by Andre Banks, ColorLines\r\n<\/p>
\r\nIn the 1920s my great-grandmother Isabella migrated with her parents to\r\nCleveland, Ohio seeking a more prosperous life. At an early age she went to\r\nwork at her family's store, a smoke shop and grocers, to support her parents\r\nand brothers during the Depression. As a young woman, she spent her days\r\nscrubbing the cold floors of Cleveland's elite. By night she felt the heat\r\nof the press as she laid creases in their tailored shirts and expensive\r\ndresses. Isabella worked hard to do the jobs that others would not - the\r\njobs that built America.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nHer story represents that of millions of people in the U.S., but don't be\r\nfooled; it is no immigrant narrative. Isabella was black, like me, and her\r\nstory, rendered invisible by the current deliberation on immigrant civil\r\nrights, is that of many Black Americans.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nThere is little question that the current immigration debate, though coded\r\nand contrived otherwise, is entirely about race. Yet, the framing made\r\npopular by immigrants and their advocates is so hostile to Black people and\r\nour American experience that it seems impossible for us to stake a claim\r\nwith this movement. Today's immigrants will find that without Blacks, and a\r\ncommitment to challenge racism beyond the reach of immigration policy alone,\r\ntheir movement will lose both its moral authority and the practical victory\r\nit hopes to achieve.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nThe language of today's movement directly evokes a painful history.\r\nImmigrants who laid claim in the past to this re-imagined American dream\r\ncolluded with a system of racism that made the hope of health, safety and\r\nhappiness an empty promise for Black people. Immigrants on the march today\r\nthreaten to go the way of the Irish, the Italian and the Jewish: they may\r\npay the price of the ticket for American citizenship by yielding to a racial\r\nhierarchy that leaves Blacks at the bottom.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nImmigrants and their advocates have gained attention by evoking the\r\nnarrative of hard-working immigrants making good in the land of opportunity\r\n- the American Dream redux - with its attendant contradictions and\r\ncontrivances. With cries that \"immigrants built this country,\" a favorite\r\ncalling card, this burgeoning movement at once revoked the history of slaves\r\nand their descendants and obscured important truths about power, migration\r\nand social mobility in this country. For my great-grandmother, and\r\ngenerations of Black people in this country before and after her, this lie\r\nis worse than silence. It is a critical and strategic omission that adds\r\nMexicans, Salvadorans and Guatemalans to the annals of American history\r\nwhile relegating Black people to its shadows.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nThe narrative of the immigrant as the symbol of hard work that leads to\r\nopportunity can mean nothing but alienation for Black people precisely\r\nbecause we know this myth is false. Without our labor - not immigrant labor,\r\nbut slave labor - in the fields and on the march there would be no market\r\nbrimming with wealth and economic opportunity, nor a tradition of civil and\r\npolitical rights readily available for appropriation and exploitation.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nSo, listening to the language of immigrant rights in 2006, a sensible Black\r\nperson might respond with ambivalence. It is difficult to take the cause\r\nseriously, much less call it our own. Immigrant rights advocates have the\r\npotential to speak broadly, and Black people more than any other group might\r\nchampion an extension of human rights denied to those on the margins. But\r\ninstead we are displaced from this movement by coded messages that celebrate\r\na history of anti-black racism. That rhetoric, joined with an under\r\nappreciated economic conflict, has generated serious alarm in Black\r\ncommunities that headlines of 'Black\/Brown Conflict' have largely missed or\r\nmistaken.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nImmigration policy has routinely been used to check the mobility of Black\r\npeople, blocking access to jobs, education and political rights. Whether\r\nEuropean immigrants pulled into the economy during the industrial expansion\r\nof the early last century, or Asian professionals arriving in the 1970s and\r\n1980s positioned as \"model minorities,\" immigration policy has been crafted\r\nto subtly recast and reinforce this country's racial hierarchy. Immigration\r\nregulations, like all public policy, set the rules of the game and can\r\npredetermine its winners and losers; history has shown through centuries of\r\nmigration that those rules have worked against working-class Black people.\r\nAs we struggle for basic rights, every new immigrant group has moved faster\r\nand further up the ladder.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nBut the squeeze Black people articulate in response to the arrival of new\r\nimmigrants goes beyond laws and regulations. While there is some dispute on\r\nhow immigration impacts low-wage labor markets where Blacks are\r\ndisproportionately represented, there is evidence that social and kinship\r\nnetworks in other communities of color directly block Blacks from jobs.\r\nEqual opportunity lawsuits are increasingly being brought against employers\r\nwho \"prefer\" Latinos to Black workers, giving even more reason to take\r\nquestions of immigration and racism between communities of color seriously.\r\nThe result of innocent intentions, like hiring friends and family into much\r\nneeded jobs, is an insidious form of racism that lurks beneath the current\r\nanger and frustration voiced by Black people across the country.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nClearly, there are plenty of reasons for Black people to be skeptical about\r\nU.S. immigration policy. The rhetoric of the movement has refused to\r\nacknowledge racism in the U.S. beyond a narrow agenda of legalization and\r\nvague \"worker rights.\"\r\n<\/p>
\r\nThe truth is, however, that Black people have been disproportionately\r\nsupportive of virtually every other movement for human rights at home and\r\nabroad. Time and history have shown that the descendents of U.S. slavery do\r\nnot support violence, oppression or the denial of rights to marginalized\r\ngroups, least of all people of color. When the nation as a whole is swept up\r\nin red baiting, war-mongering and a \"with us or against us\" war on terror,\r\nBlacks overwhelmingLY support civil rights and sovereignty.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nYet our support for immigrant rights remains a murmur of uninspired,\r\npolitically-corrected muddled statements of \"unity,\" while the rising tide\r\nof Black popular opinion is at least seriously concerned about, and at worst\r\nflatly opposed to, the legalization of millions of undocumented immigrants.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nBut times change. If immigrants, from Latin America and elsewhere, want to\r\nwin something more than the right to a poverty wage job without health care,\r\nit's time for them to craft an immigrant rights movement with language and a\r\nvision that Black people have a stake in. Incorporating Black folks is not\r\nonly a moral question; it's really quite practical. New immigrants of color,\r\nunlike their European predecessors, should recognize that in passively\r\naccepting anti-Black racism in exchange for integration into U.S. culture\r\nand economy, they might issue a warrant for the future seizure of their own\r\ntenuous rights.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nMexicans, Salvadorans and Dominicans are not Irish, Italian and German.\r\nRacism, in its subtle sweep, touches every community of color. While it is\r\ntrue that Black people often end up at the bottom, other people of color,\r\ndespite the comfort of an idealized immigrant narration, are nowhere near\r\nthe top.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nWhen my great-grandmother was my age in 1937, this country looked very\r\ndifferent. Today, Black people are working harder than ever for less than\r\never. Working-class Black communities have been wounded by the decline of\r\nthe American city and leveled by the gentrification of their resurgence. We\r\nshare these urban landscapes with immigrant families, some here for\r\ngenerations others arriving daily. Our jobs, our schools, our hospitals,\r\nindeed, our lives overlap in a complex web of political, personal and\r\neconomic relationships. We don't always see our fates as linked, but there\r\nis no question that we could. That would require non-immigrants and\r\nimmigrants alike to look critically at our lived experiences, to think\r\nbeyond our individual needs and envision the true dismantling of racism that\r\nblocks opportunity for us all. Black people are being called on to take that\r\nbroader view, but it seems unlikely we will add our numbers to a movement\r\nthat appears to forget our history and seems disinterested in our future.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nPerhaps Black people and immigrants should be allies in demanding jobs that\r\nwe can live on, a health system that cares whether we live or die, and\r\nschools that can prepare our kids to take their place as full citizens. It\r\nis becoming clear that if immigrant rights advocates do not commit\r\nthemselves to a broad program of racial justice that includes both\r\nlegalization and a wider set of structural changes, they won't expand the\r\npiece of the American pie we share, they'll simply have to fight us for the\r\nbiggest part of a very small slice.\r\n<\/p>
\r\nAndre Banks is the Associate Director of Media and Public Affairs at the\r\nApplied Research Center and the Associate Publisher of ColorLines magazine.<\/p>\n","contact":"","link":"","address":"","phone":"","parent_id":0,"mime_type":"text\/html","summary":"The Price of the Ticket \r\n\r\nImmigrants on the march today threaten to go the way of the Irish, the Italian and the Jewish: they may pay the price of the ticket for American citizenship by yielding to a racial hierarchy that leaves Blacks at the bottom. ","numcomment":0,"fileurl":"\/uploads\/","filesize":null,"article_url":"\/news\/2006\/05\/156396.php"},"attachments":[],"comments":[]}