African Americans, Latinos, and Immigration

Check out the string on blackprofs.com at  http://www.blackprof.com/archives/2005/12/african_americans_latinos_and.html#comments on Africans, Americans, Latinos, and Immigration.  Below is the entry that triggered responses:

Immigration often has been a political dividing line among Latinos and African Americans, who often feel in competition for low wage jobs in major urban centers (and have for decades). The events following Hurrican Katrina have highlighted the tensions. New Orleans Major C. Ray Nagin, who had exprienced perhaps the toughest month in city history, made the Spanish language newspapers with a question about the rebuilding of New Orleans: “How do I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexican workers?” Undocumented Latinos are the invisible victims of Hurricane Katrina. Rather than provided assistance, they have been ejected from shelters and subject to deportation by U.S. Immigration & Custom Enforcement (ICE) officiers. In part, the Bush administration seems to be cracking down on immigrants in the New Orleans area as a response the Black leaders who claim (and rightly so) that race contributed to the federal government’s slow initial response to the disaster. Immigrants also have responded to the call for workers to rebuild the Gulf Coast, only to be exploited, abused, and attacked as tressspassers.

Hurricane Katrina is not the only sign of Black/Latino tension over immigration. Its an issue in many cities, such as Los Angeles, Miami, Houston, and Chicago. The murder of five Latino immigrant workers by African Americans in the small town of Tifton, George in October is another example ripped from the headlines. As immigration has come to thr rural parts of the country, tensions have arisen in Georgia, North Carolina, and many other states now seeing more Latinos.

One wonders whether there is any possiblitity of African Americans and Latinos working together on the volatile issue of immigration. This will require leadership, sensitivity, and a good amount of listening. Is this possible?

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The responses run the gamut.

Kevin Johnson