Regarding Franz Julio's "Blind Nationalism leads to False Supremacy" (Golden Gater, March 30),it is an ignorant person who chooses to place Chicano/a Nationalism after white supremacy, or chooses to connect Chicano/a Nationalism with Nazism, the Republican agenda or genocide.
Mr. Julio seems to criticize very rapidly. He speaks of "blind Nationalists" people taking a "false perception of supremacy." He and his fellow members of the Progressive Coalition seem to be doing this a lot. Does this make him a blind nationalist? No, this makes him a blind Latino.
Chicano Nationalism gave him and all of our Raza the opportunity and ability to enter this and other higher educational institutions, and now he chooses to say this is wrong? How easily we forget our history.
Chicano/a Nationalism focuses on problems such as poverty, drug addiction, family homelessness, AIDS in the barrios, discrimination and institutionalized racism that exist here in what Chicano scholar Rodolfo Acuma calls occupied America.
Julio claims that as nationalist people we "pretend that world issues are nonexistent." Chicanos are aware of world issues, but not many of us are going to jump on someone else's bandwagon and fight next to them in some third world jungle while our people face the same problems here in Occupied Aztlan. I don't intend to demean anyone's struggle. Someone should take up that cause; however, as a Chicano, I will not.
Focusing on "outside" problems would please the racist U.S. government, because it would attract attention from what we face in this Occupied Land. A Chicano/a Nationalist should never bow to the U.S. government and not focus on the internal problems.
If this makes Chicanos/as a "separatist" people, then yes, we are. We must clean our yard before we can tell our neighbor to clean his. Our yard is still dirty with racism and discrimination.