Real “men” don’t get in each others’ faces
Yesterday at the National Chicano Moratorium Committee meeting Xenaro Ayala, representing his faction of La Raza Unida Party (LRUP), waited until the end of the agenda when the only appropriate things to be discussed were announcements, and went into a rant about his objection to my being present at NCMC meetings because I had insulted him, his son Ernesto, his daughter Libertad, and supposedly, his sister, Estela. Demonstrating what everybody who knows him well is aware of, that he lacks impulse control and that he’s a male chauvinist pig, he accused me of not being a “man” because I had not made my accusations against him and his family to his “face.” He’s upset that I have put everything out in public in my blogs.
The first rule of prevarication is, don’t lie when the truth is easily ascertainable.
An important point about what Xenaro said yesterday: at no time did he ever call me a liar or claim that what I’d said about him was untrue.
The thing that’s easiest to clear up is whether or not I have ever said anything insulting about Estela. The only thing I have ever said about Estela in my blogs that might conceivably be construed as an insult is this; you be the judge:
I won’t let them disrespect you (famous last words)
A few facts for background. When my now ex-significant other very early on in our relationship told me some of the family history, she made what I considered was a solemn representation and promise: she would not let her family insult and disrespect me the way that they had insulted and disrespected her ex-spouse. I have to admit that with her ex-spouse that he probably deserved it. As she pointedly said in her speech at the 2010 National Chicano Moratorium rally (a speech which I was then and remain very proud and touched that she made), pointed out that she had been raped and abused during her marriage. It took great courage for her to get up and say that publicly. I just wish that she’d had more courage to stand up to her family about me and about us.
I won’t shake a rapist’s hand and I won’t give one the time of day, whether it is spousal rape, date rape, or stranger rape. I certainly can’t see a person who purports to support the rights of La Mujer even being civil to somebody who had done that to his sister. But I have seen Xenaro do precisely that to his other ex-brother-in-law. He’s shaken his hand and accepted a pat on the shoulder from that pig….well, I guess it’s what you expect from one MCP (Male Chauvinist Pig) to another. Either Xenaro is a hypocrite of the worst order, or else he really is an MCP despite his public pretensions. As for shaking the hand of a rapist and spousal abuser, well that brings up the next issue.
[FROM: http://janbtucker.com/blog/2011/10/21/never-do-anything-against-conscience/ AND YOU SHOULD READ THE ENTIRE BLOG FOR CONTEXT]
ADDING INSULT TO INJURY
That blog reveals a number of the insults that I had to endure. Here’s another one that I haven’t made public before.
The Ayala family is very well aware that I am just as active in the African American community as I am in the Chicano/Latino community. It is no secret that I have served as a branch officer or committee member in three different NAACP Chapters and that my late significant other (who died in 2004) had been the Southern California Legal Redress Chair for the NAACP and a prominent criminal defense lawyer. It is also impossible for the family not to know that my late significant other’s godson and my godson is African American since he is together with me in my Facebook Profile Photo.
Before Xenaro’s lack of impulse control (as pointed out in the blog linked above) led him to rant and rave about blonde blue eyed Anglos at an NCMC meeting, perhaps the family somehow got the impression that it’s okay with me to engage in racist behavior relative to Black people in my presence because my skin color is white. On at least three occasions that are ingrained into my memory are how, both in my presence and Xenaro’s presence, Ernesto and his primo engaged in these extremely offensive conversations in Negro dialect which can only be characterized to people of my age as “Amos ‘n Andy” routines.
As I’ve previously pointed out in the above cited blog, I sat there and took it. I was of course seething inside, but because I’ve got more impulse control than the Ayala family, while I was in their homes I didn’t make an issue of it….and for that I am ashamed of myself. For this I owe an apology, not to the Ayala family as perhaps Xenaro believes, but to my god-son, all of my African and African American friends, and to all my friends who expect more of me than to remain silent in the face of racism.
Most importantly I owe an apology to my father. If my father had heard me engage in the kind of behavior that Ernesto engaged in – which Ernesto seems to think is funny – my dad would have at first calmly explained why the behavior was wrong. If I’d persisted, he’d have smacked me and I would have deserved it.
XENARO BROUGHT THIS ON HIMSELF
Aside from the fact that Xenaro lacks impulse control and loves confrontation, Xenaro’s complaint that I should have told him stuff to his face and not through blogs is entirely a problem of his own making:
http://janbtucker.com/blog/2011/10/24/my-bad/
As I pointed out, on September 26, 2011 I got an email from Libertad Ayala telling me not to email her or her father, Xenaro. When any reasonable person gets an email like that, it is intuitively obvious that they don’t want any communication with you. So, if I’d continued to email them without their consent, they’d have had grounds to seek a restraining order against and me and justifiably so. So exactly what was I supposed to do?
Since Xenaro thinks that to be a “man” I should have said these things to his face, I suppose I could have telephoned him. Oh, wait a minute. His daughter told me not to email either of them, so a reasonable and intelligent individual would think twice about that because that also might have been grounds for them to charge harassment in a restraining order.
Then again, since Xenaro somehow expects me under the circumstances to confront him face to face to be a “man,” I suppose I could have showed up at his door…..uh, except that would justifiably be called stalking once I’d been told to stop contacting him by Libertad.
Well, what to do? Oh, there’s this communication methodology called a blog in which I get to exercise my rights under the Constitution of the United States, the Constitution of the State of California and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and because, unlike Xenaro, I have impulse control, that’s what I use to warn the world about him and his cult.
