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A Q&A with Dolores Huerta

Dolores Huerta, the founder and president of the Dolores Huerta Foundation and co-founder of the United Farm Workers, has been a leading civil rights organizer and advocate for decades. The 19th spoke to her last month about how the Latino community can be allies to Black Americans in this time and how the current protests compare to the civil rights movement of the 1960s.

This interview by Andrea Valdez has been edited for length and clarity.

The 19th: First of all, are you doing OK? Is everybody in your family safe and fine? 

Dolores Huerta: Yes, I am. Thank you. Everybody's fine. Everybody's taking care of themselves. 

Good. That's all we can ask for. I'm Latina, and I'm looking at what's happening right now with the Black Lives Matter movement. In this moment, how can Latinos be an ally to Black Americans? 

To begin with, we know that a lot of the issues that people are marching and protesting for also affect Latinos: Every single private and public agency should be addressing the issues of racism. Then we have to look into ourselves in the Latino community and understand where it comes from, the cultural colonization and oppression. And that we also have that colonized mentality where people want to promote lighter skin and discriminate against people with darker skin. So we know it's part of our Latino community. Maybe not to the same extent, but we know it's ingrown and systemic. We have our own issues that we have to deal with. 

Like you said, all of us are confronting internalized racism. What is our role as Latinos, or what can we be doing to promote intersectionality? 

I think we have double duty. One of them is intersectionality, but the other one is cleaning our own house, you know? I think that we have to bond more and do more with the African American community, with the Black community. And then we have to start looking internally and look at the racism within our own families. When I have a Latino audience, I always address this issue. I say to them, ‘When a baby is born, what do we say?’ Hay, que lindo niño, esta bien guerito, no?’ (‘What a cute little boy, he's so blond.’) And it's such a sense of pride when that happens. We have to learn how to celebrate our own Indigenous community and celebrate our Indigenous roots. I think we have to start celebrating, just the way we see in the African American community where they have celebrated dark skin. Our artists need to do the same thing in our own communities: celebrate our dark skin — just attacking the whole issue of color in a very verbal way. 

Because there's this shared history between Black Americans and Latinos, does that mean that they should be kind of knitted closer together in a moment like this? 

Sometimes people feel like there's competition and that we're fighting for the same slice of the pie. But the answer is to demand a bigger pie. 

I think that we can acknowledge that we're in the same fight and we're in the same struggle. You're like the third person who has asked about this. But I think I can say this as somebody who has been doing this all my life: I was raised with African Americans. My best friend was African American. And I have eight Afro-Latino grandchildren in my family. From the beginning of my activism, I was so very close to the Black community. And with Coretta King, we were trying to get the Dr. Martin Luther King holiday. And so, I don't want Latinos to kind of put a guilt trip on ourselves, you know? I think that we have to acknowledge that racism exists in our community, but we also have to say we know where it came from. It came from the same place. It came from slavery; it came from la conquista. It came from subjugation, it came from oppression and people trying to survive. And that is not excusing it. Because we have to challenge it and we have to change it. We have to correct it. 

What is similar to the movement in the 1960s to the one today? What is different? 

In the 1960s, everybody was marching for different things. Most of the White kids who were marching were marching because they didn't want to go to war. They didn't want to go to Vietnam. It was about peace. 

Now when you see these White kids marching — and a lot of them, of course, are women — they're marching toward racial justice and against police misconduct, against racial discrimination. And that, to me, is just so awesome. Not only that, but these movements have gone international. You have people in England and France and all these other countries much more against racial discrimination and against police misconduct. I think that's phenomenal. The other thing I think is so incredible is that you see things actually happening. You see people kicking down police departments and policemen charged. And it's happening because of what the protesters are doing. I think it's amazing. 

We've seen a lot of movement even over the past decade, but it seems as though we are having a bit of a Groundhog Day in that we continue to see these stories of police brutality, of Black people being killed. But are you hopeful in a larger way? 

Well, I think if police get charged — and of course, we have to wait to see if they get convicted — then I think people are going to see a change. When we make police start changing their policy, and we see police officers, chiefs and mayors making apologies, then I think that people are sensing that this is different, that things are actually happening. The other thing too is just that it's been so sustained. We’re talking about not a march for one day, but we're talking about a march for a couple of weeks.

It's amazing. I think that we are in a new moment now. 

What we’re reading

The pandemic has already taken a toll on parents’ careers. Many parents have had to cut back hours or leave their jobs completely to take care of children during the pandemic. But taking a work hiatus could permanently hurt lifetime earnings and career trajectory, and women will likely bear the brunt of those losses. (The Atlantic, July 9)

Young Black activists are leading the movement for Black lives. The organizers at the forefront of the current racial justice movement are young, Black and often queer-identifying women. Various activists shared their vision for the future, and how they’re making it a reality, with Teen Vogue. (Teen Vogue, July 9)

Women’s health care: A market ripe for disruption lacks investment. Women’s health has often been considered a niche market. But with COVID-19 raising awareness of the importance of gender-specific research, health professionals hope it results in wider investment in women-centric health care. (Forbes, July 8)

First woman joins Green Berets after graduating from Special Forces training. For the first time since the Pentagon opened all combat jobs to women in 2016, a woman completed the yearlong qualification program to become part of the Army Special Forces. (The New York Times, July 9)

Where are all the women-owned firms on the list of PPP loan recipients? Of the firms that have received sizable Paycheck Protection Program loans, only 16 percent were classified as women-owned, drawing questions about which communities are benefiting from the program and why others are not. (Boss Betty, July 7)

🎧 Listen: Into the WNBA bubble. This season, WNBA players will wear the words “say her name” on their warm-up shirts and play on basketball courts emblazoned with “Black lives matter.” Chicago Sky power forward Gabby Williams talks about how the league and her fellow players are responding to the movement for Black lives. “To a lot of people we’re just entertainment, but now you have to listen to us speak,” she says. (Into America via NBC, July 8)

📺 Watch: Being childfree by choice: five women on why they decided not to have kids. Women share why motherhood isn’t for them and how they are treated because they chose not to have children. (The Guardian, July 7)