Guest Column
Anti-Immigrant in Black Face?
Anti-Immigrant in
Black Face?
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
The Black Commentator
The picture in the ad immediately caught my
attention. The photo was of a very dignified older African American man
looking into the camera, very determined and equally pensive. Underneath
his photo was a caption giving his name. T. Willard Fair and the fact that
he was the veteran of 40 years of struggle in the Civil Rights Movement.
This was certainly enough to pique my interest.
Beneath the caption was a statement declaring that the alleged threat to
African Americans comes from documented and undocumented immigrants. He
went on to suggest that any notion of legalizing undocumented workers was a
slap in the face of African Americans. The ad is associated with a group
called the "Coalition for the Future American Worker."
Fair's attack is not surprising, although the virulence and historical
nature of it is very unsettling, particularly because it is bound to strike
a chord among many African Americans.
Black America has been taking a prolonged economic hit since the mid 1970s.
The economic reorganization which many people call de-industrialization has
had a devastating impact on the Black worker, disproportionately so. The
elimination and/or shrinkage of manufacturing jobs in urban centers has had
the effect of hollowing out entire communities, destabilizing Black America
economically, socially and politically. Rather than the flight of the
so-called middle class, Black America has witnessed the disintegration of
segments of its working class and professional/managerial class.
This crisis began well before there was a significant influx of immigrants,
and it is this crisis that has been haunting us. This crisis has been
compounded by the right-wing political assault on the public sector, largely
through anti-tax revolts and privatization, which has resulted in both a
decline in services and a decline in employment (with the latter also having
a disproportionate impact on the Black worker).
Fair and his coalition mention nothing about this, which in and of itself is
quite significant. Instead they focus on the competition from the immigrant
worker. While competition exists, particularly in very low wage work, the
problem does not lie with the immigrants but with the desire on the part of
employers to find workers who will accept the lowest possible wages. This
has been demonstrated in any number of industries, not the least of which
was the janitorial industry during the 1980s that went from very African
American to very Latino after the industry was reorganized.
Fair makes it appear that immigrants are the ones closing steel mills and
auto plants. They are not. Fair acts as if the immigrant workers are
carrying out ethnic cleansing against African Americans. They are not. We
are, however, being cleansed from entire industries because of the greed of
employers who are always looking at the bottom line and who seek the
cheapest possible workforce, and eventually, if possible, no human workforce
at all, but just a line of robots.
Instead of Fair and his grouping focusing on the policies that have been
destroying African American employment, they instead pick the easy - and
wrong - target of the immigrant. And, it is easy to pick the immigrant.
For instance, in the construction industry, an industry that African
Americans, along with non-immigrant Latinos (particularly Puerto Ricans and
Chicanos) and Asians fought for years to get into, immigrant workers are
increasing dramatically as a significant proportion of the workforce. What
is noteworthy is that this is happening largely in the lower-paid, non-union
construction workforce where, once again, the 'logic' of capitalism prevails
in the search for a low-wage workforce. While the Black worker wants a
construction job, s/he is not looking for low-wage construction work with no
benefits. Consider the conditions into which Latino immigrant construction
workers were placed when many were brought to New Orleans for the
reconstruction of the city. Under non-union conditions, they were often
housed in a prison-like environment, and frequently cheated out of pay.
No, Mr. Fair and your cohorts, the problem is not the immigrant worker. The
problem is the system. And, just as African American workers were used in
certain industries as low-wage workers in the late 19th and early-to-mid
20th centuries, in order to undercut higher paid workers, this changed
dramatically through a combination of unionization and the Black Freedom
Movement.
What lessons can we draw from this?
As long as there is a vulnerable workforce, capitalists will seek them out
to utilize against other workers. Low-wage workers will not be competitors
if they cease being low-wage workers, i.e., if they are unionized and gain
power in their workplaces or jobs. Part of changing the character of work
can be found in the demands of a social movement that combines the fight for
political and social justice, with economic justice. To a great extent, the
crisis facing the Black worker today can be linked to the failure of the
Black Freedom Movement to pursue the path suggested by Dr. King toward the
end of his life, that united the fights for racial justice with economic
justice along with what later came to be known as global justice.
Without disrespecting the life and history of Mr. Fair, who I am sure made
contributions to our struggle for justice, somewhere along the line he fell
prey to the emotional and hallucinatory appeal of attacking immigrants as a
means of saving the Black worker. Not only is this morally bankrupt, but it
is also politically bankrupt. If we do not have an accurate analysis of the
problem, we cannot possibly develop a good strategy to resolve it. Or,
perhaps it was better and more succinctly put by the Cheshire Cat in Alice
in Wonderland when he said, "if you don't know where you want to go, any
road will get you there."
__________________________________________________________
BC Editorial Board member, Bill Fletcher, Jr. is a long-time labor and
international activist and writer.
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