Let LA’s racist City Council audio to SF Mayor Breed scapegoating Honduran migrants remind that identity politics won’t save us

Alas, the time that has come to be known as Latino Heritage Month — some prefer Hispanic, Latinx, Latine — has passed. What now? 

Amid the prettiness of the papel picado, vestidos, bailes and the vibrant mash of colors that window dress the “folklórico industrial complex,” an ugliness lured. Arguably, that ugliness has always been there.  

By now, many who are reading this may be at the very least vaguely familiar with the fallout surrounding three Latino Los Angeles City Council members. In audio that was leaked online and reported on by the LA Times, the three soon-to-be-former councilmembers — Nury Martinez has resigned, while Kevin De León and Gil Cedillo are taking their sweet mañana time — can be heard candidly conversing and degrading Black and Indigeous people. 

Martinez, who was the first Latina to hold the title of LA Council President — hashtag girlboss — called the two-year-old Black son of a gay colleague a “changuito” and questioned what “village” Oaxacans living in Koreatown came from, before declaring in the most annoying pocha accent possible: “¡Tan feos!” 

Other awful things were said too. But I don’t have all day. Y’all have the internet, so look up the recording yourselves. 

There have been plenty of protests, social media hot-takes, op-eds, impassioned public and private conversations since this scandal broke on Oct. 9. Many have focused and called out the anti-blackness of these politicians — and rightfully so. Racism is the foundational bedrock of ‘Latinidad’ — that’s a conversation for another time. But just before this story broke, troubling words were spoken by another politician, one much closer to home, words that were buried beneath the bombardment of attention focused on LA’s city council. 

On Oct. 5 during an interview on KQED Live, San Francisco’s Mayor London Breed was talking about the drug Fentanyl and asked the interviewers: “Why do people who deal drugs have more rights than people who try to get up and go to work every day…?”

“Do they though, do they have more rights?” responded one of the interviewers. 

This, astonishingly, was Breed’s answer.

“Let’s talk about the reality of the situation. There are unfortunately a lot of people who come from a particular country … Honduras. And a lot of the people who are dealing drugs happen to be of that ethnicity…”

Pause. 

Those words weren’t secretly recorded and mysteriously leaked online. They were uttered during a live interview with one of the city’s largest and most respected media outlets. How — and I’m pointing the finger at myself too — did we miss this? 

But let’s break down what she said. The talking point that drug dealers “have more rights” than hard working people is one peddled by right-wing politicos — and fake corporate liberals who profit just the same off the prison industrial complex — as if the so called “War on Drugs” didn’t destroy entire communities and families, as if people aren’t still incarcerated by the thousands for drug-related offenses. 

Secondly, when Breed decides to talk about the “reality” of the city’s drug crisis, she singles out migrants from Honduras as being the cause. Nice. Glad Hondureños got some love on Latino Heritage Month. Seriously though. Are we really that stupid to believe that the people on corners selling drugs are the ones responsible for the path that drugs take to our neighborhoods? Are we really that stupid to believe that the dealers are the ones who manufacture, package and smuggle these drugs? Are we really that stupid to believe that dealers are responsible for the demand for drugs that exists and has existed for decades here in the United States?  

If you embrace this thinking, you’re either blind or content with ignoring the root causes of our drug crisis, and are pleased with the non-solution of more policing because that makes you feel better about yourself.   

But Breed didn’t stop there. She also used this “reality” as a justification for racial profiling and says “we can’t just you know throw our hands up and say people have rights.” 

If Trump or any one of the many politically ambitious far-right fanboys he has inspired had said this, there would have been protests on the steps of city hall. He would’ve been admonished not only for the blatant racism of his statement, but for implying that people, immigrants in this case, aren’t deserving of rights.

But it wasn’t Trump. It was Breed, the city’s first Black woman mayor — hashtag girlboss again. And instead of local Latino leaders protesting what she had said, many joined her in celebration a week later inside city hall, giving into the pandering that is Latino Heritage Month, of all things. There, she talked about “unity,” and “coming together” to address the issues that affect the city. 

How is that possible, when just a week before she decided to scapegoat Honduran migrants?

Many of us have condemned the blatant anti-blackness and anti-indigeneity that was spewed from the three Latino LA City Council members. And deservedly so. But these comments from Breed too should be widely condemned. 

And if there is a lesson here, I think it is this: Stop being conned by identity politics. It won’t save you. Identity politics has been co-opted by the establishment, working sophisticatedly to diversify the power structure that keeps many of us subservient rather than dismantling it. In other words, these politicians may look like us, we may share cultural customs, last names, and language, but once they start serving the power structure and themselves, they stop serving us. 

May that be the lesson from this Latino heritage month.