Adrianne Shropshire

The Minutemen care - about African Americans?

No, seriously. Today, the Minuteman Project will launch a nation-wide caravan to counter the huge and successful marches and demonstrations for immigrant rights that we've witnessed over the last several weeks. Driving across the country, the caravan will attempt to gain support for their anti-immigrant cause by focusing on jobs or, in fact, the jobs lost that they attribute to the presence of undocumented immigrants.

Caught in their cross-hairs of their fear-induced road trip is the African American community. "They are the most harmed by illegal immigration, and it's time that we focused our efforts in our inner cities,". While the Minutemen plan on highlighting the economic plight of African American men, they don't ACTUALLY plan on stopping in any inner'city African American neighborhoods. But the caravan kick-off will have the inevitable Black spokespeople in attendance, Ted Hayes, founder of the Crispus Attucks Brigade, and the Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson, founder of the Brotherhood Organization of a New Destiny. "Who?" you say. Exactly.

The numbers of Black men out of the workforce in this country is a national disgrace and when you add the number of unemployed black men to that list it begins to look like a national crisis. And then when you add the number of African American women living below the poverty level, the unfathomable decline of union membership among Blacks, and the number of African American kids who are attending poor schools and not graduating from high school, the problem is almost too staggering to name. But what does all that have to do with undocumented immigrants? Those living in this country without papers do not set economic policy, do not set hiring policy for companies, do not control policy or the flow of resources to public education, do not control workforce development policy or programs, have not systematically eroded our social safety net over the past 30 years, and on, and on. Najee Ali an African American activist in Los Angeles said it best in an LA Times article, "If there was not one undocumented immigrant in this country, blacks would still be unemployed due to factors of discrimination, lack of job training, lack of education and other social factors... It has nothing to do with undocumented immigrants".

But this outrageous attempt to pander to the fears of the African American community, none-the-less, has the real potential to gain traction. So what's the counter? Building alliances with African American organizations that have a presence on the ground. Meaning, an actual base that is regularly in motion. Community leaders and ministers are a first step, not the last. Jesse Jackson, God love 'em, does not sway Black opinion in the way that people would like to believe. There is an economic analysis here that everyday African Americans can relate to when framed properly. And we need to be careful about message and framing. Rinku Sen alludes to this in her last post. Moving messages that include "immigrants do the work that no one else in this country will do" is not well received among Black people (or poor and working-class whites for that matter). Andrew Friedman's now infamous posting has unearthed the degree to which poor and working-class people are willing to attack each other instead of focusing on a common enemy.

There exists, in this moment, the potential to repel groups like the minutemen, to continue the shift in public opinion around this issue, and to set some good policy at the same time. Deepening existing relationships among constituencies, forming new and innovative partnerships, and African American organizations seriously confronting this issue within the rank-and-file will be key.

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Posted at 7:49 AM, May 03, 2006 in
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