African Americans and Immigration Redux

The New York Times ran a story today about African Americans view of the recent immigration protests. It captures the ambivalence, which we have seen historically, among the Black community on the issue of immigration.  Here is an excerpt:

In their demonstrations across the country, some Hispanic immigrants have compared the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s struggle to their own, singing “We Shall Overcome” and declaring a new civil rights movement to win citizenship for millions of illegal immigrants. Civil rights stalwarts like the Rev. Jesse Jackson; Representative John Lewis, Democrat of Georgia; Julian Bond and the Rev. Joseph E. Lowery have hailed the recent protests as the natural progression of their movement in the 1960’s. But despite some sympathy for the nation’s illegal immigrants, many black professionals, academics and blue-collar workers feel increasingly uneasy as they watch Hispanics flex their political muscle while assuming the mantle of a seminal black struggle for justice. Some blacks bristle at the comparison between the civil rights movement and the immigrant demonstrations, pointing out that black protesters in the 1960’s were American citizens and had endured centuries of enslavement, rapes, lynchings and discrimination before they started marching. Others worry about the plight of low-skilled black workers, who sometimes compete with immigrants for entry-level jobs.

For the full story, click here.

Will the recent immigration marches transform into a broader based civil rights movement?  It will depend on no small part on whether African Americans and their civil rights concerns become part pf the movement.

KJ