*(Via Journalisms) “Dear California, my beautiful and resilient home state. Even with your wildfires, droughts, and floods, I wouldn’t live anywhere else,” Ruben Navarrette Jr. wrote last week in his syndicated column.
“Yet, as a Mexican American, I’m not blind to history. For more than 150 years, my tribe has lived in ‘occupied’ territory. Mexican Americans were never enslaved or sold as property. But we have been subjected — like our Native American cousins — to the indignity of being treated like second-class citizens in our ancestral homeland.
“For Mexican Americans, that homeland isn’t Mexico. It’s the Southwest, which the United States stole from Mexico in 1848 and repurposed as eight U.S. states.
“The mistreatment of Mexican Americans who were left behind began almost immediately.
“In 1855, the California Legislature enacted what became known as the ‘Greaser Law,’ which allowed for the arrest of anyone thought to be a vagrant. The law used the word ‘Greaser’ to refer to those with ‘Spanish and Indian blood.’ . . .
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“Reparations may soon be on the agenda in California. On July 1, a first-in-the-nation task force is supposed to conclude a review process that lasted more than a year and file its final report to the legislature. . . .
“As I suspect is true with most Mexican Americans, I’d be offended if California tried to buy us off to get us to shut up.
“Yet, oddly, I’m more offended that state officials — including [California Gov. Gavin] Newsom and legislators — don’t seem to think the state owes Mexican Americans a nickel.
“So California, if you’re planning to settle up with other groups, you should at least acknowledge that Mexican Americans also have a claim — even if we don’t pursue it.
“The first debt incurred by the Golden State was to those who lived here long before the territory became a state and before gold was ever discovered. We are your original sin.”
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