Ernesto Portillo Jr. : Tucson black leader skeptical of worry voiced by Minutemen

Arizona Daily Star ^ | Ernesto Portillo Jr.

[SandRat]

The names in the American pantheon of black civil rights leaders is long.

It stretches from Crispus Attucks, a slave of black and American Indian parents who was killed in the 1770 Boston Massacre by British soldiers, to Andrew Young Jr., a 1960s civil rights leader and later Atlanta mayor.

Now there's an effort to add a new name to the list: Minutemen.

The lawn-chair brigade, which appointed itself border guardians last year, has now taken it upon itself to become guardians of black America.

The Minutemen, lead by cofounder and failed congressional candidate Jim Gilchrist of California, launched a crusade Wednesday citing undocumented immigrants as the cause of black unemployment.

Immigration politics is making for stranger-than-usual bedfellows.

The Minutemen are the successors of the Know-Nothings, a mid-19th century anti-Catholic and anti-immigrant movement, and White Citizens Councils, the anti-integrationist and anti-semitic Southern groups of the 1950s and 1960s.

Now the largely white Minutemen members say they stand arm in arm with their black brothers and sisters.

But don't tell that to longtime Tucson civil rights leader, Clarence Boykins, who is the executive director of the Tucson-Southern Arizona Black Chamber of Commerce and president of the NAACP's Tucson chapter.

"The Minutemen don't speak for me or blacks in Arizona or America," said Boykins, who spoke at the April 10 rally at Armory Park.

He said the answer to illegal immigration is a comprehensive plan. He supports a path to legalization for undocumented immigrants and improved border security without fences.

It's true that within the black community, there are concerns over the impact of illegal immigration on black employment and the political future. While some blacks jeered Gilchrist and a few Minutemen in Los Angeles this week when the group launched its caravan to the nation's capital, there were other blacks who supported the border watchers.

"Illegal immigration has had and is having a devastating effect on the black community," the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, a Los Angeles Minuteman supporter and critic of the NAACP, told the Los Angeles Times. "Black Americans are being put out of jobs, they're put out of their own homes."

Black unemployment has persistently lagged behind white. The joblessness rate for whites 16 years and over was 3.9 percent. For blacks it was 8.8 percent, the Department of Labor's reported for April.

In 2004, 72 percent of black men in their 20s who did not complete high school did not have a job. That compared with 34 percent of white and 19 percent of Hispanic dropouts.

In some cities with large black populations, legal and undocumented immigrants have entered the work force, competing for low-wage jobs.

The Minutemen want black Americans — and everyone else for that matter — to make a connection between black unemployment and illegal immigration.

But it's an overly simplistic and incorrect connection, Boykins said.

Black unemployment is due to the lack of quality education and job opportunities, he said. State and national governments are not providing sufficient money to improve education and job training, he said.

Illegal immigration is a factor in the unemployment rate but it's not the culprit. The national rate is a relatively healthy 4.7 percent.

The Minutemen are trying to divide blacks and Latinos over jobs, Boykins said. "Nothing of what they profess is closely related to our issues."

As the small caravan of Minutemen drives to Washington, D.C., what they really want is to drive is a political wedge between blacks and Latinos.

[ClaireSolt]

Very funny! "funds for sending black children to boarding schools in Mexico for grades K through, say eighth grade." All I can say is I am not buying his proposal that we invest even more money in failing inner city schools. I like the Katrina rescue solution best. Fire up the helicopters and airplanes and let my people go.

[DLfromthedesert]

Portillo's Dad was also a journalist, and a conservative. Ernesto is a very nice young man; very polite if you call him up; he's just a liberal.

[DLfromthedesert]

But he agreed with me that members of PICC were rude and out of line at a Graf/Tancredo event a few months ago.

[DLfromthedesert]

He also wrote an article about a local person of Mexican descent who opposed the marches, and also opposed illegal immigration.

[brazzaville]

Good afternoon.

It would appear that presence of The Minutemen scares Ernesto.

Michael Frazier

[RobbyS]

Black unemployment is due to the lack of quality education and job opportunities, he said. State and national governments are not providing sufficient money to improve education and job training, he said.

Maybe the quality education is not there because so many resources have to be devoted to teaching English to the children of illegal immigrants, which detracts from the education of the children of American hispanics, American blacks, and Americans whites. And maybe jobs in construction are not there for adult Americans because he will not work for the slave wages paid to the illegals.

[staytrue]

We all know a majority is any number bigger than 51%.

Exactly what percentage constitutes a vast majority ?

This is not a trick question by the way.

[SandRat]

There's a lot of things that frighten that RAT:

The Entire Bill of Rights
ALL the words of the Declaration of Independence not just a select few that he likes
ALL the words of the US Constitution not just the "Cherry-Picked" phrases he likes

The GOD Fearing Amerincans Scare the daylights out of him!

[SandRat]

For the RATS if it's 52% of the votes for their side then it's a vast majority and sometimes even 43% is mandate in an election if their candidate wins.

[Mike Darancette]

Tucson civil rights leader, Clarence Boykins

When was this guy elected leader? Boykins doesn't realize that the border is crossing him as he speaks.

[nw_arizona_granny]

Maybe if the man talked to a few of the workers of color, who call in the radio talk shows.

They had it all going for them, the "American Dream", and then the border let in the flood of people to push them out and to vote for more to come in.

[F.J. Mitchell]

In my opinion Claire, that should have read: "Fire up the school buses, Nagin, and get my people the hell out of New Orleans, before that hurricane you have been warned about for weeks, hits Louisiana, bursts those lowest bidder built dikes and drowns those buses up to their windows!"

My proposal to send little black Americans to Mexico for grades K through eighth grade, so they can be competitive with absolutely illiterate, Mexican schooled illegal alien invaders, who are forcing them into unemployment, was intended as sarcasm.

In my humble opinion There is not one black or white American, who for a few bucks above coolie wages, would not work at any job that illegal aliens have claimed ownership of.

[wjcsux]

Portillo is typical of the trash you get from the AZ Red Star.

[ClaireSolt]

If they wont take the jobs at the wages that are being offered, they don't have to. It they were hungry they would beat the Mexicans up to get the jobs they have to have.

[F.J. Mitchell]

And then they would toss the hungry Americans into prison for eternity for even daring to suggest that illegal aliens are gobbling up the jobs that they have always filled and worked their asses off at in supporting their families.

If accepting jobs at wages that third world invaders would turn up their felonious noses at, and accepting that as the best America's children can ever hope for , is your idea of America's future.....Activate the idiot alert!