The Enemy of My Enemy Is...?

So the illegal immigrant question continues to be batted around. One interesting aspect of the issue which I hadn't really thought about until it was mentioned by a panelist on last week's Real Time is that while illegal immigrants may not impact the living wages of the majority of the population (ie, they do the jobs that most Americans are not willing/are overqualified to do), there is a definite percentage of low-skilled Americans who are forced to compete with illegal immigrants for jobs. And, of course, as happens any time you speak of low-skilled (read: under-educated) Americans, by default it tends to mean African-Americans. Now fast forward to this week, and this article in the Times, talking about the same discomfort.

I guess I find it interesting how African-Americans have been so negative towards recent causes that have likened their struggles to the civil rights movement; anyone else remember the furor over gay marriage? Is it because there are so many issues on which progress hasn't been made? Or is it something a bit less noble, is it the need for the downtrodden to have someone that they can dump on, someone they can point to and blame. Notice that there's always been friction between African-Americans and immigrants:

W.E.B. DuBois, a founder of the N.A.A.C.P., and other prominent black leaders worried that immigrants would displace blacks in the workplace. Ronald Walters, director of the African-American Leadership Institute at the University of Maryland, said blacks cheered when the government restricted Asian immigration to the United States after World War I.

...nearly twice as many blacks as whites said that they or a family member had lost a job, or not gotten a job, because an employer hired an immigrant worker. Blacks were also more likely than whites to feel that immigrants take jobs away from American citizens.

I think the biggest problem is that people fail to see the interconnections; that if illegal immigrants were legalized and companies were forced to pay them minimum wage (which isn't even close to a living wage, but let's not get into that here), then the impetus to hire immigrant workers that you pay less than minimum wage under the table disappears, and it becomes open competition for the jobs. Yeah, there's more people competing for the jobs, but those are the breaks; everyone deals with competition for the jobs they want. It is difficult to have a lot of sympathy for African-American activists when other groups have come into the same or worse situation and have flourished.

Well, I guess when I say, "other groups," I really mean Asians, right. And I'm sorry, but it's true. No, Asians weren't brought here as slaves, in ships packed to the gills. Instead they had to pay for the right to immigrate here, in ships packed to the gills. They had to deal with being rounded up, having their property seized and being sent to camps because they were all security risks during the Second World War. But, and this is probably going to sound screamingly racist, there is a culture there, there is a notion that education is the path to empowering yourself, a notion stretching all the way back to dynastic China, when entering civil service via the national exam was the quick way to advancement. African-American activists state that the reason why African-Americans embrace thug life is because they feel disenfranchised; that they have no other options, so of course they turn to that. I think it's a bit of a chicken and the egg argument. Yes, they are severely limited. But there is a darker aspect to African-American culture, one that you will see if you live in areas dominated by African-Americans (which I do), or even if you just watch enough African-American programming; I've seen this subject touched on in episodes of Fresh Prince, Boondocks and in Chris Rock's standup. It's a standpoint that says education is bad, is selling out, is somehow not black, that seeking a higher standard of living by going to college is worthy of nothing but contempt and mockery. More than anything else, it is that that needs to be addressed, and that's what Bill Cosby was trying to get at when he made the comments he made a few years ago. That is not something that the government can change, that is not something that anyone but African-Americans can change. And they should, damn it. Hasn't it been long enough? Haven't enough people fought and bled and cried for those rights? Did Martin Luther King and Malcolm X fight, preach and die just so African-Americans could enjoy their BET and $2 fried chicken?

Nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
-Martin Luther King, Jr.