“If you’re Black, get back.  If you’re brown, stick around. But if you’re white, you’re all right.” So went the popular saying of the 1960s Civil Rights and Black power movements, which capsulized the feeling of social, political and economic disenfranchisement among African Americans in major urban centers.

Well, by all indications, brown – meaning America’s burgeoning Hispanic community – has stuck around.  And of a surety, everything has changed for them now. Quite dramatically in fact. For the very near future and beyond, fortunes are looking up for Latinos in the United States. Hopefully, that’s the case for African Americans as well.

While the growth of non-ethnic groups here has stagnated over the past decade, and the Black population similarly has only guardedly increased, Hispanics now represent the fastest-growing “minority” in this country. They additionally are the largest ethnic group, assuming the title long held by African Americans. According to recent statistics from the U.S. Census Bureau, Latino numbers have actually more than doubled since 2001, and indications are that this trend will continue. Some of the advantages of this ascent are latent, others glaring.

In the realms of business and academia today, Spanish is by far the second language deemed most essential to command. Spanish-language TV channels and networks permeate many top markets, and CNN even has a news anchor in its employ who, when necessary, effortlessly responds to viewer call-ins in Spanish. There was a first-ever Hispanic presidential candidate in the running earlier in the current race, as well as 25 sitting Latino American congressmen and senators. Illegal immigration looms large as the paramount issue on every serious political candidate’s platform, and though their median age is younger than that of other ethnic groups, the Hispanic community is acknowledged as the vote not to be ignored.

In short, in every major area beyond mere demographics, Hispanics are flexing their muscle. And, although we had plenty of notice, African Americans appear to be at a crossroads in determining how to respond. Talk of forming Black-Hispanic alliances recognizing the shared struggles of people of color have thus far proven little more than lip-service, and citing the re-election of George H.W. Bush, Black voters repeatedly fail to galvanize during election seasons.

The term “minority,” formerly the watchword that signaled business set-asides, college scholarships and loans, ad spending, targeted marketing and PR contracts and other opportunities earmarked for Blacks, now has been all-but replaced with “urban,” which technically can encompass any racial identity. Ask anyone in either of the aforementioned industries, and they’ll confirm that it already, generally does.  Current projections are that the buying power of Black America will top $1.1 trillion by the year 2011. But America’s Hispanic community, whose buying power has now reached $863.1 billion, will wield an economic strength of $1.2 trillion at that time.

As long projected, the nation has certainly become more diverse, with minority groups now one third of the U.S. population. Yet is America truly ready? Does it have to be? Do Black and brown people have the foresight and vision to unify and build mutually beneficial multi-ethnic coalitions without jockeying for advantage to leverage the power and respect that both deserve? Chicago, for one, may be a model.  People of color here are staking their futures on the probability that Black and brown synergy can and must happen, with several of its premier ethnic companies and institutions stepping up and taking the lead.

This past October, just over 200 years since Black trader and pioneer Jean Baptiste Point DuSable became Chicago’s founder and first settler, the institution that bears his name, the DuSable Museum of African American History joined forces with the city’s National Museum of Mexican Art to host the second annual Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Cesar Chavez Luncheon. In the names of two of this country’s most celebrated Black and Hispanic civil rights crusaders, history was quietly made as a distinguished panel of experts came together for a discourse about the fusion of Black-Hispanic ideas and energies to confront issues of import to both cultures.

The National Museum of Mexican Art again mobilized on the issue last November, but this time alongside Chicago’s Center for the Study of Race, Politics and Culture at the University of Chicago in convening “Afro-Mexican Studies Symposium 2007.”  The first-ever event brought together working scholars from Rutgers, Johns-Hopkins and Oregon State Universities, plus other local and national luminaries in this growing field in progressive, well-attended discussions about Black-brown history, race relations past and present and collaboration in the parallel struggles of people of African and Latin descent.    

Joseph Nebolsky de Ochoa, senior vice president of FCG Latino and an attendee at the symposium, heads a newly-created division at Flowers Communications Group of Chicago that itself is evidence of the successful fusion of Latino and African American culture in the arena of integrated marketing communications. In August 2006, the talents of Nebolsky de Ochoa’s former agency, jndeo, were acquired by the award-winning African American-owned firm to add full-service multicultural capabilities to FCGs clients and their programs. An active participant, he observes that the symposium accomplished what it set out to do: To establish dialogue, and to lift the veil on Black-brown insecurities about trust and resistance to change.

“Fear is change,” Nebolsky de Ochoa told this writer.  “For years, each group (African Americans and Latinos) has been fighting on so many fronts externally, but also internally among their own.  This rhetoric continues. For example, we hear; ‘you’re not Black enough to understand being Black.’  Or ‘you’re not brown enough to be brown.’ At the DuSable-Mexican Fine Arts Museum event, there was serious debate about why Hispanics are supposedly ‘taking jobs away’ from African Americans.  It was interesting to see folks begin to understand that nobody is taking jobs, but that the jobs in question are just no longer willingly accepted by African Americans.

“Most interesting to me was hearing how each group was critical of the other for all types of reasons,” adds Nebolsky de Ochoa. “I think it’s apparent that both Black and brown are beginning to acknowledge the importance of coming together to establish common ground on the issues.  There are still many in the old guard that want us to remain separate, but the younger generations are beginning to see the strength inherent in togetherness.

“It has been hard for most groups to work together,” concludes Nebolsky de Ochoa. “Now, it may be even harder, but we need to fuse our fears and come together. Otherwise, we’ll still be playing catch-up in the next 25 years – which is exactly what the other cultures wants us to do.”

 

Editor’s note: Ronald E. Childs is an award-winning Black journalist living in Chicago.  He can be reached at: TheOMEN091959@aol.com, or visit his web site at www.theomenonline.com.