Commentary:
By Jimmy Franco Sr.
We all have a general tendency to believe in myths that have been consistently repeated to us all of our lives as this type of conditioning process have instilled within our minds a subjective faith in certain feel-good concepts and abstractions that do not really exist. We are not born this way, but we are propagandized and programmed to accept as true what political authorities, schools and other social institutions implant within us even though many of these ingrained myths, concepts and historical occurrences that we are taught are often not real or actually didn’t happen within our society.
With the approach of 2015, we need to reject this conditioning process and discard most abstract concepts, theories and illusory beliefs that are detached from the objective world and which hinder us from confronting important social issues and changing conditions within our society. Here are some beliefs that many of us hold or have once held, that actually don’t exist or do not correspond to the real world. As such, they need to be discarded into the trash bin of 2014.
The police truly “protect and serve’ and only kill bad people:
The prevailing attitude and illusion within the country that the local police are some sort of knights in shining armor who are always on the side of justice is being dissipated by an increasing trend of unnecessary police shootings, beatings and rights abuses inflicted upon Latino and African-American men. The latest and most blatant casualty of police misconduct that was caught on film is the case of Eric Garner who was strangled to death by the New York City police. Communities need police protection. However, it must be carried out in a professional, honest and accountable manner. The idealistic perception of the ‘good old boys in blue’ has been shredded by the reality of unwarranted killings of young men, racial profiling, misconduct and a lack of civilian oversight over the para-military police forces. Urgent reforms of police methods and practices that need to be made are the attachment of mandatory body cameras on each officer, eliminating the militarization of police departments, increased training and the implementation of community policing rather than community occupation.
Obama’s immigration action has made the system more humane:
Many people believe that the recent executive order by President Obama regarding immigration relief was a huge victory and a key step toward comprehensive immigration reform. Such emotionalism and positive spin cannot hide the fact that this temporary pardon may only affect about four million out of thirteen million or more undocumented persons living within the country. The narrow scope of Obama’s executive order excludes the two million plus persons who have already been deported during the last six years, parents of Dreamers, adults without children and the million or so farm workers who are still being exploited in the fields.
Meanwhile, the government’s unjust guest worker program which closely resembles a system of indentured servitude continues to expand. While Obama’s action on immigration is a partial win and can be viewed as a positive step forward, the chorus of victory cheers does not correspond to the actual situation where a majority of the undocumented has still been left out in the cold.
The Democratic Party is a political ally and always defends Latino interests:
A large number of Latinos still accept the notion that the Democratic Party sincerely cares for their well-being and that to follow the ‘Pied Piper’ in a loyal manner will eventually produce results and improve people’s lives. The political game of follow-the-democratic leader has resulted in a pattern of Latinos being ignored, disrespected and taken for granted for many years now. While the right-wing abuse of Latinos by the Republicans is no option, the blind and masochistic loyalty to the Democrats is not a substitute for the positive alternative of organizing independent grassroots movements, community-based groups and actions that push and struggle for concrete change from below.
The existing educational system will solve our social problems:
The traditional message that we have all heard is to tell students to attend school and do well and that this effort will most likely produce a good future. However, this educational road is a lot more complicated and difficult than implied by this simplified message. Numerous young casualties are being left along the academic pathway as many students have tried their best in school and still have fallen by the educational wayside. While we should motivate students to do well in school, the existing reality of an unequal educational system, poverty, parents working long hours to survive, inferior schools with low expectations and sub-standard teachers, effectively derail the enthusiasm and academic achievement of many low-income Latino students. Adding to this deplorable situation is the rapid increase in college tuition costs and resulting loan debt. These social and economic barriers are widespread in many of our schools and prevent many students with good intentions from not successfully completing their studies. Besides being supported and motivated to do well academically by family and friends, students also need to be encouraged by them to become involved in the growing political movement to reform and change their schools by demanding more funding and resources for their classrooms, a higher level of expectations and accountability from teachers and administrators and lower college tuition costs
The promise of social mobility and class equality are achievable for all:
The traditional American myth states that there are no class divisions within our society and that everyone is equal with the same opportunity to ‘pull themselves up by their bootstraps’ if only they work hard. However, stubborn facts show that a deepening of class divisions presently exists and that a gap in the distribution of wealth and the rate of poverty is growing larger with each passing year. A major part of our society does work long hours and very hard for low wages, yet, there is no magical or automatic economic ‘bootstrap’ in existence that improves their wages, standard of living nor the quality of life for their families. What is required are not more illusory feel-good tales, but the organization of a broad-based labor movement that demands pay raises, an increase in the minimum wage, an expansion of unionization and labor rights, full benefits and a system of universal healthcare for all. We must create our own collective bootstrap based upon organization and action in order to apply political pressure and demand that hard work is reimbursed with fair wages and full benefits.
We have a political democracy where power lies with the people and ballots:
A fallacy that continues to be promoted within our society is that the economic and political systems in this country are separate and distinct as if some sort of legal and ethical walls actually keep them apart. The US Constitution clearly states that the US is a republic which is to be governed by ‘chosen’ representatives and not a democracy. During the 1700’s when the US was founded, a democracy would have meant direct governance by the majority.
However, this was not what the founding white male slave owners and wealthy businessmen wanted for ‘their’ new country and this system was rejected as being a form of ‘mob rule’. At present, any separation of our economic and political systems is steadily being eroded and corrupted by the financial growth of monopoly capital and the emergence of a powerful plutocracy. The result of this growing trend has been an expansion of corporate financial control over our system of governance and electoral campaigns, the type of vital legislation that is approved or blocked and even key judicial decisions. In order to turn this situation around, some semblance of democracy and a level playing field needs to be restored into the political system.
US military forces always fight in defense of freedom and democracy:
The traditional propaganda line that has historically been fed to the public in order to rationalize a progression of constant wars and huge military budgets over the past seven decades is that US invasions, bombing campaigns, military interventions and occupations of other countries have been done to defend freedom and further democracy around the world. The last just war that we were involved in and which was legally declared by the US Congress was World War II. The traditional US folklore which portrays the military pursuit of ‘freedom and democracy’ as a supposed guiding motive for US foreign policy has led to countless violations of international law by both Republican and Democratic administrations. This repeated and false tale about being the savior that continually wages violence around the world for the noble cause of ‘freedom and democracy’ tends to romanticize and distort the unnecessary involvement of US troops in numerous countries as being their duty to ‘serve our country’ and ‘defend our way of life’.
Fighting for a profit-seeking military-industrial complex should not be our way of life. Supporting our troops should actually mean distinguishing between just and unjust wars and not sending them to fight and die in invasions of foreign lands for economic motives such as the defense of corporate resources and profits. The current bloated military budget, over 150 military bases worldwide and a huge increase in spending for new nuclear weapons need to be cut and our troops brought home. It’s time to truly stop the violence internationally and turn our swords into plowshares and invest our resources into peaceful civilian needs.
The Mexican Government is just and NAFTA and the drug war are beneficial:
Many Mexican-Americans and other Latinos have long held a distorted perception that the Mexican Government which is presently under the control of the PRI Party is generally fair, but that its inherent problem is merely one of incompetence. This is also the convenient attitude that is held by US government officials. However, facts show the existence of a corrupt Mexican government that is controlled by an elite class of skilled and unethical politicians who cooperate with the US drug war, NAFTA and the exporting of its own people to the US due to decades of unemployment in Mexico. Making this situation even worse has been the well-organized embezzlement by Mexican politicians of public funds, payoffs from cartels, mistreatment of workers and violations of the civil rights and lives of its citizens such as the recent massacre of the 43 student-teachers in the state of Guerrero. The traditional use of the ‘mordida’ or system of bribes along with the tactic of ‘pan o palo’ which is used to either buy off critics and opponents with money and jobs or resort to the palo of violence and the outright elimination of people is still alive and well in Mexico. This corrupt and violent situation tends to be glossed over and given a pass by most US politicians and dismissed by many others in this country as simply being part of an historically corrupt system and ‘Mexican culture’ The criminal narco-state that exists in Mexico needs to be fundamentally democratized from the bottom up with political safeguards and methods of accountability instituted for defending the human rights of its citizens.
Jimmy Franco Sr. writes a blog, Latino Point of View from which this edited version was published from. For the full text visit: http://www.latinopov.com/blog/