Racialicious Crush Of The Week: Scot Nakagawa

On a side note, the best thing that came out of that post for me is the stories folks have shared with me and the “friends” I’ve made. I put “friends” in quotes because they are people I only interact with online. Many of them are black–some from the U.S. but also a handful in Europe. For them, the post made an emotional impression. I think that black people have been so targeted, so viciously maligned, that it meant something to those who reached out to me that someone who is not black had something to say about that experience.

Your writing is the definition of “intersectional.” What connections/points of solidarity do you think anti-racism is solid on and where can we improve?

What a kind thing to say! I think that anti-racism is on solid ground when it makes the connection between the local and the global, and when racial justice advocates work in the intersection of related issues like gender, class, sexuality, ethnicity, and race. Looking at the international context is the direction I’m slowly moving in, but I need some help with it. I invite folks to send me resources or even recommend books to read, people to talk to, or organizations to visit.

Among many gaps is, I believe, the lack of understanding of that international context I just referred to. For instance, in the immigration debate, we talk about the U.S. as a magnet for immigration, but rarely address the factors that are pushing people to leave their home countries like war, poverty, global economic inequality. We also fail to see that migration is a global issue, and all highly industrialized countries are feeling the pressure of increasing numbers of people from resource exploited regions of the global south arriving at their borders, seeking a safe haven. Some, maybe, even consciously going to those places that have historically exploited their home nations, recognizing that there’s relative wealth and opportunity there.

If you didn’t answer this in the first question, would you mind giving a bit of personal background: where you grew up, family, education, where you get your fly caps at?

Okay, first the most important info. The cap. It’s a Brixton cap and you can get it at any one of many stores on the Fulton Mall (at least for Brooklynites). Any other fashion challenged folks can find it online at swell.com. I was a surfer once upon a time in a place far, far away, so I still buy from surf shops that support the Surfrider Foundation.

My background is that I grew up in Hawaii in the 60s and 70s in a very rural, very working-class former plantation community. I’m mostly self-educated. I dropped in and out of high school and have been homeless, which is an experience that disproportionately affects LGBT people. My family has always been involved in community politics and I guess I picked up some of my passion for racial justice from them.

I also spent a year at Lewis and Clark College in Portland, OR. That was a really important experience to me because it introduced me to some really great people who were part of the first serious political work I did in Oregon.

But mostly my politics is rooted in my personal experiences and the stories that thousands of people have shared with me in a career of over 30 years now as a teacher and community organizer.

I came of age during the AIDS crisis of the 80s and joined the LGBT movement through ACT-UP. I spent a couple of years working for the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force where I helped to create a project called Fight the Right. More recently, I spent some time at the Highlander Center in rural Tennessee where I helped to coordinate the education program reaching out to Appalachia and the Deep South. Earlier this century I spent some time working with incarcerated people and their families out west, fighting for criminal justice reform.

Check out the rest of the interview at the R’s Tumblr!

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