I made my way over to the Beloved Community Center on Arlington Street this morning to see the conference Rev. Nelson Johnson held with members of the Latin Kings.
I’ve had an interest in street gangs since spending some time with them last year for a story and reporting on several gang-related homicides in Greensboro. I didn’t encounter any Latin Kings when during my reporting – which I was told by gang cops and gang members had something to do with their not having a terribly strong presence here and with their history of morphing from violent street gang to pseudo radical political movement and back, depending on where and when you find them.
I took some digital audio at the conference and it came out all right. I’ll post it later on tonight, after I edit out some of the obtrusive background noise.
But first impressions of the conference:
1) Jorge Cornell, the 31-year old King who was the focus of the conference, claims that he is the “Inca,” or leader, over all of North Carolina’s Kings. He says they number in the hundreds in North Carolina. There’s no official home office through which you can check any of that, of course, so I guess it’s up for conjecture.
Some of his rap was a little weak, but he was more charismatic and articulate than some of the gang leaders I’ve met. He had a few great lines — the best coming when he was asked why people join the Latin Kings.
“A sense of brotherhood,” Cornell said. “It’s like what you’ve got at these colleges…fraternities.”
Cornell railed against the media, politicians and 287 (G), which allows for cooperation between local law enforcement and U.S. Customs and Immigration Enforcement.
Cornell described his problem with 287 (g) this way:
“Let’s say you got your ordinary Latino gets stopped at a license checkpoint. Now we all know that if he’s an immigrant, he can’t get a license in this state. So therefore they’re going to lock him up. They’re going to run his name in the system, it’s going to show that he’s an immigrant, and they’re going to deport him.”
Well…that sentence is true if you change a few words, but not as it was stated. An “immigrant” — like many of the members of my family who came from Puerto Rico legally, can and have obtained licenses. They can drive wherever they like and have nothing to fear from license checkpoints. If, however, by “immigrant” you actually mean “undocumented person” then yes, they’d have trouble getting a license and, like anyone else operating a vehicle without one, could be arrested. If they’re in the country illegally, they could certainly be deported. But to take that set of facts and decide that it amounts to a targeting of Latinos for being Latino…it goes a little far, to say the least.
My father is a first generation American — like Jorge, a Puerto Rican American born and raised in New York City. His father and mother raised nine children in poverty in a mostly Latino neighborhood. They certainly consider themselves “your ordinary Latino.” None of them are undocumented. And while they have their concerns about how to create a path to citizenship for undocumented people (so do I for that matter) I can’t imagine any of them would take kindly to the suggestion that “your ordinary Latino” fears license checkpoints because they know they’re going to be deported.
Cornell continued:
“This state shows clearly that there is no place for Latinos. They don’t want us here. They’re trying to accomplish what they couldn’t accomplish with African Americans. They brought them here in…how do you say? Cuffs? Shackles. That’s how they’re sending us off. In shackles.”
This is the sort of in-group/out-group talk that is as fascinating as it is confusing. I know plenty of black people who would be plenty offended to hear the American slave trade and the legacy of strife it’s given our country compared to deporting an undocumented guy who entered the country illegally and is driving without a license. But there are also plenty – black, white and Latino — who do see it as interrelated and do understand both peoples’ struggles as intertwined.
I don’t think there’s any question there’s some racial profiling of Latinos going on in many places. As a white guy, I’m in a bad position to judge how closely I think that’s related to historical systematic enslavement and genocide. I’ve occasionally felt a little uncomfortable because I don’t get it when an entire theater of non-white people around me is laughing at a Tyler Perry movie, but I’ve never directly experienced any true racism. I am, however, always interested to hear the discussion among people who have something on the line.
2) There are few specifics about what “peace” really means to the Latin Kings who are calling for it, how they hope to achieve it, when a gang meeting might happen or what it might look like. Cornell did say that there are sets of the Bloods and Crips and other gangs who are in talks toward a peace agreement…but having read that sentence you now know as much about it as anyone who attended the conference.
3) The reporters at the event (mostly TV folks) reminded me a lot of the straight but sort of clueless journalists you see trying to interview Dylan, The Stones and The Sex Pistols in documentary footage. They’re tripping all over themselves trying to use the slang, they’re confused about what the person before them represents, they’re asking questions that sort of scrape the surface of the difference between their world and ours but are not really asking any of the questions we all want to.
Toward the end of the conference the N&R’s Allen Johnson changed that, standing up and pointing out that while the Kings at the conference claimed that theirs was a peaceful political movement, a validated member of the Latin Kings is now one of Guilford County’s most wanted and we’ve seen a lot of gang crimes and gang violence from MS-13, another Latino gang that often claims that they’re more an ethnic fraternity than a criminal organization.
Cornell responded to that by essentially saying every group has its bad eggs, but he was looking to build peace.
Let’s hope he’s serious.
5 Comments
July 1, 2008 at 12:47 pm
I would just point out to you that Puerto Ricans are American citizens — that’s why your family was able to come to the US so easily and why they do not have to fear deportation as other Latino migrants do. It’s true that lack of legal status is what imperils these “undocumented” migrants, but it’s a mistake to think that 287g only affects “illegals.” Legal immigration status is extremely complex and there is a lot of gray area that a beat cop making a traffic stop cannot understand (immigration law being second only to tax in complexity). 287g encourages local police to make arrests on people who look foreign — even if they aren’t committing a crime, maybe you can get them deported! It degrades the constitutional standards for stops and arrests (probable cause that a crime has been committed — remember, lack of legal status in the U.S. is a CIVIL infraction, not a criminal one) and encourages a police culture of racial profiling and lack of respect for the Constitution that eventually affects all of us.
July 1, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I’m aware that Puerto Ricans are American citizens — that was sort of the point.
When my father is driving his car in the little hick town where my parents now live, southern cops don’t look at him and think: “Ah — Puerto Rican! He was probably born here, but even if he wasn’t….American citizen!”
They just see a dark-skinned guy with no southern accent. He’s often taken for Mexican by default. By your logic he, his family and friends should be getting arrested or detained on trumped up charges all the time just so the police can attempt to deport them. None of them — even those who can barely speak English – have to my knowledge ever had this experience. Of course there are cops who pay more attention to them than white people, of course that’s wrong and it should change — but thus far none of them has had to contend with Boss Hog trying to deport them.
As they aren’t here illegally and don’t commit any crimes, they don’t fear the police. On the not infrequent occasions where my dad has been hassled or treated differently for his skin color or ethnic makeup (usually by citizens, but occasionally by the kinds of cops who do like to pull over or question dark skinned guys), he’s never worried about being deported. And to my knowledge the instances of special attention by police haven’t gone up for him or his family since 287 (g).
As a Puerto Rican American himself, Cornell doesn’t have to worry about deportation either. That’s why it was worth mentioning in the context of my father. Their backgrounds and life experiences are extremely similar. But one thinks he and “all Latinos” are being targeted by police because they’re Latino and the other is a decorated war veteran who is proud of his heritage and doesn’t fear the law.
I don’t doubt Cornell’s been hassled by the police — but that may have as much or more to do with his proclaiming his affiliation with (and leadership of) a gang whose members are routinely tied to drugs, violence and other criminal activity. Having gang tattoos and gang ties tends to get you noticed a bit more than being, as he termed it, “your average Latino.”
July 5, 2008 at 9:37 pm
If anyone wants to know the truth about the ALKQN a.k.a “Latin Kings” go to http://www.ALKQN.org The Only Official and Authorized website of the ALKQN, and you will see what we are truly about, and you will see that there are plenty of Brothers and Sisters that are out here doing good things.
August 13, 2008 at 2:17 am
how do i get in touch with King J?
April 22, 2009 at 3:19 am
We on the same thing here in chicago going for that movement…amor de rey!!! WE are a Nation under the ALMIGHTY…u cant judge us just because there are some bad eggs here to, all i got to say is thats life and not every King Queen is the same, we have rights to…we will not let yous be fooled by the media because that’s what they want to do to the public, open your eyes people to the lies history told..amor dey rey!!!