Latina/os, and American Indians, could not disassociate itself from the “model minority” stereotype attached to Japanese Americans that placed it at the top of the local racial hierarchy, and effectively prevented the organization from being seen as part of the oppressed Third World. Whereas East Wind consciously avoided coalition building with whites to align and identify itself with the Third World Left, the BPP, occupying the bottom of the racial hierarchy, welcomed white support and resources. Paradoxically, BPP's lack of racial privilege endowed it with a “revolutionary chic” that attracted white support. Pulido refuses to homogenize the Third World Left, paying due attention to the similarities among groups and to their unique struggles and ideologies. The differences within the Third World Left, she claims, were based on race and class as well as on tensions between nationalism and internationalism. Although the Third World Left employed the rhetoric of internationalism to expand possibilities for transnational coalition building, the individual organizations strategically embraced revolutionary and cultural nationalism to build solidarity within the immediate community. This adherence to nationalism adumbrates why, for example, CASA rarely collaborated with other local Latino/a groups. Thus, far from being spontaneous or “random”, the differences between organizations reveal “each organization's political ideology, as well as the racial and class position of its membership” (p 179). The penultimate chapter addresses the dearth of scholarship on gender relations in the Third World Left by highlighting the need to historicize gender relations. Rather than comprehending the organizations as merely oppressive and masculinist, Pulido articulates them as sites of struggle, pinpointing how women negotiated gender relations and asserted or gained agency, albeit limited in some cases. Even as we confront the reality that the organizations were formed to “reestablish the status of and privilege of subordinated men” (p 181), Pulido enables us to appreciate how the Third World Left empowered women and offered men new radical lenses for re-imagining their masculinity, and for understanding how patriarchy becomes an extension of nationalism. The dynamics and idiosyncrasies of gender relations in each organization render contradictory and unexpected insights about the role of women in the Third World Left. For instance, while the BPP participated in a culture of violence and disproportionately relegated women to community work and child care rather than roles of leadership, it also offered women “unprecedented opportunities” to assume power by valuing actions that involved risking one's life and well-being (p 190). In contrast, CASA women “never achieved the leadership and visibility that the Panther women did” (p 195). While opportunities existed for female leadership—such as writing in the community newspaper, La Fronteras—these moments were rare. In addition, the emphasis on study and theoretical work safeguarded male privilege within the organization. East Wind was the most adept at critiquing patriarchy, and Pulido ascribes this strength to the organization's collective structure rather than the hierarchical form of the BPP or CASA. Also, Asian American activists understood patriarchy as epiphenomenal to capitalism and consequently subverted traditional gender roles. Thus, while the Third World Left encompassed a wide array of gender relations—oppressive and liberatory—it remained a space that fostered an interrogation of unequal gender relations and offered opportunities for women to assume leadership roles. The final chapter explores the Third World Left's imprint on the landscape of contemporary activism and politics. Far from treating the Third World Left as a relic of the past, Pulido demonstrates that the radical legacy of the Third World Left continues to shape progressive politics and activism among the Latina/o, Black, and Japanese American communities. A “partial list of contemporary Los Angeles organizations with links to the Third World Left” lists eighteen organizations that have sprung from that shared historical trajectory (p 217). What distinguishes these organizations from those in the 1960s and 1970s for Pulido is their different historical context and their conscious efforts “to learn from past mistakes” (p 216). The life and career trajectories of former members of the Third World Left have varied according to race and class. CASA's concern for labor laws led many of its members to become lawyers or politicians in close association with unions. Similarly, most members of East Wind became professionals and continued their political activism either as a volunteer or as a career. In the same way that CASA has molded the contemporary labor movement in Los Angeles, the East Wind has been instrumental in obtaining redress and reparations for Japanese Americans. However, the lives of former members of the BPP have taken diametrically different paths due to their position in the racial hierarchy. Although some of Pulido's interviewees had graduated from college or worked as full-time activists, “others were just barely making it, trying to keep mind, body, soul together” (p 225). Their economic status and emotional and spiritual states were prefigured by such structural inequalities as their working class backgrounds coupled with the devastating effects of surviving a state of war, which manifested themselves, among other things, in post-traumatic stress disorder and physical disabilities. Black, Brown is methodologically rich. From interviews with movement participants to posters and fliers from SoCal Black Panther Party events and newsletters, the analysis integrates a wide range of archival and ethnographic materials. However, Pulido's attempts to explain concepts such as Maoism (p 134) or to critique popular culture can sometimes cause confusion and unease for the reader, for example, when she refers to “popular depictions of sixties radicalism, as seen in movies like The Big Chill and Forrest Gump …” (p 123). Although Pulido correctly observes that these films gloss over “the vibrant theoretical debates that characterized the movement”, one could argue that The Big Chill and Forrest Gump were not films about radical social movements; they were sentimental and nostalgic Hollywood depictions of liberal whites during a period of intense social activism. The brilliance of Pulido's methodological approach is most apparent when she addresses historical formations and mutations in the representative SoCal organizations' ideologies through first person accounts. Consider the following quote from chapter 5 when she turns to Huey Newton's later theoretical innovation of “intercommunalism” and the inability of many in the community to understand or support it: Actually, when Huey got out of jail … a lot of changes started happening like putting down the gun, like no longer defending yourself. And he had this thing of intercommunalism. Huey was real deep. He was a brilliant man, but a lot of people didn't understand intercommunalism, and I think that is what helped split the party, because they didn't understand where Huey was going (p 152). Situated at the end of a discussion on the BPP and the lumpen proletariat, Pulido's example insightfully outlines the organization's deep link to, and its eventual separation from, certain sectors of the working class community. Black, Brown argues that despite being plagued by a culture of violence and sexism, the Third World Left made considerable progress in the spheres of democracy, gender relations, and interethnic solidarity. The argument for the need to situate and historicize progressive politics throughout Black, Brown gains renewed urgency in Pulido's plea that we need a left more than ever today. The primary spirit animating the book is a passionate commitment to learn from the political and intellectual struggles of the activists who comprised the Third World Left, while also illustrating when and how their activism could have been “tempered with more wisdom, honesty, kindness, and flexibility” (p 11). The political vision that Pulido shares through her labor of love demands that we learn from our past to imagine a better future—with an openness, flexibility, and critical and respectful engagement with difference that can resist orthodoxy. Not only does this vision inspire us to rethink the meanings of engagement in and outside the academy, but also it invites us to tackle difficult questions such as who comprises “people of color” at specific political moments, as well as about the unexamined relationships between the Third World Left within and beyond the United States.