Posted on 03/10/2003 9:47:01 PM PST by wallcrawlr
Black Immigrants Earn More Than U.S. Blacks
Black immigrants from Africa or the Caribbean fare better economically than their African American counterparts according to latest census figures in the San Francisco-based Sun Reporter.
The typical black immigrant earned $7,000 a year more than the average African American in 2000, who made $33,500 – the lowest of any U.S. ethnic group. Additionally, the unemployment rate was 5.1 percent for black immigrants compared with 10.2 percent for black Americans. This is compared with 3.9 percent unemployment for whites and 4.7 percent for Asians.
Harvard sociologist Mary Waters said many employers favor immigrants because they assume blacks born in the United States will not work as hard. Other scholars say that immigrants come with more drive, desire and education.
Immigrants from Africa and the Caribbean say they are used to working hard because there is no welfare or food stamps in their countries. “The big joke in the black community is if you are Jamaican you must have three jobs,” said Joan Savory who moved from Kingston, Jamaica to Oakland. She said Jamaicans work hard because they have to send money home to their struggling families.
But Martin Jackson from Trinidad said, “There is still a lot of racial discrimination against all people of color. We should not make the mistake that some of us are doing better.”
Korean Americans Worried About Hate Crimes
A rash of vandalism against Korean-owned shops in San Francisco has fueled concerns over possible hate crimes against Koreans, reports the Korean-language daily Korea Times. The community fears that Americans would seek retaliation after well-publicized protests by Koreans against the U.S. presence in their country in addition to the increasing threats from North Korea.
A handful of Korean businesses were hit on the night of Feb. 23 in the city’s Richmond District. The damage was mostly cosmetic and the stores reported hardly any theft. The Korea Times said it could not find any obvious reasons for the attacks. Nearby shops of other ethnic origins reported no damage.
Mi-Ja Kim, the owner of Young’s Cleaners, which had its windows broken, said she has never seen any incidents like these since she opened for business 10 years ago. She worried about future attacks.
“I moved my Korean-language sign from the entrance as a precaution,” she said. “I feel uncomfortable that Korean merchants were specific targets in these cases,” she added.
Japanese Americans Commemorate Internment Victims
Japanese Americans from San Francisco to Sacramento gathered recently to commemorate the annual Day of Remembrance, the Feb. 19th signing of Executive Order 9066 in 1942 by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for the forced relocation and incarceration of 120,000 people of Japanese descent on the West Coast, reports the San Francisco-based Nichi Bei Times.
Programs linked past injustices to present struggles. A panel in Sacramento agreed that the cloud of suspicion over Muslim, Arab and Sikh Americans was similar to the one experienced by the Japanese American community after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Mohinder Sandu of the Sikh Temple in West Sacramento said that although the Sept. 11 terror brought unjust accusations, he found hope in support from groups such as the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL).
At the San Francisco meeting, Rev. Lloyd Wake, a retired Methodist minister, talked about the heartbreak of leaving farms and homes during the internment but also spoke of people such as Bertha Starkey, a Christian missionary, who went voluntarily to the Poston internment camp to share the tar paper barracks, sandstorms, the summer heat and winter cold.
Wake said, “Our memories today are filled with historical events and experiences that evoke horror and hope, outrage and joy, pain and healing. But if we treat these memories as only something to talk about, write about, to venerate, that is not enough. These memories must be used to energize and motivate us to deal with the injustice and inhumanity today.”
Top Columnist Lists Hispanic Politicians to Watch
As both political parties gear up for 2004 presidential elections, Pilar Marrero, political editor and columnist with Los Angeles Spanish-language daily La Opinión, listed the names of national Hispanic politicians to watch in the months ahead.
In an interview with El Norte Digest, Marrero, whose award-winning column Actualidad Política, runs Mondays, said the new leaders represented the diversity and independence of the Hispanic electorate.
Marrero said four leaders were established powerbrokers: Rep. Bob Menendez, New Jersey Democrat and chairman of the House Democratic Caucus; Al Gonzales, White House counsel who is influential in picking judges and himself a possible future U.S. Supreme Court nominee; Bill Richardson, Democrat and New Mexico governor; and Texas Rep. Silvestre Reyes, Democrat who serves on both the House Armed Services and Select Committee on Intelligence.
Marrero also mentioned Democratic Rep. Hilda Solís, who represents the San Gabriel Valley and parts of East Los Angeles, as a future leader in Washington. Marrero said Solís, first elected in 2000, has excelled in building issue-based coalitions that attain concrete goals.
Despite the preponderance of Democrats, Marrero has written about the independence of Latino voters, who will punish any party that takes them for granted. “Latinos are not one thing or the other,” she said. “At the moment of truth, people vote on the issues, or the things they care about.”
In a post-2002 elections editorial on strong Latino support for Republicans, Marrero wrote: “When they least expect it, we awaken and give a civics lesson to those who think we’re merely puppets.”
Visa Delays Rather Than Hate Crimes Roadblocks for Arab Students
Reports have been circulating of a sharp decline in Arab and Muslim students in American universities after 9/11. However, the Arab American Institute (AAI) has concluded that the drop is not as dramatic as people had assumed. After surveying embassies and organizations that provide students with scholarships, AAI also reported that the decline was due more to visa processing delays than fears about hate crimes or security measures, FBI scrutiny or special registration.
According to the AAI survey, the countries with the sharpest decrease in the number of their students attending U.S. schools are Qatar, Oman, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. However, the overall number of Egyptian students attending U.S. schools has increased. More than new students, it was Arab students already enrolled in U.S. schools who faced the most problems while trying to return to the U.S. from trips back to their home countries. Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Kuwait topped the list of countries whose students experienced difficulties getting back to school.
The managing director of AAI, Jean Abi-Nader also noted that some of the decline in Arab students coming to the United States could also be attributed to British, Australian and Canadian universities competing vigorously for them. Some of the Persian Gulf countries are now giving scholarships intended for U.S.-bound students to those who choose to attend any English-language university.
Donal Brown and Terry Lee contributed to this report.
Native blacks are so wrapped up in their Black leaderships mis-guided message the whole world passes them by!
This is a matter that the race pimps hate and desperately want to ignore. If America is irredeemably racist toward its black people, then how can even blacker people come here, with nothing, and succeed?
The entire basis for affirmative action and race preferences collapses in the face of these statistics.
That's funny, so are many Scotsmen. Deep deep translucent blue.
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I wonder what would happen if you mixed them ---would their kids be medium blue?
Well, Ms. Waters fails to recall a study which showed something very different. ( I wish I remember who had done the study, but it was profiled on a network news show)Blacks who grew up in predominantly black countries were not socialized with the politics of race division and stereotypes, when coming to a country like America they had none of the subliminal inferences on inequality.
The show compared this with a socially inferior Japanese clan( name fails me) who could not gain ground in Japan and were stereotyped as "lazy and stupid". Obviously they did very well in the US.
As a side, My husbands best friend is from Trinidad...the guy is a saint, supporting an unbelievable number of extended family members on his salary as an engineer. I have watched Africans on the soccer team my husband coaches move from small cramped quarters to large homes in a matter of three years.
Of course I think this is true regardless of the race of many immigrant groups, who land here and find the golden dream of opportunity. White or black, there are quite a few Americans who simply have lost their drive.
Doesn't that kind of put the lie to all the racism being the cause rhetoric?
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