DenverPost | In October 2005, one month after Katrina ripped
through New Orleans, a plainly agitated New Orleans
Mayor Ray Nagin told a town hall audience, “I can
plainly see in your eyes that you want to know, ‘How
do I take advantage of this incredible opportunity?’ How do
I make sure New Orleans is not overrun with Mexicans?”
He referred to the fear of many blacks that contractors, with
the federal government’s connivance, would skirt labor laws,
snub needy black workers and recruit thousands of unskilled,
Mexican workers to do the clean up and reconstruction work
in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast.
The remark was insensitive and insulting. And within
days an enraged United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce
denounced Nagin, “The Chamber will not allow inappropriate
and offensive comments made by Mayor Nagin to
deter the hardworking spirit of our community.”
The Chamber’s denunciation was more than a mere slap
at him. It conjured up the positive image of Latinos as productive,
taxpaying, law abiding and above all else, hard working.
For years, the Chamber and nearly every major Latino business,
political, educational, and civil rights group had lobbied
hard to sell that image to millions of doubting and skeptical
American born whites and blacks. And now with one mindless
crack, Nagin had tarred that image. But observers at the
town hall meeting also noted that the mostly black audience
applauded his remarks. Their applause, Nagin’s quip, and the
Chamber’s swift outrage, told much about the fear, hostility,
misconceptions, and ambivalence that haunts black and Latino
relations in America.
The rising tension that underlay the Chamber’s protest
of Nagin was probably inevitable after the Census Bureau in
2002 publicly trumpeted that Latinos were now the top minority
in the U.S. The news hit black America like a thunderbolt.
Sensing that the Census announcement and the press’s
seemingly too eager rush to play the news up could ruffle
racial feathers, and could be exploited by some to intensify
racial friction and the ill-feelings of blacks toward Latinos,
dozens of Latino academics, writers, and activists signed an
“Open to Letter African-Americans from Latinos.” They passionately
assured blacks that they would “combat the competitiveness”
and “opportunism” of many that would seek to
pit Latinos against blacks while minimizing the historic suffering
of blacks and displacing them from the front running
spot they still occupied in the struggle for justice and equality
for justice. Writer Richard Rodriguez went even further
and blasted federal demographers for malice and stupidity
for blaring out that Latinos were now the number one minority.
He saw this as a virtual conspiracy by the feds to further
“trivialize” blacks and equally bad, to marginalize Latinos as
a permanent minority.
The criticism from Rodriguez and assurances from the
Latino letter signers was a welcomed effort. But it went largely
unreported and unnoticed by blacks. Many blacks still complained
that they would be shoved even further to the economic
and political margin among minorities in the country.
The Census report also showed that Latinos were widening
their population growth gap on blacks. That gap will grow
even wider in the coming years due to the higher birth rate
of Latinos and the continued flood of new immigrants, both
legal and illegal, from Mexico, El Salvador, Guatemala, Columbia
and other Latin American countries.
The reality that blacks will lose even more ground in
the numbers comparison to Latinos as fresh waves of immigrants
come to America will likely stir more complaints from
many blacks. Those complaints rose to a high pitch during
the immigration debate in Congress and the mass immigrant
rights marches in the streets in March 2006. Though polls
showed that blacks were generally more favorable toward illegal
immigrants than whites, the polls seemed wildly at odds
with the sentiments that many blacks privately expressed on
immigration. At the peak of the immigration debate, legions
of blacks flooded black talk radio stations and posted angry
notes on Internet sites bashing illegal immigrants. The attacks
were often little more than a thinly disguised attack on
Latinos.
0 comments:
Post a Comment