‘Brown Enough,’ a book LAUSD uses to talk about race and representation

Christopher Rivas visited three LAUSD schools, including Inglewood High School, Lynwood High School and La Puente High School to read excerpts from his recent book, “Brown Enough: True Stories About Love, Violence, the Student Loan Crisis, Hollywood, Race, Familia, and Making it in America,” opening the space to a discussion with youth, many of them Latinos, about identity, hate crimes and the importance of representation.

Rivas, LA vs Hate and Adam Steel of Grow Mentoring began a partnership in 2024 that looks to combat hate through literacy, using Rivas's latest book as a guiding tool. 

“Community and unity are just some of the ways to combat hate. It's hard to hate someone when you know them and their culture,” Rivas, actor, author, podcaster, playwright and storyteller, told CALÒ News. “This idea of coalition and unity is really powerful, not just in words, but in practice.” 

L.A. vs. Hate is an L.A. County agency centered on community and designed to support communities targeted for hate crimes or incidents. They have reporting services and also post-hate crime assistance. It is run by the L.A. County Commission on Human Relations and helps people understand what a hate act is, how to report it and how to support people who have been victims of hate. 

With their unity coalition, L.A. vs Hate also looks to educate the L.A. County community on hate crime and use art, in all its forms, to combat hate and unify communities and create spaces that promote dialogue and open communication about inclusivity.

“I believe in the power of creating stable and thriving communities in which the terrible disease of hate and loneliness can be cured. It's vital to stand together, uplift each other and create a city where everyone feels safe, valued and heard,” Rivas said when talking about why he decided to join the coalition. 

The Afro-Latino writer and creator grew up in New York. Rivas, who is Dominican and part Colombian, is proud of his Latinidad, but at the same time refuses to be defined solely by this title. 

Rivas and Steel, who began partnering in November 2023 to create a literacy and youth engagement campaign looking to directly support underserved youth with resources, mentorship and culturally relevant books, said that when L.A. vs Hate looked to sponsor some of the events and book reading and conversations within LAUSD schools, they were very excited. 

“It was a no-brainer,” Steel told CALÒ News. “The book not only touches on important topics that many youth can relate to, but it also brings awareness to things that many youth do not know how to openly talk about.” 

As stated by Rivas, “Brown Enough” explores topics such as love, sex, fake-it-till-you-make-it ambition, bad Spanish, color, code-switching, whitewashing, scandal, Hollywood, representation and more. 

The memoir navigates necessary and often revealing topics through fourteen chapters, each a distinct moment where Rivas explores his brownness and how to own it.

“This is a book that speaks the truth and allows bodies of culture to understand how much value they have in this world and what whiteness does to us and our consciousness and our self-worth,” he said. “I hope it empowers [youth] to be themselves and then maybe, hopefully, to love themselves and to take up space and to tell their own story.” 

In each of the LAUSD schools he visited, he gifted about 300 students a copy of his book and hosted a one-hour assembly where youth were able to learn about the importance of self-empowerment and embrace their identity. Followed by a Q and A, students were able to ask questions about the book and reflect on their own biases or self-discovery journey. 

“When I was a kid I never saw myself in literature. I didn’t even see myself on TV, and this developed some self-hatred in me,” Rivas told the Inglewood students. “I was a kid and would watch a lot of television and all I saw was white people, so I thought I needed to be like them in order to have a story worth telling, in order to be somebody. “

“It's important for our young men to see men that look like [them] doing something positive. It’s important for them to get a positive message from a positive man,” Lamar Collins, principal of Inglewood High School, said. “The biggest challenge in school today is not academics; the big challenges are the social [and] emotional  concerns that our kids are dealing with.”

Fidel Rodriguez, a senior human relations consultant on the L.A. vs Hate team, said that although the organization looks to inspire people to stand up to hate and track as well as document hate crimes, the educational component is also vital to the work that the organization hopes to move forward, especially when it comes to supporting individuals and communities to heal from the trauma of hate and racism. 

“There's always an educational component to our work,” he told CALÒ News. “We saw the opportunity to work with [Rivas] as a way to promote literacy and as a way to dismantle and unpack racism and the foundations of hate.”

Rodriguez, who has worked for the Los Angeles County Human Relations Commission as a human relations specialist for over a decade, said literacy and books like “Brown Enough” are often more than an academic tool, as they also introduce students to topics like empowerment, self-love and love for others, issues that oftentimes do not make it to K-12 curriculums. 

“I've always pushed literacy. I think the foundation of you knowing yourself is coupled with learning about other people's narratives,” he said. “Books have done so much for me throughout the years, especially in the hardest times in my life.”  

For Rodriguez, developing art-focused projects to fight against hate, facilitating adult leadership training and leading youth development programs for those impacted by childhood trauma is personal. He said a lot of his advocacy is driven by his own journey and the systemic trauma induced by his experiences in the juvenile and criminal justice systems. 

“I never thought I would be in positions like these today, and I'm honored,” he said when talking about his leadership role in L.A. vs Hate and the partnership with Rivas. “Books like these are more important than ever because many of these critical thinking books are being banned.” 

On January 24, just four days after President Donald Trump's inauguration, the United States Education Department called book banning a “hoax” and announced it would be dismissing 11 complaints received during the previous administration relating to book bans by local school districts. 

According to research by PEN America, one of the leading nonprofit organizations advocating for free expression and human rights, more than 10,000 books were banned in public schools from 2023 to 2024, tripling nationwide from the previous year, which was 3,362. 

According to the research published last November, PEN America analyzed the content of the most commonly banned books this year and found that these books overwhelmingly include books with people and characters of color (44%) and books with LGBTQ+ people and characters (39%).

Both Rivas and Rodriguez said this is incredibly alarming as many of the banned books are written specifically for young adult audiences and depict topics young people confront in the real world, such as racism, hate crimes and more.  

“Our cultures, our Blackness and Brownness, are so beautiful and so rich, so we should be having these dialogues. That is what I hope my book does: encourage dialogues and openly talk about our stories and triumphs,” Rivas said.   

Earlier this month, Rivas visited his final LAUSD school, Norwalk High School. Rivas said that conversations in schools that address race, colorism, identity and equality are now more important than ever, especially at a time when diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives are under attack by the current administration. While DEI is under attack, L.A. vs Hate continues to push for connection and conversation in schools while addressing race, colorism, identity and equality. 

"We have ended the tyranny of so-called diversity, equity and inclusion policies all across the entire federal government and, indeed, the private sector and our military," Trump said earlier this month. “And our country will be woke no longer."

As soon as he came to office, Trump also began issuing executive orders to dismantle DEI programs and put pressure on federal contractors to end “illegal DEI discrimination.”

“High school might be too late,” Rodriguez said when asked if having students openly talk about racism, hate crimes and discrimination in high school can be overly exposing them, as many critics believe. “This is the world we're living in. We live in a world that is fraught, and we try to act like identity's not a big deal, but it is because our identities are so important.”