Jorge Rivas

“Without Blacks’ Sacrifice, Latinos Would be 30 Years Behind in the Fight for Civil Rights”

Hector Tobar, one of the few columnists of color left at the Los Angeles Times, says “Without Blacks’ sacrifice, Latinos would be 30 years behind in the fight for civil rights.”

What do you think?

In “”For Latinos and blacks, a call for unity, not hate” Tobar writes:

I’d been invited by USC to be on a panel discussing the topic of Blacks and Latinos in Los Angeles literature. But the mostly student audience didn’t want a writerly chat. They wanted to talk about the reality of a divided, angry city.

“There’s certain parts of Watts and Compton where Blacks can’t go,” a young Black man told us, rising up from his seat to describe Latino gang members’ slurs and threats.

A high school teacher rose to his feet, too, to talk about his Latino students’ ignorance of African American history and the intolerance he often hears from the Spanish-speaking immigrants around him.

Read Tobar’s column “For Latinos and Blacks, a call for unity, not hate” on the LA Times site.

Posted at 9:55 AM, Jun 22, 2009 in Permalink | View Comments