by Bryan brown
Growing up in California and coming of political age in the 90's, race has been a central factor in my develop as a person and as a radical. California elections have been the battle ground upon which fights over immigrant rights, bilingual education, affirmative action, criminal justice, labor rights and queer marriage have been fought. The explosion of rage in Los Angeles after the Rodney King verdict clearing four white cops of all charges in the internationally witnessed beating of King was to have a profound impact on my way of seeing the world. I rarely ever thought about what it meant to be white, I was just a person. The ability of whiteness to be so universalized, to be the norm, to be the standard and all others and just that, others. I grew up in the post-Civil Rights era, where racism has operated in a way that rarely even speaks directly about race.
I remember as a small child listening to other children speak Spanish and I assumed that it was because......
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