Our guest is Melinda Grisby—known online as @browngirlpride is a social media activist, Former Air Force Medic twice deployed to Iraq, and a public speaker with a focus on history and decolonization.
In the first half of today’s program, Melinda discusses the history of the racial classification of Latino people in the United States that the implications of the Latino vote. She also corrects some widely circulated misinformation and makes a case that the narrative associated with Latino voters is inaccurate and has led to harmful responses from other racial groups.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. I am
your host, Ramse's jaw sending a big shout out to
my co host, my partner in crime, q Ward, who
is currently traveling trying to make the world a better place.
But he will be back in the saddle next weekend
(00:23):
for your listening pleasure. But have no fear, we have
a special guest joining us today. She goes by the
name of Melinda Grisby. She's known online as Brown Girl
Pride and I want you to follow her at Brown
Girl Pride. I promise you're going to learn something special.
And for those who don't know, she is a social
media activist. She's a former Air Force medic twice deployed
to Iraq, and she's also a public speaker with a
(00:44):
focus on history and decolonization. So welcome to the show, Melinda.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm really excited to talk to you.
For those that kind of pay attention, you know, you
might have seen a couple of her videos because she
goes viral from time to time, but she's also I
guess Rose took kind of national prominence via TikTok. There
(01:12):
was a video of you burning a uniform right after
the Roe v. Wade Roby Wade was overturned by the
Supreme Court, and this was an active protest, and a
lot of people were able to see this form of protest,
and I thought that it was masterful because a lot
of people are indoctrinated to assume that military personnel are
(01:32):
just compliant and complicit, and you have been one person
to stand up for indeed what is right. And so
for the people that have come to this conversation in
support of you and to salute you and to remind
you that your actions have encouraged them, I employ to
stick around because again, I think we're going to have
(01:53):
a fantastic conversation today and we're going to learn a
lot about the history behind not only that protest, but
a lot of other things that we need to know
about this current administration. But before we get there, as always,
we'd like to start off with some ebony excellence, and
today's ebony excellence I'm gonna share from kyt dot com
or news Channel three out of Oxnard, California, and I
(02:16):
love this. Jose Hernandez continues to expire. So former astronaut
Jose Hernandez energized hundreds of students eager to hear his
life story on Wednesday at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center.
It's part of Oxnart School Districts summer enrichment programs in
STEM and literacy. Quote, they can see someone that speaks
like them, looks like them, and perhaps came from the
(02:38):
same socioeconomic background that they're coming from, and so it
empowers them to say, Hey, if he did it, why
can I, said Hernandez. Hernandez spoke in a mix of
Spanish and English, telling stories of his upbringing as a
child of Mexican immigrant farm workers.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
He achieved his goal, and now I could achieve my
goal when I grow up, unquote, said fifth grader Isabella
rout Era. Quote he definitely defied the odds and defied gravity,
I mean being up in space, so it was really
cool unquote, said special education educator Darnie Sorry Danny Jacksper.
Hernandez's message of hope and perseverance comes during a politically
(03:18):
tumultuous time, especially in oxennarm quote the raids and everything
with the whole ice thing, A lot of kids have
been staying home and not coming to school as much.
A lot of families are staying home just in fear
for their life and their safety unquote, said jacksper quote.
The political world is a big pendulum that swings one way,
then it swings those opportunities. Then when it swings, those
opportunities may not be here now, but they are going
(03:40):
to be here in the other And so what we've
got to focus on ourselves prepare ourselves for future opportunities unquote.
This according to Hernandez, A hit movie was made of
Hernandez's life called A Million Miles Awayez got his master's
degree from UC Santa Barbara and now serves as a
University of California agent. So yeah, I love that. All Right,
(04:03):
back to the uh the educator of the day. So
I guess I'll give a little bit of background. I
came across your account and I and I recognized your face.
I hadn't followed you, but I recognize your face because again,
you know, some videos that you had posted had gone
(04:25):
viral in the past. But you were talking really about
the history of Hispanic people and really the term Hispanic.
And you know, I think one of the listeners was
asking what were Hispanic people during during slavery? And you
had this masterful, eloquent response. And then I disappeared down
(04:48):
the rabbit hole, and I was like, you know what, Q,
we have to get her on the show because there's
so much that we can't talk about because you know,
it's not our it would not be as authentic for
us to talk about it. And then there's so much
that we wouldn't know that we didn't know it right.
So it was just a joy to come across all
(05:09):
this information, but also I enjoyed it. Of course, have
you up on the show. So again, for folks that
are listening, I do want you to check out our
social media profile at Brown Girl Pride. Okay, so I've
talked about you a little bit. I want you to
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself in your
own words, your background, sort of what qualifies you to
have the conversation that we're about to have.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Sure, So, I am a military vet. I served in
the Air Force for ten and a half years, did
two tours to Iraq. I was an Air Force medic
and then after I got out of the military, I
went to nursing school and I become a nurse and
my specialties were er and acute impatient psych and now
(05:50):
I do hospice. So a lot of advocacy work within
the medical system and having to fight medical racism is
what started leading me into more getting involved in speaking
my opinion online. And then I had the viral video
of me burning my uniform, and again that was after
(06:11):
the Roe v. Wade overturning. And to me, at that point,
you know, don't get me wrong, it's not lost on
all of us people of color who serve. We know
that the country don't like us, and we deal with
the racism inside the military as well as the misogyny.
So it's not a racist or misogyny free zone, but
there is still a level of it. Hits differently when
(06:33):
you know your bodily autonomy is taken from you. And
so when I saw all these politicians saying that they
supported the vets and supported the military, how can you
when you're literally actively taking away the rights of the
people who are supposed to protect that constitution. And so
I did that video and I continued on my journey
(06:56):
on content creation from there, and a big thing that
I had noticed was that there was a lack of
people talking about the history of Indigenous people, or when
they did, there was a lot of things that were wrong.
So I started going down the realm of debunking all
the pseudohistory and the pseudoscience that accompanies the pseudohistory, and
(07:19):
that's kind of.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Where I ended up.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Where I'm at now with my platform and talking about
the things that I talk about, I focus a lot
on correcting a lot of the history of Indigenous people
and the quote unquote Latino population as well as well
as decolonization work. You know, bringing to light things that
we don't always recognize is a colonized way of thinking
(07:44):
or a white supremacist rhetoric. And so at that point,
you know, if we open people more up to that,
in my opinion, we have a better chance of fighting
white supremacy as a whole. You know, it's a psychological
game and it's an ideology, and it can't be fought physically.
It has to be fought mentally. So you know, the
revolution of the mind is what I'm after.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Sure, sure, sure, And I the device when when Vice
wrote this article about you and about your viral moment.
I think that that really brought some some scrutiny and
some additional attention. So talk to us a little bit
about kind of the intention behind the protest. Connect with
(08:27):
us for us, rather connect the burning of a uniform
with Roe v Wade. What what were you saying with
that protest so that people that haven't read the Vice
article know exactly what you were trying to do with that.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
What I was trying to convey with that was don't
say thank you to my service. Don't say thank you
for your service to my face and then behind my
back actively try to take my rights away, you know.
And so as a symbolic way of protesting at that moment,
and you know, being after I just found out that news,
(09:04):
I said what I felt about that.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
You know, don't don't tell me thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
This doesn't mean the same thing for me anymore as
it used to, because if you're actively trying to take
away my rights, what are you thinking me for?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
You know? So I burned my uniform.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
As a way to show that as a veteran and
as active duty military, our job, our oath was to
is to protect the Constitution of the United States, and
it's to protect the rights of the people. And if
our rights aren't protected, then this uniform doesn't mean anything anymore,
and it deserves to go up in planes. And so
(09:43):
I did get some scrutiny behind that by some folks
and by others. It was very much applauded and while recepted,
and it was a it was a way that the
sound on that video was a way for active duty
who can not burned their uniforms in protests because of
military laws, they were able to use that as a
way to put pictures of them in uniform or pictures
(10:05):
of them training and things like that to show that
they were in support of what I was doing, even
though they couldn't do it themselves. So it was it
was humbling, to say the least, on that sure.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
So again just circling back, as I mentioned, you came
to our attention because of the viral video of you
discussing the history of Mexican people and their initial categorization
as white and ultimately this subsequent categorization as Hispanic. And
as I mentioned, the woman posted a video and she
(10:39):
was asking you where were Hispanic people during slavery? So
the floor is yours, you know, talk to us about
this whole chapter in history. Where were Hispanic people during slavery?
Why were Hispanic people are Mexican people categorized as white?
And then why is there now a new category known
(11:00):
as Hispanic for this group of people? And again, just
bring us up to speed on all that.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Sure to quickly break it down.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
When Columbus showed up on our shores in fourteen ninety two,
starting in the Caribbean, he started enslaving indigenous people from
the jump. He even started taking people back to Europe
and to some European colonies in Africa. And then due
to the decimation and the genocide that they were committing,
that's when they started bringing Africans from Africa over to
(11:35):
the Americas in fifteen to ten. Fast forward well, and
during this time the Spanish cast system was also They
had sixteen official casts, but they had dozens more, and
it varied from region to region, so the term Hispanic
wasn't being used. Hispano was a common term, but at
that time Creoyo was the official term for Spaniards born here.
(12:00):
And then those of us who would be quote unquot
considered mixed were called mestisos and then, but it didn't.
This is where colorism kind of gets introduced. If you
were a dark skinned mystiso, you were treated as an Indio.
Same with if you were a dark skin mulatto, you
were treated as a negro. And so this is where
colorism kind of gets introduced. Fast forward to the Mexican
(12:23):
American War in eighteen forty eight when it ended and
the signing of the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. In that treaty,
it stated that those that stayed on the now established
north some were if you sit on the north side
of that border, you would be considered a u a citizen. Unfortunately,
in eighteen forty eight, though, the only people who were
(12:45):
allowed to be citizens were white people, so they weren't
too keen on us being considered white. But that's how
they had to classify as on the census. So fast
forward to eighteen ninety seven. There was a Texas case
called Enri Rodriguez, and in that case, he was a
(13:06):
Mexican national who was trying to fight for his naturalization.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
He could vote, and he had been in.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
What is now the United States since eighteen fifty four,
so long after the war, and he was successfully able
to get them to honor the treaty of Wade lupe
hidal Goal and give him his naturalization. During that core case,
they kind of cemented our classification as white. We were
white on paper, but not white socially, which is a
(13:37):
huge difference.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Socially.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
We weren't given all of our rights. We were citizens,
but we weren't able to vote. We had poll taxes,
we had language tests just to vote. So there was
all kinds of things that they did to minimize our
rights as citizens. Then fast forward to the Civil War
that happened. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed, and that kind
(14:03):
of cemented that only free white people and descendants of
enslaved Africans would be considered US citizens.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
So those of us.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
That were Mexican, we were considered Indian to them native American,
and that's how they would say it at that time.
And then the tribal Native Americans as us being detribalized,
and then the tribal Native Americans they weren't even citizens
yet either, So there was.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Another battle into.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
That and why we were able to get our citizenship,
but we had to be classified as white. And if
we weren't classified as white, they would have had to
classify as as black. Well, they didn't want to have
more POC. It would dismantle their whole illusion of white
supremacy and being the superior race. So then we go
(14:57):
into after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, and eventually in
nineteen twenty four, tribal Native Americans became citizens. We were
considered citizens under the classification of white. In nineteen twenty
nine the Repatriation Act started. And then ironically in nineteen
thirty it was the first census and it's been the
(15:19):
only census that classified Mexican as a race. And also
during those nineteen thirties, you had mass deportations. Two over
two million Mexicans were deported, and one point two million
of those Mexicans were US citizens. So and people born here,
people born on this side of the border since the
(15:41):
Treaty of Wadalupe has been signed, so sixty percent were deported.
So because of that, an organization named lou Lac. This
is where you get the misconception is we fought to
be white. The organization called lou Lac petitioned the government
to put us back on the census as white. As
a means to so that way the US government couldn't
(16:03):
track us through the census and find us and deport
us much more kind of how you see today with
them using the irs and with them using like medicaid
to do.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
All of that.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
So we got put back onto the census as white
in nineteen forty. While during this time, the censuses used
to allocate money, resources things like that to communities, and
because we were marked up as white white schools, white
communities were taking our resources and that money wasn't being
allocated to our schools, and there was no way to
(16:35):
track that because we were classified as white on paper,
so all the statistics couldn't show how brown communities were
being treated and misuse of funds. So lu Lack then
came back into the picture and petition that we'd be
put into a separate category. We're still classified as white
as race, but put into a subcategory of Hispanic that
(16:56):
would separate us and show that where the resources were
going and showed that the brown people under this white
classification aren't getting what was promised to them. So in
the nineteen seventies, that's when it became a subclassification that
the term Hispanic, and then a little bit later on
the term Latino. And that's the evolution of how we
went from being indigenous to Mesthisos to white to Hispanic.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant, well, and so much of that. Like,
I'm so mad that I went to public school, and
I went to school in California and Arizona. But I'm
so mad because you would think that, you know, it's
right there, and it's something that we should know and
have that context so that we're not as susceptible to
(17:45):
fear mongering, and you know, these people are illegals, and
you know everyone, you know, all that sort of stuff.
You know. In Arizona, famously, the SB ten seventy was
something that we had to push back again, something we
had to protest out here because SB ten seventy gave people,
gave officers the right to really stop and frisk, to
(18:06):
stop and search, stop and detain whatever individuals that simply
looked illegal. And the crazy part about it is it
wasn't until well after I had graduated from the public
school system that I realized and learned that this used
to be Mexico and the United States manipulated as they
(18:29):
were doing at the time these lands away from Mexico
in the same way that they manipulated lands away from
the various tribes, right, And so the people that are
native to this land look Mexican because indeed, historically speaking,
they that's exactly what they are. Their lineages from this place.
And so it's having this context is just is brilliant,
(18:52):
and I thank you for sharing that with our listeners.
There's something else I want to talk to discuss us
for me, the bias in exit polls with respect to
Latino voters, right, because another one of your videos that
came across you had some a brilliant way of framing
(19:14):
this conversation that we're having nationally, particularly between black populations
and Latino populations, that Latinos voted for this this mass
deportation effort, and they're getting what they voted for, and
this isn't our business that sort of thing, which is
something that we push back against. You know, we are
brothers and sisters and if you're in trouble, we got
to come right. So talk to us a little bit
(19:36):
about the video that you posted, where again, it really
does address more granular detail about the exit polls insofar
as Latino voters are concerned.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Sure, so there's automatic bias right off the bat with
the term Latino. It's not a race on the census,
but they counted as a race on exit polls. That's
the biggest red flag right there. Latino and Hispanic are
not actual races or ethnic groups. They're language groups they
put under. They put us under a label based on
(20:11):
a common language from Latin America, right from our colonizers.
And so there's hundreds of ethnicities, if not thousands, within
the Latin American diaspora, from the southwest United States all
the way down to the Caribbean and South America. So
thousands of ethnicities. And then you have four different racial
(20:31):
groups technically, based off of US standards what a racial
group is. We have black Latinos, we have European white Latinos,
we have the indigenous Latinos that everybody correlates the term
Latino too to the brown people. And then we also
have Asian Latinos, which a lot of people don't reckon
realize either. So when you're doing a poll and you're
(20:52):
asking people to self identify, and they say they're Latino,
but they may present as black, they may present as white,
they may present as brown, and that you're not getting
an actual accurate version of what race they are. You're
homogenizing an entire four racial groups into one and then
saying that's the Latino vote. So that's the automatic bias
(21:13):
in there. And then national polls don't put weights on race.
They'll put weights on other things like that's objective for example,
age things like that, and then based off of state
and national polls, but they don't put a weight on race,
so they can't account for that because how people self identify,
(21:33):
So our numbers are always going to be misconstrued. Even
with more accurate polling where they kind of get down
into the counties and the voting districts and trying to
get as much information that way to get a more
accurate poll, but they still count as as a race
even in those polls, and so they'll break it down
by more of an ethnic group.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
In those polls that.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
They were to get that they were able to do
to get a more accurate count, it showed we were
at sixty two I believe percent of Latin Knows that
voted for Kamala, which doesn't seem like a lot, but
if you look Historically, at the patterns of the quote
unquote Latino vote, the highest it's ever been was like
seventy three percent, and that was during Obama's second term,
(22:15):
and it was like seventy percent during his first term.
Ever since then or before then, it's always been anywhere
between sixty three to sixty seven percent of Latinos who
voted Democrat. So nobody actually voted differently than what they've
done in the past, but it was portrayed that way
in the media because they needed the boogeyman, the people
(22:36):
that they were going to deport. They needed everybody to
be mad at us and say, hey, you did this
to yourself, so we wouldn't get the support, so we
wouldn't get people out there helping us, and so people
would just write it off and ignore it. And that
was the purpose behind it. It was that game that
they pushed because they've made sure those numbers were out
there and exaggerated, and then when we get down to
(22:57):
the real numbers, we find out that no, it's actually
this and even Latino men per that more accurate poll
that was conducted by both Latino and African American organization,
even Latino men still voted over fifty percent for Kamala.
So this push of anti blackness, which does exist in
(23:17):
our community, and this push for misogyny which does exist
in our community, was placed on us for the reason
why Kamala didn't win. And in all reality, they didn't
do any more voting different than they have done in
the past or we've done in the past. So it
was just a way to literally push the fear mongering
propaganda and get everybody angry at us so people wouldn't care,
(23:41):
and some people fell for the oki dok, you know.
And so I'm hoping that people will look into it
more and research more. And I got videos on high
page as well, so you can see that that's what
actually happened, and it wasn't any different. We didn't just
all of a sudden didn't want a black woman as president.
It's just how a historic people have always voted because
(24:02):
of all that dynamic, because we're not a modelith you
have all these ethnicities, racial groups, you're you're lucky to
get seventy one percent of us to vook for the
same thing, you know, being how diverse we are. So
that's where that kind of when I wanted people to
you know, clear that up for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah. Yeah, And of course to get deeper dives again,
you can people can find your social media at Brown
Girl Pride because a lot of these things are so enlightening,
and I think that it really challenges us to question
(24:47):
the division that we push back against that is being
sown in our own communities. We don't even see that
this division is being sewn across our tribal lines black people,
Hispanic people, et cetera. And so a lot of people saying,
oh no, they did this to themselves, blah blah blah.
(25:07):
You know, you're giving really what people need to snap
out of that self destructive way of thinking. We're a
little short on time, so maybe if you can give
me about a minute, I want to kind of steep
keeping the same kind of vein here. You know we've
discussed on the show. Of course, this administration's heavy handed
approach to immigration reform, if you even want to call
(25:27):
it that. You've also made the connection between Alligator Alcatraz
and slavery. So I think it's important because Q mentioned
this before on the show. I want you to explain
how you arrived at that conclusion. Again, give me about
one minute or so.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
So I have been saying for a long time that
they're not going to be able to mass deport as
many people as they claim that they're going to. And
in reality, because of all the tariffs in the back
and forth that they're doing, they need a workforce and
because of that, they are going to use these places
like Alligator Alcatraz as concentration camps and to bring back
forced slave labor. It's not something that they've shied away
(26:10):
from saying publicly either, but they most that's what this is.
It's reintroducing slavery. So when they said they wanted to
make America great, they weren't even talking just Jim Crow.
They really wanted to go back to slave days. And
it won't just affect us, It will affect anybody that
they feel is you know, not a desirable to them
(26:30):
and undesirable. So it will affect African immigrants, Haitian immigrants.
It is already affecting them, and you know it's going
to start affecting other communities. So it's important to realize
that this is what it is. It is slavery back again.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, And like I said, this is something that you know,
we had a breakdown on the QR code or our
other show, Q and I and Q made a very
similar conclusion with all the data, so thank you for
that
Broadcasting from the Hip Hop Weekly Studios. I'd like to
welcome you to another episode of Civic Cipher, where our
mission is to foster allyship, empathy and understanding. I am
your host, Ramse's jaw sending a big shout out to
my co host, my partner in crime, q Ward, who
is currently traveling trying to make the world a better place.
But he will be back in the saddle next weekend
(00:23):
for your listening pleasure. But have no fear, we have
a special guest joining us today. She goes by the
name of Melinda Grisby. She's known online as Brown Girl
Pride and I want you to follow her at Brown
Girl Pride. I promise you're going to learn something special.
And for those who don't know, she is a social
media activist. She's a former Air Force medic twice deployed
to Iraq, and she's also a public speaker with a
(00:44):
focus on history and decolonization. So welcome to the show, Melinda.
Speaker 2 (00:49):
Thank you. I appreciate you having me on.
Speaker 1 (00:52):
Yeah, yeah, and I'm really excited to talk to you.
For those that kind of pay attention, you know, you
might have seen a couple of her videos because she
goes viral from time to time, but she's also I
guess Rose took kind of national prominence via TikTok. There
(01:12):
was a video of you burning a uniform right after
the Roe v. Wade Roby Wade was overturned by the
Supreme Court, and this was an active protest, and a
lot of people were able to see this form of protest,
and I thought that it was masterful because a lot
of people are indoctrinated to assume that military personnel are
(01:32):
just compliant and complicit, and you have been one person
to stand up for indeed what is right. And so
for the people that have come to this conversation in
support of you and to salute you and to remind
you that your actions have encouraged them, I employ to
stick around because again, I think we're going to have
(01:53):
a fantastic conversation today and we're going to learn a
lot about the history behind not only that protest, but
a lot of other things that we need to know
about this current administration. But before we get there, as always,
we'd like to start off with some ebony excellence, and
today's ebony excellence I'm gonna share from kyt dot com
or news Channel three out of Oxnard, California, and I
(02:16):
love this. Jose Hernandez continues to expire. So former astronaut
Jose Hernandez energized hundreds of students eager to hear his
life story on Wednesday at the Oxnard Performing Arts Center.
It's part of Oxnart School Districts summer enrichment programs in
STEM and literacy. Quote, they can see someone that speaks
like them, looks like them, and perhaps came from the
(02:38):
same socioeconomic background that they're coming from, and so it
empowers them to say, Hey, if he did it, why
can I, said Hernandez. Hernandez spoke in a mix of
Spanish and English, telling stories of his upbringing as a
child of Mexican immigrant farm workers.
Speaker 2 (02:53):
Quote.
Speaker 1 (02:53):
He achieved his goal, and now I could achieve my
goal when I grow up, unquote, said fifth grader Isabella
rout Era. Quote he definitely defied the odds and defied gravity,
I mean being up in space, so it was really
cool unquote, said special education educator Darnie Sorry Danny Jacksper.
Hernandez's message of hope and perseverance comes during a politically
(03:18):
tumultuous time, especially in oxennarm quote the raids and everything
with the whole ice thing, A lot of kids have
been staying home and not coming to school as much.
A lot of families are staying home just in fear
for their life and their safety unquote, said jacksper quote.
The political world is a big pendulum that swings one way,
then it swings those opportunities. Then when it swings, those
opportunities may not be here now, but they are going
(03:40):
to be here in the other And so what we've
got to focus on ourselves prepare ourselves for future opportunities unquote.
This according to Hernandez, A hit movie was made of
Hernandez's life called A Million Miles Awayez got his master's
degree from UC Santa Barbara and now serves as a
University of California agent. So yeah, I love that. All Right,
(04:03):
back to the uh the educator of the day. So
I guess I'll give a little bit of background. I
came across your account and I and I recognized your face.
I hadn't followed you, but I recognize your face because again,
you know, some videos that you had posted had gone
(04:25):
viral in the past. But you were talking really about
the history of Hispanic people and really the term Hispanic.
And you know, I think one of the listeners was
asking what were Hispanic people during during slavery? And you
had this masterful, eloquent response. And then I disappeared down
(04:48):
the rabbit hole, and I was like, you know what, Q,
we have to get her on the show because there's
so much that we can't talk about because you know,
it's not our it would not be as authentic for
us to talk about it. And then there's so much
that we wouldn't know that we didn't know it right.
So it was just a joy to come across all
(05:09):
this information, but also I enjoyed it. Of course, have
you up on the show. So again, for folks that
are listening, I do want you to check out our
social media profile at Brown Girl Pride. Okay, so I've
talked about you a little bit. I want you to
tell our listeners a little bit about yourself in your
own words, your background, sort of what qualifies you to
have the conversation that we're about to have.
Speaker 3 (05:30):
Sure, So, I am a military vet. I served in
the Air Force for ten and a half years, did
two tours to Iraq. I was an Air Force medic
and then after I got out of the military, I
went to nursing school and I become a nurse and
my specialties were er and acute impatient psych and now
(05:50):
I do hospice. So a lot of advocacy work within
the medical system and having to fight medical racism is
what started leading me into more getting involved in speaking
my opinion online. And then I had the viral video
of me burning my uniform, and again that was after
(06:11):
the Roe v. Wade overturning. And to me, at that point,
you know, don't get me wrong, it's not lost on
all of us people of color who serve. We know
that the country don't like us, and we deal with
the racism inside the military as well as the misogyny.
So it's not a racist or misogyny free zone, but
there is still a level of it. Hits differently when
(06:33):
you know your bodily autonomy is taken from you. And
so when I saw all these politicians saying that they
supported the vets and supported the military, how can you
when you're literally actively taking away the rights of the
people who are supposed to protect that constitution. And so
I did that video and I continued on my journey
(06:56):
on content creation from there, and a big thing that
I had noticed was that there was a lack of
people talking about the history of Indigenous people, or when
they did, there was a lot of things that were wrong.
So I started going down the realm of debunking all
the pseudohistory and the pseudoscience that accompanies the pseudohistory, and
(07:19):
that's kind of.
Speaker 2 (07:20):
Where I ended up.
Speaker 3 (07:21):
Where I'm at now with my platform and talking about
the things that I talk about, I focus a lot
on correcting a lot of the history of Indigenous people
and the quote unquote Latino population as well as well
as decolonization work. You know, bringing to light things that
we don't always recognize is a colonized way of thinking
(07:44):
or a white supremacist rhetoric. And so at that point,
you know, if we open people more up to that,
in my opinion, we have a better chance of fighting
white supremacy as a whole. You know, it's a psychological
game and it's an ideology, and it can't be fought physically.
It has to be fought mentally. So you know, the
revolution of the mind is what I'm after.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Sure, sure, sure, And I the device when when Vice
wrote this article about you and about your viral moment.
I think that that really brought some some scrutiny and
some additional attention. So talk to us a little bit
about kind of the intention behind the protest. Connect with
(08:27):
us for us, rather connect the burning of a uniform
with Roe v Wade. What what were you saying with
that protest so that people that haven't read the Vice
article know exactly what you were trying to do with that.
Speaker 3 (08:40):
What I was trying to convey with that was don't
say thank you to my service. Don't say thank you
for your service to my face and then behind my
back actively try to take my rights away, you know.
And so as a symbolic way of protesting at that moment,
and you know, being after I just found out that news,
(09:04):
I said what I felt about that.
Speaker 2 (09:06):
You know, don't don't tell me thank you.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
This doesn't mean the same thing for me anymore as
it used to, because if you're actively trying to take
away my rights, what are you thinking me for?
Speaker 2 (09:18):
You know? So I burned my uniform.
Speaker 3 (09:20):
As a way to show that as a veteran and
as active duty military, our job, our oath was to
is to protect the Constitution of the United States, and
it's to protect the rights of the people. And if
our rights aren't protected, then this uniform doesn't mean anything anymore,
and it deserves to go up in planes. And so
(09:43):
I did get some scrutiny behind that by some folks
and by others. It was very much applauded and while recepted,
and it was a it was a way that the
sound on that video was a way for active duty
who can not burned their uniforms in protests because of
military laws, they were able to use that as a
way to put pictures of them in uniform or pictures
(10:05):
of them training and things like that to show that
they were in support of what I was doing, even
though they couldn't do it themselves. So it was it
was humbling, to say the least, on that sure.
Speaker 1 (10:18):
So again just circling back, as I mentioned, you came
to our attention because of the viral video of you
discussing the history of Mexican people and their initial categorization
as white and ultimately this subsequent categorization as Hispanic. And
as I mentioned, the woman posted a video and she
(10:39):
was asking you where were Hispanic people during slavery? So
the floor is yours, you know, talk to us about
this whole chapter in history. Where were Hispanic people during slavery?
Why were Hispanic people are Mexican people categorized as white?
And then why is there now a new category known
(11:00):
as Hispanic for this group of people? And again, just
bring us up to speed on all that.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Sure to quickly break it down.
Speaker 3 (11:12):
When Columbus showed up on our shores in fourteen ninety two,
starting in the Caribbean, he started enslaving indigenous people from
the jump. He even started taking people back to Europe
and to some European colonies in Africa. And then due
to the decimation and the genocide that they were committing,
that's when they started bringing Africans from Africa over to
(11:35):
the Americas in fifteen to ten. Fast forward well, and
during this time the Spanish cast system was also They
had sixteen official casts, but they had dozens more, and
it varied from region to region, so the term Hispanic
wasn't being used. Hispano was a common term, but at
that time Creoyo was the official term for Spaniards born here.
(12:00):
And then those of us who would be quote unquot
considered mixed were called mestisos and then, but it didn't.
This is where colorism kind of gets introduced. If you
were a dark skinned mystiso, you were treated as an Indio.
Same with if you were a dark skin mulatto, you
were treated as a negro. And so this is where
colorism kind of gets introduced. Fast forward to the Mexican
(12:23):
American War in eighteen forty eight when it ended and
the signing of the Treaty of Guadelupe Hidalgo. In that treaty,
it stated that those that stayed on the now established
north some were if you sit on the north side
of that border, you would be considered a u a citizen. Unfortunately,
in eighteen forty eight, though, the only people who were
(12:45):
allowed to be citizens were white people, so they weren't
too keen on us being considered white. But that's how
they had to classify as on the census. So fast
forward to eighteen ninety seven. There was a Texas case
called Enri Rodriguez, and in that case, he was a
(13:06):
Mexican national who was trying to fight for his naturalization.
Speaker 2 (13:12):
He could vote, and he had been in.
Speaker 3 (13:16):
What is now the United States since eighteen fifty four,
so long after the war, and he was successfully able
to get them to honor the treaty of Wade lupe
hidal Goal and give him his naturalization. During that core case,
they kind of cemented our classification as white. We were
white on paper, but not white socially, which is a
(13:37):
huge difference.
Speaker 2 (13:38):
Socially.
Speaker 3 (13:39):
We weren't given all of our rights. We were citizens,
but we weren't able to vote. We had poll taxes,
we had language tests just to vote. So there was
all kinds of things that they did to minimize our
rights as citizens. Then fast forward to the Civil War
that happened. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed, and that kind
(14:03):
of cemented that only free white people and descendants of
enslaved Africans would be considered US citizens.
Speaker 2 (14:13):
So those of us.
Speaker 3 (14:15):
That were Mexican, we were considered Indian to them native American,
and that's how they would say it at that time.
And then the tribal Native Americans as us being detribalized,
and then the tribal Native Americans they weren't even citizens
yet either, So there was.
Speaker 2 (14:35):
Another battle into.
Speaker 3 (14:36):
That and why we were able to get our citizenship,
but we had to be classified as white. And if
we weren't classified as white, they would have had to
classify as as black. Well, they didn't want to have
more POC. It would dismantle their whole illusion of white
supremacy and being the superior race. So then we go
(14:57):
into after the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, and eventually in
nineteen twenty four, tribal Native Americans became citizens. We were
considered citizens under the classification of white. In nineteen twenty
nine the Repatriation Act started. And then ironically in nineteen
thirty it was the first census and it's been the
(15:19):
only census that classified Mexican as a race. And also
during those nineteen thirties, you had mass deportations. Two over
two million Mexicans were deported, and one point two million
of those Mexicans were US citizens. So and people born here,
people born on this side of the border since the
(15:41):
Treaty of Wadalupe has been signed, so sixty percent were deported.
So because of that, an organization named lou Lac. This
is where you get the misconception is we fought to
be white. The organization called lou Lac petitioned the government
to put us back on the census as white. As
a means to so that way the US government couldn't
(16:03):
track us through the census and find us and deport
us much more kind of how you see today with
them using the irs and with them using like medicaid
to do.
Speaker 2 (16:12):
All of that.
Speaker 3 (16:13):
So we got put back onto the census as white
in nineteen forty. While during this time, the censuses used
to allocate money, resources things like that to communities, and
because we were marked up as white white schools, white
communities were taking our resources and that money wasn't being
allocated to our schools, and there was no way to
(16:35):
track that because we were classified as white on paper,
so all the statistics couldn't show how brown communities were
being treated and misuse of funds. So lu Lack then
came back into the picture and petition that we'd be
put into a separate category. We're still classified as white
as race, but put into a subcategory of Hispanic that
(16:56):
would separate us and show that where the resources were
going and showed that the brown people under this white
classification aren't getting what was promised to them. So in
the nineteen seventies, that's when it became a subclassification that
the term Hispanic, and then a little bit later on
the term Latino. And that's the evolution of how we
went from being indigenous to Mesthisos to white to Hispanic.
Speaker 1 (17:22):
Brilliant, absolutely brilliant, well, and so much of that. Like,
I'm so mad that I went to public school, and
I went to school in California and Arizona. But I'm
so mad because you would think that, you know, it's
right there, and it's something that we should know and
have that context so that we're not as susceptible to
(17:45):
fear mongering, and you know, these people are illegals, and
you know everyone, you know, all that sort of stuff.
You know. In Arizona, famously, the SB ten seventy was
something that we had to push back again, something we
had to protest out here because SB ten seventy gave people,
gave officers the right to really stop and frisk, to
(18:06):
stop and search, stop and detain whatever individuals that simply
looked illegal. And the crazy part about it is it
wasn't until well after I had graduated from the public
school system that I realized and learned that this used
to be Mexico and the United States manipulated as they
(18:29):
were doing at the time these lands away from Mexico
in the same way that they manipulated lands away from
the various tribes, right, And so the people that are
native to this land look Mexican because indeed, historically speaking,
they that's exactly what they are. Their lineages from this place.
And so it's having this context is just is brilliant,
(18:52):
and I thank you for sharing that with our listeners.
There's something else I want to talk to discuss us
for me, the bias in exit polls with respect to
Latino voters, right, because another one of your videos that
came across you had some a brilliant way of framing
(19:14):
this conversation that we're having nationally, particularly between black populations
and Latino populations, that Latinos voted for this this mass
deportation effort, and they're getting what they voted for, and
this isn't our business that sort of thing, which is
something that we push back against. You know, we are
brothers and sisters and if you're in trouble, we got
to come right. So talk to us a little bit
(19:36):
about the video that you posted, where again, it really
does address more granular detail about the exit polls insofar
as Latino voters are concerned.
Speaker 3 (19:49):
Sure, so there's automatic bias right off the bat with
the term Latino. It's not a race on the census,
but they counted as a race on exit polls. That's
the biggest red flag right there. Latino and Hispanic are
not actual races or ethnic groups. They're language groups they
put under. They put us under a label based on
(20:11):
a common language from Latin America, right from our colonizers.
And so there's hundreds of ethnicities, if not thousands, within
the Latin American diaspora, from the southwest United States all
the way down to the Caribbean and South America. So
thousands of ethnicities. And then you have four different racial
(20:31):
groups technically, based off of US standards what a racial
group is. We have black Latinos, we have European white Latinos,
we have the indigenous Latinos that everybody correlates the term
Latino too to the brown people. And then we also
have Asian Latinos, which a lot of people don't reckon
realize either. So when you're doing a poll and you're
(20:52):
asking people to self identify, and they say they're Latino,
but they may present as black, they may present as white,
they may present as brown, and that you're not getting
an actual accurate version of what race they are. You're
homogenizing an entire four racial groups into one and then
saying that's the Latino vote. So that's the automatic bias
(21:13):
in there. And then national polls don't put weights on race.
They'll put weights on other things like that's objective for example,
age things like that, and then based off of state
and national polls, but they don't put a weight on race,
so they can't account for that because how people self identify,
(21:33):
So our numbers are always going to be misconstrued. Even
with more accurate polling where they kind of get down
into the counties and the voting districts and trying to
get as much information that way to get a more
accurate poll, but they still count as as a race
even in those polls, and so they'll break it down
by more of an ethnic group.
Speaker 2 (21:52):
In those polls that.
Speaker 3 (21:53):
They were to get that they were able to do
to get a more accurate count, it showed we were
at sixty two I believe percent of Latin Knows that
voted for Kamala, which doesn't seem like a lot, but
if you look Historically, at the patterns of the quote
unquote Latino vote, the highest it's ever been was like
seventy three percent, and that was during Obama's second term,
(22:15):
and it was like seventy percent during his first term.
Ever since then or before then, it's always been anywhere
between sixty three to sixty seven percent of Latinos who
voted Democrat. So nobody actually voted differently than what they've
done in the past, but it was portrayed that way
in the media because they needed the boogeyman, the people
(22:36):
that they were going to deport. They needed everybody to
be mad at us and say, hey, you did this
to yourself, so we wouldn't get the support, so we
wouldn't get people out there helping us, and so people
would just write it off and ignore it. And that
was the purpose behind it. It was that game that
they pushed because they've made sure those numbers were out
there and exaggerated, and then when we get down to
(22:57):
the real numbers, we find out that no, it's actually
this and even Latino men per that more accurate poll
that was conducted by both Latino and African American organization,
even Latino men still voted over fifty percent for Kamala.
So this push of anti blackness, which does exist in
(23:17):
our community, and this push for misogyny which does exist
in our community, was placed on us for the reason
why Kamala didn't win. And in all reality, they didn't
do any more voting different than they have done in
the past or we've done in the past. So it
was just a way to literally push the fear mongering
propaganda and get everybody angry at us so people wouldn't care,
(23:41):
and some people fell for the oki dok, you know.
And so I'm hoping that people will look into it
more and research more. And I got videos on high
page as well, so you can see that that's what
actually happened, and it wasn't any different. We didn't just
all of a sudden didn't want a black woman as president.
It's just how a historic people have always voted because
(24:02):
of all that dynamic, because we're not a modelith you
have all these ethnicities, racial groups, you're you're lucky to
get seventy one percent of us to vook for the
same thing, you know, being how diverse we are. So
that's where that kind of when I wanted people to
you know, clear that up for a lot of people.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah. Yeah, And of course to get deeper dives again,
you can people can find your social media at Brown
Girl Pride because a lot of these things are so enlightening,
and I think that it really challenges us to question
(24:47):
the division that we push back against that is being
sown in our own communities. We don't even see that
this division is being sewn across our tribal lines black people,
Hispanic people, et cetera. And so a lot of people saying,
oh no, they did this to themselves, blah blah blah.
(25:07):
You know, you're giving really what people need to snap
out of that self destructive way of thinking. We're a
little short on time, so maybe if you can give
me about a minute, I want to kind of steep
keeping the same kind of vein here. You know we've
discussed on the show. Of course, this administration's heavy handed
approach to immigration reform, if you even want to call
(25:27):
it that. You've also made the connection between Alligator Alcatraz
and slavery. So I think it's important because Q mentioned
this before on the show. I want you to explain
how you arrived at that conclusion. Again, give me about
one minute or so.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Sure.
Speaker 3 (25:45):
So I have been saying for a long time that
they're not going to be able to mass deport as
many people as they claim that they're going to. And
in reality, because of all the tariffs in the back
and forth that they're doing, they need a workforce and
because of that, they are going to use these places
like Alligator Alcatraz as concentration camps and to bring back
forced slave labor. It's not something that they've shied away
(26:10):
from saying publicly either, but they most that's what this is.
It's reintroducing slavery. So when they said they wanted to
make America great, they weren't even talking just Jim Crow.
They really wanted to go back to slave days. And
it won't just affect us, It will affect anybody that
they feel is you know, not a desirable to them
(26:30):
and undesirable. So it will affect African immigrants, Haitian immigrants.
It is already affecting them, and you know it's going
to start affecting other communities. So it's important to realize
that this is what it is. It is slavery back again.
Speaker 2 (26:46):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (26:46):
Yeah, And like I said, this is something that you know,
we had a breakdown on the QR code or our
other show, Q and I and Q made a very
similar conclusion with all the data, so thank you for
that
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