Black–brown unity
In some instances, such as in the case of forging an understanding of yellow power, scholars have noted that the need to create a pan-Asian identity and dismantle existing stereotypes (e.g. "model minority") are also necessary steps which precede the formation of cross-racial unity, as Asian-American activists, writers, and scholars such as Amy Uyematsu, Franklin Odo, Larry Kubota, Keith Osajima, and Daniel Okimoto have addressed since the late 1960s.
[7][8] Adam Serwer for The Atlantic stated that "the lives of disproportionately black and brown workers are being sacrificed to fuel the engine of a faltering economy, by a president who disdains them.
[11] After being hit by rubber bullets at a Los Angeles protest, actor Kendrick Sampson stated that the police were "only here to terrorize black and brown communities and indigenous folk," who are the most vulnerable.
[15] In the aftermath of a conflict, activists in Little Village, Chicago, held a rally for black and brown unity to fight white supremacy.
[11][16] The racial-political ideology of Black-Brown unity is based on acknowledging the similarities of oppression endured by Black and Brown people.
[18] Zillah Eisenstein and other scholars recognize how the need for unity among people of color emerged from the global nature of oppression and its relationship with capitalism, colonialism, masculinity, and white supremacy.
[19]Similarly, Gary Okihiro recognizes how European colonialism was built on an ideology which justified "their expansion and appropriation of land, labor, and resources in Africa, Asia, and the Americas."
[20] The first wave of movements asserting the objective of forming unity or coalitions between people of color and economically disadvantaged whites, began in the late 1960s in the United States and declined by the 1970s.
[21] However, as a result of police brutality, government surveillance and harassment, sabotage campaigns by government agencies and local police departments which targeted activist organizations with the intention of producing distrust and disunity among activists and organizations, and the assassination of leaders such as King and Hampton, this wave of multiracial coalition building declined by the 1970s.
Along with the other representatives, Hopi spiritual leader Thomas Banyacya, who was present at the conference along with many northern New Mexican villagers, also signed the treaty, which began with the following five articles:[24]Article I: "Both peoples do promise not to permit the members of either of said peoples to make false propaganda of any kind whatsoever against each other, either by SPEECH or WRITING."
While this agreement recognized that disagreements and conflicts between Black and Brown people had been present in a society which actively oppressed both groups, it signified an attempt to forge a coalitive liberation movement, and has been noted by scholars in comparative civil rights scholarship to represent the inception of an attempt to forge Black-Brown unity.
[23] Attempts at coalition work between Black and Brown people largely occurred in the southwestern United States and had notable regional differences.
As noted by academic Daniel Martinez HoSang, Black and Mexican American parents and students were often "plaintiffs in litigation related to educational adequacy and reform" in court cases into the early 1970s.
Richard M. Daley defeated Washington's successor by "pitting the gains of one group against the other—replacing black officials with Latinos, for instance—in order to forestall the unity.
Okihiro documents the "coolie" slave trade, in which approximately one-third of Asian enslaved peoples perished en route to the Americas under the forced authority of European and American ship captains, to assert that "the African and Asian coolie were kinsmen and kinswomen in that world created by European masters.
"[30] African American community and political leaders, such as Frederick Douglass and Blanche K. Bruce, recognized this shared oppression openly.
The court upheld this decision on the grounds that white men should be shielded from the testimony "of the degraded and demoralized caste" of racially inferior peoples.
However, as Okihiro notes, while some African Americans were opposed to acts of cooperation and solidarity with Asian workers, the majority recognized that "the enemy was white supremacy and that anti-Asianism was anti-Africanism in another guise."
Hsiao-Chuan Hsia conducted a study of fifteen rural Taiwanese who had never been to the United States, yet perceived Black Americans as "self-destructive, dirty, lazy, unintelligent, criminal, violent, and ugly."
The researcher found that "these negative images were generally gleaned from U.S. television shows, movies, and music videos that the respondents had seen in Taiwan."
The Kerner Commission, which was assembled to address the causes of the 1967 Detroit race riots, found that American media was a major agent of the violence "through coverage and editorial writing that sometimes was blatantly hostile and antiblack," as summarized by academic Amy Alexander.
Throughout Latin American countries, such as Brazil, the idea of racial whitening was made pervasive through colonialism, while mestizaje promoted a color-blind ideology.
Nwosu argues that "Black and Latino historical struggles for freedom and justice are so intertwined that separation and divorce cannot be the most genuine pathway for progress in America," and that anti-Blackness must be combated through mutual respect.
"[43] Scholar Ellen Wu noted that, even though events such as the Chinese Exclusion Act and anti-Japanese sentiments were pervasive, that "in the 1960s, white liberals wielded the model minority stereotype to stifle black social movements."
Gary Okihiro notes that, although Caudill and De Vos had attempted to "distinguish between identity and compatibility, similarity and sharing, subsequent variations on the theme depicted Asians as 'just like whites'."
"[50] In his 1973 essay entitled "Yellow Power," Larry Kubota echoes the sentiments of Frantz Fanon's notion regarding the psychic violence of colonialism and refers to the model minority stereotype as a myth which had conditioned some Asians in the United States to believe that "there was no need for change because their own social and economic status was assured."
"[27] In the 1930s, legal scholar Ian Haney López records that "community leaders promoted the term Mexican American to convey an assimilationist ideology stressing white identity.
Even prior to the 1960s, members of the Mexican community who were of darker complexion, recent immigrants, and/or working-class often identified based on their cultural or familial ties in Mexico and not by their race.
