# Quote — Elizabeth Martínez, De Colores Means All of Us

> The era called the sixties can be said to run from 1955 (the Montgomery bus boycott) to 1975 (when the mass movements had died down and most activists were moving on to new forms of struggle or non-political priorities). But many of the authors of those two dozen books end the era in 1970, not because the decade formally ended then but largely because that was when male-led, white student protest sharply declined. This dating negates high points of struggle by peoples of color (such as the Native American armed occupation of Wounded Knee in 1973) and by the women's movement, which reached its heights after 1970. By their dating of the era, our authors impose an overwhelmingly white male definition on it.

- Author: [Elizabeth Martínez](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-martinez.md)
- Book: [De Colores Means All of Us](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-martinez/de-colores-means-all-of-us.md)
- Source: [Wikiquote](https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Elizabeth_Martinez#%E2%80%9DThat_Old_White_Male_Magic%E2%80%9D) ([CC BY-SA 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/))
- Quote page: https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-martinez/de-colores-means-all-of-us/the-era-called

## More from this book

> White radicals of the 1960s-many of them called "the New Left"-learned tactics from African Americans, who had learned some of theirs from Asians (Gandhi) and who also adopted tactics from white workers of an earlier era. Native Americans took tactics from Blacks. Asian-American youths were inspired by young Puerto Rican activists. Chicano organizations copied from the Black Panther Party, as in their breakfast program. Yet the "New Left" is usually staked out with Eurocentric boundaries in our books on the 1960s. Even many people of color define the New Left as white, and would deny that their activism had anything to do with a new, old or any other kind of Left. The New Left was indeed born primarily white. But its vision of a society in which the exploited and oppressed become an empowered collectivity did inspire people across racial and national lines. That vision generated an international political culture that stirred youth from Paris to Mexico to Tokyo and lives on today. Who cannot be reminded of that New Left ideal, "participatory democracy" (a phrase used by Students for a Democratic Society), when hearing of how 3,000 Chinese students voted on every major decision in Tiananmen Square in May 1989?

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-martinez/de-colores-means-all-of-us/white-radicals-of-the.md)

> the contradiction of encountering male-supremacist practices within a movement supposedly fighting for social justice spurred many Chicanas to new consciousness.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-martinez/de-colores-means-all-of-us/the-contradiction-of-encountering.md)

> it's vital to avoid a longtime error of leftist politics, starting with Marxism: failure to understand the powerful role in human society of subjective forces such as spirituality. That failure has opened the door wide to right-wing manipulation of spiritual hunger. That failure undermines the possibility of mobilizing masses of Latinos/as for whom faith has been an affirmation of heart in a heartless world. The bottom line in any organizing for social justice needs to be respect for others' needs, including spiritual needs.

[Quote page](https://www.leafyquotes.com/elizabeth-martinez/de-colores-means-all-of-us/its-vital-to-avoid.md)