Kevin de León is aware of the trauma many Angelenos carry. He has seen Black and brown males’s lives destroyed by highly effective establishments that present them no mercy.
He is aware of the scars town bears from double requirements that allow and empower white antiheroes whereas demonizing and disposing of flawed males of colour.
This information gave him audacity to attempt a fast-tracked comeback by way of media appearances final Wednesday, his first time talking publicly since audio of a racist dialog he participated in leaked earlier this month. “I failed, it’s that straightforward,” he advised Univision’s León Krauze in a Spanish-language interview.
Opinion Columnist
Jean Guerrero
Jean Guerrero is the writer, most not too long ago, of “Hatemonger: Stephen Miller, Donald Trump and the White Nationalist Agenda.”
De León centered his pleas for forgiveness on his “silence” when Nury Martinez, the council president who has since resigned, made the dialog’s most revolting remarks. Whereas he and his colleague Gil Cedillo face deafening calls to resign for contributing to the anti-Black and anti-Indigenous feedback, De León says he gained’t step down as a result of “there’s nonetheless a variety of work forward.”
Sure, there’s. However how can he hope to be a part of that work when he hasn’t reckoned with the magnitude of his failure? If he had, he wouldn’t be attempting to dictate the phrases of his absolution. In a letter to the brand new council president, Paul Krekorian, De León promised to take “skilled sensitivity coaching,” as if his downside could possibly be fastened by company workshops on wokeness.
He acts like he is aware of higher than anybody learn how to heal the injuries he opened.
As I watched De León trying dejected on Univision, although, it struck me that his scheme for sympathy may succeed. He was manipulating part of me that couldn’t assist rooting for him as a Latino refusing to give up within the face of shock amplified by a tradition all too desirous to see Black and brown males fall.
De León was betting that many others who watch Spanish-language information — particularly moms, grandmothers and different Latinas who’ve cherished males who appear like him — would have the identical reflexive pity and relieve him of the burden of incomes the neighborhood’s forgiveness. We’d clear up his mess for him.
He’s flashing the identical poisonous machismo on this interview as within the leaked dialog — the type that sees any substantial inconvenience as an assault.
However De León isn’t a sufferer. He’s not the identical because the Black and brown males who’re disproportionately incarcerated and murdered by legislation enforcement. He’s one of the crucial highly effective males within the metropolis. And he betrayed his constituents’ belief by laughing at or chiming in on ridicule of these most in want of his protection.
The recording uncovered his Latino grievance politics, a mutation of white grievance politics that threatens a long time of multiracial coalition constructing. In a county the place Latinos are almost half of the inhabitants, we are able to’t have leaders who’re poised for majority rule on the expense of darker-skinned and poorer residents.
However there’s one factor on this scandal extra disturbing than the zero-sum calculus it uncovered: the informal ease with which President Biden and different highly effective figures piled onto the strain for De León and Cedillo to resign over a racist dialog whereas the administration continues the way more harmful offense of deportations that materially, economically and psychologically devastate Black and brown households — the households that De León and Cedillo have a document of defending.
The 2 disgraced leaders had beforehand been among the many boldest fighters for the nation’s most weak individuals: undocumented ones persecuted by each events. From Cedillo’s transformative wrestle for driver’s licenses for undocumented Californians to De León’s key position in making California a sanctuary state, they confirmed guts. Their hubris as soon as served a noble goal.
Maybe energy corrupted them. They need to be held accountable. However they shouldn’t be caricatured as monsters. That form of indulgence would abuse a privilege that sure individuals have — the privilege to talk and be heard. Lots of the Angelenos who most want illustration from people like Cedillo and De León, probably the most oppressed, are too busy struggling to be following the scandal’s sordid particulars and opining on them. One Indigenous lady from Guatemala who lives in De León’s district advised me she wasn’t certain, from my description of occasions, whether or not resignations had been the one recourse. “All of us make errors,” she stated. “If he requested for forgiveness, I’m an individual who forgives. But it surely’s not about me.”
What if it had been? De León as soon as served individuals like her, scoring a historic statewide enhance to the minimal wage, amongst different issues. However he, Martinez and Cedillo have since revealed that they see individuals like her because the butt of jokes typically.
L.A. has seen this script earlier than. The one by which individuals of colour in positions of energy more and more turn out to be co-opted right into a challenge of class-based oppression. Roberto Lovato, a former immigrant rights activist in L.A. and the writer of “Unforgetting,” calls it “the rise of intersectional empire.”
How can we within the media, tutorial circles and different locations of privilege keep away from turning into what we condemn? It should require greater than calling for resignations.
Lovato advised me he fears that within the “deserved rush to sentence the racist rubbish,” classist rubbish can be left intact.
Maybe a extra constructive challenge than shaming these politicians could be to problem the methods we’re all complicit so we are able to construct town we’d wish to see: one the place we resist the magnetism of riches, reject the excessive of in-group supremacy and stay dedicated to the varied neighborhood. Whether or not De León retains deluding himself doesn’t matter almost as a lot as how we battle for that collectively.
