All the Things We Have in
Common
By
Johnie H. Scott
(WAVE Newspapers, Wednesday, May 3, 2000)
“When everything
else is gone, the music will still be there.”
I must say that writing this column has given me many reasons to look at our community and world in an entirely different light. Initially, the charge was to write about “cultural diversity” which I took to mean developing a column focused on the way(s) in which the different races and cultures seemed to be changing the world as we know it. That understanding has definitely changed.
A quick glance at the LAUSD alone – with more than 700,000 students in grades kindergarten-12 representing more than 90 different cultures – serves as proof enough that ours is no longer a black and white society as much as some might want to think, or hold onto.
Despite the fact that Latinos now comprise nearly two-thirds of those students in the LA Unified, one cannot say that today’s world is black, brown and white. Those Latino or, better yet, Spanish-speaking youth come from nationalities and cultures as different from one another, in their own way, as African Americans differ from West Indians or Afro-Brits. Which is to say the people of Guatemala and Nicaragua differ from those of Columbia and El Salvador, that Peruvians and Bolivians share different values and tastes from those of Mexico and Argentina though they all speak Spanish.
Native-born Mexicans are very different in their social, political, economic, and cultural outlooks from their Chicano/a brothers and sisters from East Los Angeles, or Panorama City, for that matter. They might all speak Spanish, to be sure, but it is not the same Spanish they speak and each brings a different perspective to the Big Dance, so to speak.
Cultural
Productions Give One Aspect of the Differences
You can see this variation in the cultural observances. El Teatro Campesino and El Ballet Folklorico, although firmly grounded in history and tradition, are not to be ever confused with representing the extent and full range of Latin dance just as one cannot assume that the Alvin Ailey Dancers give us the same sensibility that comes from Arthur Mitchell’s Dance Theater of Harlem; or that Cinco de Mayo is a holiday that every single Spanish-speaking person observes which would be the same as assuming that all Black Americans are aware of, much less celebrate, Juneteenth. It just ain’t so!
That’s making the same kind of stereotyping that Black folk have endured for so many hundreds of years, that “They all look alike to me!” The world is, it never was, that simple a place.
I think of a close friend (who shall remain nameless) from that time during the late 1970s and early 1980s. I was the Public Relations Officer at what was then called the Charles R. Drew Postgraduate Medical School located on 120th Street and Compton Avenue in Southcentral Los Angeles. As the Public Relations Officer of “Drew” as we called this, the first and only minority-oriented medical school west of the Mississippi, I was part of the management team working under the leadership of then-Dean Dr. David Satcher – now the U.S. Surgeon General.
Ours was a mission and goal that ultimately would be realized in the Charles R. Drew University of Science and Medicine, this being the academic and teaching arm of the Los Angeles County Martin Luther King, Jr. General Hospital. Reflecting on those years, I think of this friend. He was a hard-working, industrious, very conscientious person who lived at the time in the city of Garden Grove. He was also a fourth-generation Mexican-American who was very proud of his family and its roots.
In the many conversations the two of us enjoyed during that time, he pointed out the differences – real and imagined – that existed between himself, his family and parents, and those first-generation Mexicans entering the country. The latter seemingly were “featured” every night on the television evening news as those “illegal aliens” caught up by the U.S. Border Patrol while attempting to crossover into the United States from their native Mexico.
Even now, I can recall the strain that would enter my friend’s voice when he spoke of how “very different” those so-called “illegals” were: the differences ranging from lifestyle choices to their just plain making it hard for those like him who could, and did, trace their family roots in California back over more than a century.
There were times when we held these discussions when I was reminded of the differences my own family and friends felt separated us from those recent African American arrivals from “the Country”: Louisiana, Mississippi, Texas, Arkansas, North Carolina and Alabama. We looked down on these arrivals much, I imagine, the same way that those blacks who came to Los Angeles and other part of the nation during the Great Migrations of the early 1900s looked down upon their brothers and sisters (i.e., my parents) who came to Watts during the late 1940s and early 1950s in search of better job opportunities than existed in the Deep South.
It seems as though ours is a society based upon class divisions of the most petty, divisive sort. The people living in Baldwin Hills looked down upon the people living in Compton who looked askance at those of us living in Watts and for no better reason than believing they had somehow reached higher ground in the so-called Promised Land.
You saw this in the black Debutante Parties that were featured every week in the Society section of the black weeklies, in the ways black entertainers made the covers of Ebony and Jet for moving over into the exclusive Crenshaw District. It didn’t matter that everyone was struggling. It didn’t matter that you only had to miss those proverbial two paychecks in a row to be right back from where so many of us started when first landing in the Promised Land – those government housing projects with names like Aliso Village, William Mead or “Dogtown,” the Pueblos, Jordan Downs, Nickerson Gardens, Hacienda Village, Avalon Gardens and Imperial Courts. Where, in order to qualify for housing, you were either a welfare recipient or lived below the federal poverty guidelines. This was a time when folk put in a hard day’s work, then came home only to go right back to work that evening with most folk having 2-3 different jobs in” making ends meet.”
Those with the energy and drive rehearsed every single night in those project living rooms and on street corners, trying to get singing groups together and make that hit record much like you see the youngsters today striving for that break in the rap industry. People like Brenda Holloway and younger sister Patrice, the Invincibles (“Heart Full of Love”), the Rivingtons, Little Joe Mosley and the Sequins (“Looking for a Job,” “Wedding Bells”), Olympics (“Western Movies”), the Blossoms, and yes, the famed Whispers (who came from the Jordan Downs, Hacienda Village and Nickerson Gardens housing projects in Watts) all hoping for that big break to come so they, too, might be able to pack up, get up, and leave the hard times behind.
Ours was a sort of “cultural diversity” that didn’t set people apart from one another. To the contrary, it made for even stronger bonds in bringing people together from all parts of the city and country as we connected, celebrating this experience called Black Life and Community. Didn’t matter, not then, if you went to Fremont, Jordan, Manual Arts, Jefferson, Dorsey, Los Angeles or Lincoln High. The music united us; our music, which highlighted our hopes and dreams. I know this might come across as corny, but it’s the truth.
I turn on the evening news nowadays and it doesn’t seem to matter how much channel surfing I do, the repetitiveness of the images I see, not to mention he mind-numbing sameness of the lyrics (I mean, come on, how many different ways can you call a girl “a bitch” or “ho?”), truly will make you “wanna throw your hands and holler.” Seems to me as if introducing some of today’s gangster rappers with their limited vocabularies and even more challenged mental outlooks to what was really driving the people and music “back in the day” wouldn’t be a bad idea.
Thinking of the wisdom, the healthy life experience that the Whispers’ Walter or Wallace Scott could pass on some of these self-styled “thug” rappers about art and personal integrity, about respect for yourself, your family and community while, at the same time, teaching them “game” about what it takes to survive for more than 30 years in one of the world’s toughest businesses says in no uncertain terms that we could do much worse; as a matter of fact, we could do a whole lot worse.
(This article was edited and revised by the author from the original version as published by the WAVE Newspapers. Links have been embedded by the author in updating for this special Pan African Studies course offering – JS)