From 'This is for La Raza' to 'This Fool'

On critiquing the fetishization of "foo" culture Or They're laughing at you, not with you, menso

A lot of dust has been kicked up recently in regards to racial epithets, slurs, what constitutes comedy, having a sense of humor and more precisely, “foo” culture and its fetishization, by not only Raza, but by Amerikkka at large. If you have been paying attention, I wrote a piece about the history of the slur “beaner.” I then conducted a poll and discovered that people find the word “latinx” more offensive than “beaner.” I also wrote a piece about Hulu’s new series “This Fool,” in which I argued that Hollywood, in cooperation with popular meme accounts, academia and politicos, have made us the butt of a national joke; We are, collectively, perceived as “foos” in the lens of the nation.

If that’s “progress” to you, it might be time to crack open your copy of Occupied America again.

So I wanted to respond to some of the pushback and explain why criticizing “foo” culture is important and where the criticism comes from.

The Daily Chela recently published a piece criticizing the meme site, Foos Gone Wild, and asked the question: is “Foo” the new brownface? This garnered quite a bit of attention and pushback (including from FGW itself, who as of this writing has 1.9 million followers on Instagram), with angry FGW supporters proclaiming that critiquing FGW, or “foo” culture in general, is akin to being a “wokoso” and a hater. It’s a great read, and I highly recommend it. The rabbit hole there is DEEP but I won’t delve into how deep just yet.

The reaction to the DC article was interesting but not surprising, at least not to me because I’ve been fighting this battle a long time. Let me rewind a bit.

From a historical perspective, this whole thing is crazy to witness because we’re living through it, as opposed to just reading about it in a tattered MAS book. There have been monumental shifts in Chicano history just this past decade and recently I questioned WHO, if anyone, is documenting any of this stuff?

In my opinion, the few Chicano Studies programs left around the country, and their scholars and department heads, should be taking stock of all of this stuff and documenting it. But they’re not, largely because many of them are part of the problem due to the radical shift in academia that occurred not long ago. If you don’t remember the very word “Raza” became taboo on college campuses not long ago, strange but true.

That leaves independent writers, of which there are few, and then unknown and underground blogs to try and cover any of this stuff…and you start to see the problem; no one is documenting these shifts in culture and so at some point in the future, this period of Chicano history will be murky and difficult to interpret…and it will be filled to the brim with “foos.” Is that how we want to be remembered?

It strikes me as RIDICULOUS that there are not more Chicano Studies programs covering these kinds of topics. If anyone should be pushing back against the exploitation of the “foos” it should be MAS programs and leaders. If I had the juice and the connections, and if my name was not MUD, I would love to teach a class on the shifts in modern Chicano culture in just the past 20 years, because there have been many! Alas, I do not have those connections, my name IS MUD, and so I write instead, independently!

At the very least I will be publishing a collection of my essays at some point in the future and maybe that can be used as a teaching tool - time will tell. I am after all, still brownlisted.

Back to my original point; they’re laughing at you not with you.

The most common response I see whenever someone starts criticizing “foo” culture is that it’s just jokes. It’s comedy, foo! It’s satire, bro! Don’t you have a sense of humor? If we can’t laugh at ourselves then what can we laugh at?

Obviously, yes, I get it; Believe it or not, I do have a sense of humor. I get the jokes. I laugh at them as well and I’ve written Chicano satire myself. The difference from where I’m standing is that I can tell when something has shifted from an inside joke to being the butt of the joke.

In my opinion, many of the most dedicated “foo” fanbase cannot see the forest from the trees because they do not know the history involved, the battles, and more importantly, how we arrived at this point in Raza history.

How did we go from This is for La Raza to This Fool?

The answer to that question is complicated and long-winded but there are those of us who lived it and remember a time when we were “Brown and proud” instead of doing “sock checks,” calling each other “foos” and asking each other to “look at it closely.” That a company as big as Hulu is using terminology like ”you down?” should give a clue with how deeply vested these kinds of companies are in “foo” culture.

Another response online pointed to Kid Frost and wanted to know how FGW with their rapping “clown” was any different from what Frost did back in the day. This made me laugh.

Frost and others gave us a huge sense of pride back then, which is difficult to describe now because we are so far removed from that era and kids just can’t relate. Let me just say, it was a powerful movement for Chicanos.

When “This Is For La Raza” dropped you couldn’t tell me shit. That song was a battle cry for us to march into the streets and proclaim Y Que?! to any mother fucker who dared try to disrespect our culture! It was on back then and we let it be known that we were not to fucked with.

And now? Now we have a rapping clown doing “sock checks” for likes…and kids tell me he’s doing this “for the culture.” How far we have fallen.

Back in the day, the pride we felt was only rivaled by the rage we expressed at the system who refused to take us seriously or dared to disrespect us. There was a whole movement of conscious hip hop that came out back then that sought to educate and uplift. This was for La Raza…literally.

There is none of that now; quite the opposite actually and I’m supposed to merrily go along with this shift, don my clown nose and laugh and agree that a satirical, rapping clown is the same Frost?!? Chale!

For those of you who would dismiss me as just an “old head” who doesn’t get it, I get it. We get it. YOU are the ones who don’t get it. You cannot comprehend the history. We lived it. We are not the same.

Normally, this is where Chicano Studies would step in and I could point to a book that has documented why this shift happened but, as I mentioned, there has been this huge void there for the past few decades and the existence of that void is partly responsible for the wholesale ignorance of so many young Chicanos about our own struggles and history.

As this discussion blew up online, and more and more “foo” cult members chimed in their support, a guy commented, “They’re really gonna be upset when they discover Cheech & Chong.”

This made me laugh because it’s specifically one of my points for why mainstream Amerikkka’s perception of Chicanos is so warped and perverted to begin with.

I laugh my ass off at Cheech and Chong’s comedy - I have for most of my life. It’s difficult to describe the joy I experienced as kid, discovering some of their skits for the first time (on vinyl and cassette!) and the warm reassurance that we, Raza, could laugh at ourselves! And that these jokes, were meant for us! It was a special feeling for me. Cheech’s Christmas skit changed my life.

That was a cool feeling, but that warm reassurance faded quickly when I discovered that white people also liked Cheech and Chong and their laughter was different than mine.

Their laughter came from a different place than ours and it was then that I understood the difference between laughing with you and laughing at you.

And from that point on I never wanted to listen to or watch Cheech and Chong alongside white people. It made me uncomfortable - those jokes were OURS and how dare they intrude on our sense of humor!

This is difficult to explain, especially to non-Chicanos.

When I first heard Cheech sing “Mexican Americans” I loved it! It spoke to me like nothing else before! I could relate and it was SO rare to have a Chicano comedian that achieved mainstream success and tell jokes and stories that seemed to come from my own family! And when I heard Chong sing “Beaners” I laughed my ass off because it was funny!

But! It’s only funny to me in the context that we were laughing at ourselves. Whenever I saw or heard white people laughing at “Beaners” or at Cheech’s accent, I immediately lost my sense of humor. It wasn’t funny anymore I felt not only self-conscious but angry. When I listened to a white dude imitate Cheech my kneejerk reaction was to wan to punch them in the face.

Truth be told, there was a period of time in my life where I hated Cheech and Chong and cursed their names. I hated that they gave white and black Amerikkka these stereotypes and this coded language and jokes that they could never truly understand and they would use against me!

My hate, of course, faded over the years and I learned to enjoy them again but to this day, I refuse to watch or listen to their jokes with white people and when I hear them reference the show I cringe.

And this is how I feel about “foo” culture and the fetishization of “foo” culture at large.

Yes, I get the jokes. I laugh at them as well. But I have gone past the point where I thought they were funny to now noticing that non-Chicanos are laughing AT us and not with us.

And corporations are cashing in on this at our expense.

See, what a lot of Raza don’t realize now is that, it wasn’t that long ago that many of the people in charge took notice of our numbers. We used to always be referred to as a “sleeping giant” due our sheer population numbers and people would say things like, “Boy, if they ever got organized watch out!”

But we never did.

Instead we’re more asleep than ever and these institutions have noticed. Corporate Amerikkka noticed and used this to their advantage because we are easier to market to as one large group of people, never mind that none of our cultures are even remotely similar. But! We’re easy to sell shit to as a big group!

Politicians noticed this as well and figured out that if they could lump us all together as one big voting bloc, boom! Success! They call this the “latino vote.” Never mind that Raza, not “latinos,” not “hispanics,” but Raza, Chicanos, at one time, had our own political third party. And we scared the shit out of the establishment with that.

The media, academia and Hollywood all took note of our numbers as well and you can see the results in real time on your TV and phones. The bottom line for all of these folks is simply profit. We are, effectively, a cash cow to them. Nothing more, nothing less.

“Foos” and the exploitation of “foo” culture are nothing more than a fad in this generation, but its popularity has been enough for corporate board rooms to take notice and thus put venture capital behind various projects and startups. And so, what you get is TV shows and films greenlit that exploit these things that were once just “inside jokes” and bring them to the nation’s attention. That’s where we are now.

We have all these shows and films about stereotypes now - we always have had these kinds of things but we have garnered national attention with them in this era. Instead of just sexy maids, immigrants and convicts, we have stories of drug dealing, blood thirsty bikers, sex pots and now “foos.”

Absolutely none of this stuff does a single thing for the people it exploits - but neither did Cheech and Chong back in the day.

What it does do is warp and pervert the perception of Raza on a national level and there is such a VOID behind it of any real substance, that white and black Amerikkka simply believe whatever comes out of their TVs and phones about us. And who can blame them? We, ourselves, push and support this crap after all.

To your average idiot Amerikkkan, we are “foos” and that perception is not only damaging but dangerous because there is no positive reinforcement behind any of it, just jokes.

And this is what I’m talking about when I say that yes, these things can be funny or entertaining, but when there’s no alternative to the “foo” or the “biker” or the “devious maid” on a national level, that sends the message that we are a joke to not be taken seriously.

Who takes Raza seriously these days? No one.

Not even us.

• S/C