Many Blacks split with leadership on immigration
By Earl Ofari
Hutchinson
New America Media
May 13, 2010
The cameras homed in on
the Reverend Al Sharpton as he led thousands to the Arizona state
capitol building in Phoenix in an old fashioned, energetic, shouting,
chanting, sign-carrying civil rights style march. The marchers demanded
the repeal of Arizona’s hotly contested immigration law. Meanwhile, on
the periphery of the march, a small band of counter protesters shouted,
hooted, and hectored Sharpton and the other marchers. Their action drew
almost no news mention. However, their counter-protest was different.
They were mostly African American. The temptation is to laugh off their
pro-SB 1070 countermarch as a comic sideshow. After all, Sharpton,
President Obama, all major civil rights groups, the Congressional Black
Caucus and nearly all local black Democratic state and local officials
unequivocally champion immigration reform and oppose the Arizona law.
But many blacks don’t
agree with them.
In fact, there is a
quiet but glaring disconnect between civil rights leaders’ outspoken
support for liberal immigration reform measures and the unease, wariness
and outright antipathy that many blacks feel toward illegal immigration.
That disconnect is evident in blog posts, chat rooms, Web sites, letters
to newspaper editors, and radio talk shows. Many blacks blame illegal
immigrants for the poverty and job dislocation in black communities.
A 2006 Pew Hispanic
Center poll found that more blacks than whites say that illegal
immigrants should not be denied education and services. But the
tolerance ends when it comes to jobs. Far more blacks than whites agree
that illegal immigrants take jobs away from blacks and claim to know
someone who has lost a job because of illegal immigration.
The first big warning
sign of black frustration with illegal immigration came during the
battle over Proposition 187 in California in 1994. White voters voted by
big margins for the proposition that denied public services to
undocumented immigrants. More than half of blacks voted against the
measure. But nearly fifty percent of black voters supported it.
Then Republican Gov.
Pete Wilson shamelessly pandered to anti-immigrant hysteria and rode it
to a reelection victory. Wilson got nearly 20 percent of the black vote
in that election -- double what Republicans in California typically get
from blacks. Wilson almost certainly bumped up his black vote total with
his freewheeling assault on illegal immigration. Blacks also gave
substantial support to anti-bilingual ballot measures in California.
Though there is furious
dispute over the economic impact that the estimated 10 to 15 million
undocumented immigrants in the United States have on the job market,
there is no concrete evidence that the majority of employers hire
Latinos at low-end jobs and exclude blacks from them solely because of
their race. The sea of state and federal anti-discrimination laws
explicitly ban employment discrimination. Despite a handful of lawsuits
and settlements by blacks with major employers for alleged racial
favoritism toward Hispanic workers, employers vehemently deny that they
shun blacks, and maintain that blacks simply don't apply for these jobs.
These aren't just
flimsy covers for discrimination. Many blacks will no longer work the
low-skilled, menial factory, restaurant, and custodial jobs that they
filled in decades past. The pay is too low, the work too hard, and the
indignities too great. On the other hand, blacks that seek these jobs
are often given a quick brush-off by employers. The subtle message is
that blacks won't be hired, even if they do apply. An entire category of
jobs at the bottom rung of American industry has been clearly marked as
"Latino-only." That further deepens suspicion and resentment among
blacks that illegal immigration is to blame for the economic misery of
poor blacks.
A Pew Hispanic Center
survey in 2008 found that tens of thousands of blacks were employed in
the top occupational categories for undocumented workers (farming,
maintenance, construction, food service, production and moving). The
survey also found that a significant percent of meat-processing workers
and janitors were black. Even more surprising, more than 10 percent of
blacks were still involved in agriculture -- an area that is largely
seen as the province of undocumented immigrants.
Illegal immigration
then and now is not the prime reason so many poor young blacks are on
the streets, and why some turn to gangs, guns and drug dealing to get
ahead. A shrinking economy, savage state and federal government cuts,
the elimination of job training programs, failing public schools, a
soaring black prison population, and employment discrimination are still
the major reasons for the grim employment prospects and poverty in
inner-city black neighborhoods.
The group that shouted
their pro-Arizona immigration law slogans at Sharpton was not much of a
sideshow to the immigration march. But their message -- that civil
rights leaders say one thing about immigration while many blacks feel
another way about it -- is a sign that immigration draws a line in the
sand even among blacks.
Earl Ofari
Hutchinson is an author and political analyst. His new book is "How
Obama Governed: The Year of Crisis and Challenge" (Middle Passage
Press). Follow Earl Ofari Hutchinson on Twitter: twitter.com/earlhutchinson
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