Human Rights Issues Are Exposed In The Book White Male Privilege. Mark Rosenkranz Was Influenced From The Legacy Of Pancho Villa.
The book "White Male Privilege" profiles discrimination and racism toward minorities. Mark Rosenkranz interviews Brian Swann (brother of the former Pittsburgh Steelers star Lynn Swann who was also the 2006 gubernatorial candidate for the state of Pennsylvania.)
Pleasanton, CA (PRWEB) January 24, 2007 -- The new book "White Male Privilege" profiles discrimination and racism toward minorities. Mark Rosenkranz interviews Brian Swann (brother of the former Pittsburgh Steelers star Lynn Swann who was also the 2006 gubernatorial candidate for the state of Pennsylvania).
Is it racism, or simply white male privilege? Either way, it is an issue that remains to be grappled with. In the Declaration of Independence, our founding fathers declared, "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal," and yet, it would be another 189 years before Americans would be equal by law. It has been suggested that with the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, America had finally overcome its ugly past of racism and discrimination. As we entered into the new millennium, the author wondered if America had really set aside its biased and discriminatory practices. The author interviewed eight people as he developed the foundations for this book. One of the people he was honored to interview was Brian Swann DDS, the brother of famous footballer Lynn Swann.
Brian shared his story of a racially motivated encounter that he and his brother had experienced in the 1970's in San Francisco, California. Each of the eight people interviewed for this book brought with them a different experience and viewpoint as it relates to discrimination and racism in America, and more specifically, white male privilege in America. The author brought these eight individual viewpoints together, and told their story as they relate to American history, from the early days of colonization through the present day. Click here.
Raul Nava helped motivate Mark Rosenkranz to write White Male Privilege. This article below, gives a short synopsis of the story he was compelled to reveal.
###Man's 80-year secret revealed
HIS FATHER WAS LEGEND PANCHO VILLA
By Dennis Taylor
Bay Area News Group
Article Launched: 08/11/2008 01:32:24 AM PDT
A photograph that hung on the wall of Raul Nava's family home - a man on horseback - caught the eye of Nava's girlfriend. Her observation changed Nava's life.
"What a great picture of your father," she said.
"That's not my father," he corrected her. "It's my grandfather."
The brief exchange sparked his curiosity and Nava, 46, prodded his father for information that revealed an amazing family secret - one that Raul's father, Ernesto Nava, had protected for 80 years.
The man in the photo was, in fact, Pancho Villa, the legendary revolutionary who organized the oppressed people of Mexico into a guerrilla army 100,000 strong, and overthrew a corrupt government. And Pancho Villa, was, in fact, Ernesto Nava's father.
"All my life, I could never say anything about that to anybody," explained the 93-year-old Ernesto, who traveled Saturday from his home in Hayward to be a special guest at the 28th annual Steinbeck Festival in Salinas. "I held it in for 80 years because my mother told me, 'If you're in Mexico, they will kill you. If you are here (in the United States), they will kill you. You must never speak of this to anyone.' "
Ernesto says he never knew his famous and infamous father, who stole from the wealthy to finance his revolt, and negotiated deals with the United States for food and weapons. He was only 2 years old when his mother, Macedonia Ramirez, smuggled him into the United States, to
New Mexico, for their own safety in 1917.
"It was very, very dangerous," he said. "In New Mexico, you didn't talk about that."
Pancho Villa - born Doroteo Arango Arambula in 1878 - became an outlaw as a teenager, fleeing to the mountains after killing a hacienda owner who he said had raped his sister.
After joining up with Emiliano Zapata and others, he became the charismatic leader of a revolt against dictatorial Mexican President Porfirio Díaz and a government that made life easy for foreign land barons and workers, while native Mexicans suffered in poverty.
President Díaz finally resigned and went into exile in 1885, with the revolution in its full glory, but the battles raged on until Villa and Zapata declared peace in 1918. Five years later, Villa was assassinated on orders from one of his longtime adversaries, Álvaro Obregón, a general in the Mexican army who suspected he was organizing another army.
Ernesto, meanwhile, grew up in the United States, where he ran a construction business in Hayward.
When Raul Nava discovered the family secret, he suggested that they return to Mexico for a visit.
"He hadn't been there since he was 14 years old, when he went back to Mexico alone to look for (information about) his father," Raul said. "I really wasn't certain what we'd find there, what the reaction would be, if we went there."
Ernesto was 84 when Raul took him back to the states of Chihuahua and Durango in Mexico, where Pancho Villa's legend looms large.
"We had a map of the area in our rental car, but we didn't need it," Raul said. "My father could tell exactly where we were, and where we needed to go, just by looking at the mountains. Even after 70 years, he knew the landscape."
"I didn't know if we should tell anybody who he was, but my father said, 'I'm an old man now. It doesn't matter.' " he said. "So the first person we told was a janitor at our hotel."
The janitor passed on the news to the owner of the hotel in Parral, Chihuahua, José Socorro Salcido Gómez, who, by chance, had written a book about Pancho Villa. Gomez is the organizer of a Pancho Villa festival that is held each year in Parral.
News spread across the city, and the people there treated Ernesto like a celebrity.
"It was very emotional to go back there after 70 years," he said.
During the Navas' visit, one comment was common from people in Mexico, some of whom knew Pancho Villa. They told Ernesto he looked exactly like his father.
"All of them said that - everybody," he said.
After a lifetime of keeping his identity secret, it was nice thing to hear.
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Contact Dennis Taylor at dtaylor@montereyherald.com or at (831) 646-4344.
On a side note, Ernesto Nava's son Raul Nava helped motivate author Mark Rosenkranz to write the book entitled White Male Privilege.
http://www.amazon.com/White-Male-Privilege-Racism-America/dp/0979108918/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1218568140&sr=8-1
