Posted on 02/02/2003 8:55:55 AM PST by Dog Gone
THE black community has made great strides in the last few decades. Racism has certainly not been eradicated, but it is no longer accepted with a wink and a nod as it once was. We are proud to see Secretary of State Colin Powell, even when we do not agree with everything he does. The same with Condoleezza Rice, the president's national security adviser, and many others.
That's the good news.
The bad news is that in some regions we black folks are so overwhelmed by the huge numbers of immigrants that we are being displaced in our schools, jobs and neighborhoods.
That may seem a harsh thing for a black person to say against brown people, but I don't see it that way. I am an American, proud of both my nation and my race. What I see in my community of South Central Los Angeles -- where I have lived nearly all my life -- is thousands of Mexicans who care nothing about our traditions and culture, and only want to impose their way on us. That's not immigration, that is invasion.
It is sad what has happened in my neighborhood. This was a respectable, blue-collar area of hard-working black folks living in their bungalows and going to their jobs. In just a couple decades it has become almost entirely Mexican. They live several families to a three-bedroom house and keep chickens in the yard, but the city doesn't care about the zoning violations or the noise of having so many crowded into a small space.
According to the Census Bureau, nearby Watts is now 60 percent Hispanic, and it was previously the black community on the West Coast. No longer.
The immigration situation is really hard on our young people. A 17-year-old kid on my street couldn't get a job at McDonald's because he didn't speak Spanish. Another young neighbor boy was thrown into a bilingual classroom at age 8 and was forced to listen to Spanish all day long. His six-hour school day was turned into three hours. When his mother asked for an English-only class, she was told "there are none."
Would you believe that I, a black man, have been called a racist many times for speaking up against this invasion? I have a radio program on the subject and therefore hear from a lot of people, even some in Mexico.
When they call me a racist, I put this question to them: What if a hundred thousand Vietnamese were suddenly dropped into Guadalajara? And what if those newcomers didn't speak Spanish, and further insisted that their children be taught in Vietnamese? What would you think if they were happy to work for half the normal wages for any job they could get, thereby putting thousands of your local Guadalajarans out of work? Would it be racist to say there was a problem?
When people of good will and good sense hear the situation put that way, nearly all understand and respect my viewpoint.
Now if only they would listen in Washington. America's political leaders are the problem. They have been selling out this great nation for real and imaginary political benefits while ignoring the dangers. Even after Sept. 11, nothing has been done to plug up our borders. Another terrorist attack could be 10 times worse, and it would likely happen because Congress and the president learned nothing about the need to keep the nation's borders secure.
If I sound angry, you hear right. Like other Americans, I want immigration to be legal, controlled and reduced. But as a black American, I see that the burden my people must carry is heavier than for many others. I am sure that if Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., were alive, he would understand the fundamental unfairness to the black community of allowing more immigration than the nation can handle.
DITTO !!
Racism is indeed accepted mainly from the black community. Just this morning I saw an interview on C-SPAN II in which an African-American author discussed his book about diiving to the wreck of a slave ship.
When asked why he was along on the dive he said to write an article for the magazine for the National Association of Black Scuba Divers. If there was an Association of White Scuba Divers they would be called racists.
I hope you're learning Spanish.
I can't quite articulate why I find this article racist and repellent. Maybe it's because Anderson himself looks at illegal immigration as a racial issue ("a harsh thing for a black person to say against brown people").
In fact, 50,000 Vietnamese "were suddenly dropped" into Northen Virginia from 1975 to 1990.
They did not ask for Vietnamese schools, they did not destroy the labor market, they did not ask for handouts. They just went about the business of joining American society. And to a large degree they've succeeded.
Oh yeah: they're all - 100 percent - LEGAL immigrants.
If Anderson could get out of his racist mindset he'd see the only issue at stake is the rule of law, not ethnicity.
By definition, "Hispanic" illegals are first and foremost scofflaws and criminals. Maybe that's why he doesn't like them in his neighborhood.
You gotta be kidding me! Unfrickinbelievable.
I think this man has a very good point, however. Illegal immigration is definitely hurting those states that have to deal with most of them. There is no way I will believe that there is an economic advantage to allowing all these illegals. And this man is right about the number that live in a single house and have chickens in the yard. It's all true and it's really pretty disgusting. The last thing this country needs is to turn its boroughs into Mexico.
If that idiot Vicente Fox would get off his duff and do something about Mexico instead of always insisting that it's the US's responsibility to handle this problem, we might get somewhere. And our politicians are hardly doing any better what with in-state tuition for illegals, etc. It's crazy.
Where I live is mostly Spanish speaking now and I predict in a few years will be only Spanish speaking and more and more sections of the country will go the same way. If Americans want to know how their change is being counted out or what is being said, they need to learn Spanish.
Illegal aliens please there is no such thing as a illegal immigrant. An Immigrant comes through customs with visa in hand and a desire to become a citizen.
Don't let them shape the argument by word usage.
Ignorance looms very large in your mind I see. Your statement is false. We have never had a period in our history like the last 35 years when standards of living for large groups of americans went down. There has also never been a state in american history that had such a high percentage of the foreign born in it as california today.
MUCH has been made over Latinos surpassing African-Americans in size to become the nation's largest minority group. An impression has been created that there is a prize to be won and that Latino issues will now replace African-American issues.
Nothing could be further from the truth. African-American concerns remain very much in front of the public and many of them are the same issues that concern Latinos. This raises the probability of coalitions, but in order for coalitions to work there must be a discussion about the issues that create tension.
One of the major issues is the strain between immigrants and African-Americans. Many African-American believe that Mexican immigrants take their jobs and keep wages low. Immigrants hold more negative views about African-Americans than do U.S.-born Latinos, even though immigrants have much less contact with African-Americans. Within both groups females are more hostile than males toward the other group.
How is the issue of immigration to be addressed?
Preventing immigrants from coming over will not happen because on balance the positive contributions of immigrants, such as the creation of jobs and the expansion of the economy, far outweigh any negative effect. No less of an authority than Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan has said that the economy will not grow without the presence of immigrant labor. A growing economy benefits everyone regardless of race and ethnicity. The trend is one of greater integration between Mexico and the United States -- not less. Thus the first step toward understanding is accepting the presence of Mexican immigrants as part of the American mosaic.
There should also be an understanding of where the competition between immigrants and African-American occurs in the labor market. The research shows that immigrants compete primarily with African-Americans and others who are high school dropouts, lower skilled and working in the lower echelons of the labor market. In this segment of the labor market are found low paying jobs with little advancement opportunity, few if any benefits and high rates of unemployment. These types of jobs are a permanent feature of the labor market and they existed before immigrants came and competed for the jobs -- and the jobs will be remaining if and when immigrants leave. Immigrants did not create this labor market. Nor did African-Americans. The situation is structural in nature and the question is what if anything can be done about it.
Not all African-Americans feel that immigrants take their jobs. Many identify with people who are risking their lives to flee from oppressive economic conditions to find a better life. Those who feel this way tend to be members of the middle- and professional class and it is with this segment where the potential for a coalition is currently the greatest.
Another concern is the speaking of Spanish in public places. As the size of the Latino population has grown, so has the use of the Spanish language. Many African-Americans (and others as well) feel threatened when they hear Spanish because they don't understand what is being said and believe that Spanish speakers are talking about them. Some bilingual Latinos readily admit that they switch to Spanish when they want to make comments about non-Spanish speakers who are in their presence, but for the most part they are talking about day-to-day concerns in a language in which they feel comfortable and that is the core of their culture. Also, many Latinos are monolingual Spanish speakers, cannot speak English and, given their adult status, probably never will.
The Spanish language will never replace the English language in the United States so there is nothing to fear. The English language is not going away, but neither is the Spanish language. The two languages will exist side by side and influence each other as they have for two and and a half centuries despite efforts to suppress the speaking of Spanish.
Negative feelings about the Spanish language do not define the sentiments of all African-Americans. Because of their history and day-to-day experiences, many African-Americans believe, as do many Latinos, that the criticism of the Spanish language is an attack upon a group's culture. Again, it is the middle- and professional classes that hold more favorable opinions about the speaking of Spanish.
The emphasis has been upon two issues that strain the relations between Latinos and African-Americans, but it would be fallacious to conclude that black-brown relations are on balance contentious and narrowly defined by issues emanating from immigration. Indeed, at this point the relationship is more harmonious than not and there is greater recognition of what the two populations have in common, such as the need for a quality public education, adequate and affordable health care, justice in the legal system and equal opportunity in general.
There is an ongoing dialogue between the leadership of each group. This is good because human relations are fragile and can change in an instant. During these times, dialogue and understanding become paramount.
You d*mn right it's a lie : I saw hardworking local people forced out of the meat packing industry here in my hometown, by a variety of measures including draconian enforcement of policies from the management ('looking for excuses to fire people')to violence from the 'imported' workers, much of it sexual violence directed at white female workers especially. The plants went from mostly local (black and white) to at least 75% 'imported' over a 10 year period.
Now here's the weird part : I always assumed it was a cost-saving measure. That the plant management could pay these people minimum wage to $7.00 an hour, as opposed to the $9-13+ the locals had been making . Uh-uh. I was wrong. They are being paid exactly what the locals were making. So why were the locals forced out? Were the trying to unionize? Did they complain about management positions going to college graduates from the outside, rather than to people working their way up? Is it some kind of social security/health insurance scam ? I don't know. .
I do know this : The people in HS that planned to go directly to the plants after graduation were proud of how they'd be independent and able to support a family so quickly. They were NOT "too proud and lazy" to work there. Maybe things are different in the small town midwest, but around here all the cashiers, hotel cleaning ladies, fast food employees etc are local people teens and up, white-black-other. They do a good job and are usually polite and friendly I wonder how long they'll be allowed to keep these jobs.
I am convinced that the people in the media who say that "illegal immigrants are only doing the jobs Americans are too proud and lazy to do" are speaking in code, and what they're thinking is,"So what if Americans who were doing crappy factory or service jobs starve or work 3 part time jobs to survive!???!! They didn't have college degrees! They probably live in trailers, for pity's sake! They don't count as human beings!" I wonder how many of the people who parrot that line of BS also think that way...al least a few, I'm sure.
Rather, the politically surreal isolation self-imposed by "the black leadership," with which they have for the last decades continued to try and convince black people of the futility of daring to entertain [law-abiding] opportunities, has now proven to be the chain for securing real isolation.
All these years during which especially young black men could have been studying instead of feted at the altar of Jesse Jackson's "You have a right to be perpetually down 'n in the 'hood."
It's incredible; all of a sudden about ten years ago, there appeared around here hundreds of illegal aliens from "south of the border."
They found jobs which supposedly did not exist --- er, that is, they found jobs, instead of waiting around for something extorted from Jesse Jacksonian Democrat-cy (or The Reverend Al's Creative Workship, or Harry Bull 'n Fount o' Pain).
We could have right now, a few thousand young black men who had instead studied and become doctors and scientists and engineers, and they could be contributing to the cures of various ills of the little kids over at Children's Hospital.
But no, because The Party of Closure wants none of it ... that is, they want nothing by virtue of employing what is in each of us, the restless energy to do something.
The hardest part of work, is the self-discipline and expectations of oneself, from which come productivity greater than the needs of yourself; and when working as a team, sometimes twice as productive.
It's nature's way of growing; God's design.
Something the Reverend Al could do so much more to explain and see much more in the fruit of our labors.
Jesse has always tended toward shameless tall tales, yet he used to get away with it because in small numbers, he would tell young black children to study, to work on their education; but he, has long since stopped explaining to kids how they must prepare themselves for law-abiding opportunity.
You are delusional. Did you know that the White House, the Senate and the House are all in Republican hands now. Are you saying that these republicans are liberals now? The republican party is just as opposed to the will of the american people on immigration as the democrats have been in the past. The problem is the New World Order and that the american democracy has been rendered dysfunctional. And there likely will be no backlash from the american working class. The american working class sits and watches reality shows on tv, they are out of the loop and it is easy for the tv keepers to manipulate them.
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