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Blacks,
Hispanics and Immigrant Bashing for Colonial Control
By MANUEL GARCIA, Jr.
Do recent immigrants from Latin America
diminish the economic advancement of other Americans, in particular
black Americans?
"The reaction to foreign
immigrants, as also to internal migration, comes partly from
the belief or, in any case, the assertion that the newcomers
are taking jobs that properly belong to established workers already
in residence. That many of the immigrants, if not most, take
employment for which the resident workers are not available or
that they no longer seek goes unmentioned. A further, much cultivated
negative reaction is ethnic and social -- the newly arrived are
thought to bring a different and presumptively defective racial,
religious, familial, hygienic or civic culture to the established
community." --John Kenneth Galbraith [The Good Society,
1996]
A very clear statement of this
argument is given by Brother Pruitt, Chairman of the Committee
for African-American Reparations, in Los Angeles, California,
reproduced here in full.
On Wednesday, May 31, 2006,
"Bro. Pruitt" AfrikaSpirit@aol.com wrote:
Greetings,
African-Americans have been
injured, excluded and held back since coming to America, so now
they have greater expectations and desires to achieve equality
than ever before. Groups who have not been in this country as
long as blacks or have not contributed to the growth of this
nation as blacks have are given access to certain rights and
privileges that guarantee them entry into institutions and services
that enable persons and groups to progress and become equal.
It is a crying shame to see the descendants of slaves denied
entry and find themselves left out of sharing in this vast structure
and fortune that came about from profits of slavery, which materialized
in the foundation and infrastructure of this nation. The Civil
Rights Movement was based on a struggle for blacks to overcome
constraints and obstacles in society that prevented them from
reaching equality.
Though blacks have made marginal
progress since that era, they are now losing ground they gained.
African-American workers, educators and students should not feel
uncomfortable when their peers speak Spanish. If Spanish speaking
people want to come to America they should speak English, just
as other minority groups do. African-Americans should not sit
by and watch their brethren in certain fields be forced to learn
Spanish because Spanish speaking people are not forced to learn
Swahili. That is a true encroachment on the rights of black people,
and as a proud black man it pisses me off to know this is exactly
what is happening. Those in politics have got to stop this madness
and make those Spanish-speaking people know that it is their
responsibility to pull themselves up by the bootstraps and learn
to speak English if they want to stay in America, and learn to
respect what blacks, whites and others have come to accept as
a melting pot. This means that there is nothing wrong with being
proud of your heritage, but you must learn the ways that people
of this country have become accustomed to, to keep the social
fabric of this nation intact.
When Spanish-speaking people
began this mass migration into Los Angeles thirty years ago,
they were just as nice and cooperative as they could be. They
went out of their way to learn how blacks made it in a society
where they are the underclassmen and underachievers ... they
learned the skills and trades of blacks, and they copied them
in social activities. Now that Spanish-speaking people have
numbers, they are using race-based tactics to give those who
speak Spanish advantages over others, and they are applying these
unfair means to overload the system in competition for programs
and services. They have become very disrespectful in the communities,
schools, and prisons, and they are a threat to blacks in terms
of employment, housing, health care, safety, business and education
because they are trying to get citizenship for 12 million illegal
aliens.
It does not matter what anyone
says ... the statistics are there. Spanish-speaking people are
receiving free health care that has been denied to blacks for
generations, and they have invaded communities, jobs, schools
and public programs that have historical significance in housing
and helping blacks. If the government does not want to provide
enough resources to meet the needs of both groups, blacks had
better come together and demand Reparations to ensure their piece
of the pie, because the climate in America is leaning towards
the 'new Negroes'.
African-Americans should look
at this immigration issue in terms of others getting resources
and concessions that they should have received long ago. Blacks
have never been compensated for unpaid slave labor, psychological
abuse caused by suffering from displacement, lynchings and segregation,
and the powers that be broke promises that were given to them
in social, political and legal actions to assist them in life
after slavery. Blacks should demand the immediate production
of an African-American Reparations Package that will guarantee
them land, resources and technology to meet the needs of their
people to improve Integration, establish Repatriation and secure
Separation. If we blacks do not stand up to fight for what is
rightfully ours, we will recede to a lower status in image and
standing in this nation, and around the world.
I know this is heavy information,
but if you read my home page thoroughly, you will understand
this position for African-Americans: http://hometown.aol.com/blk2day/myhomepage/index.html.
In loving memory of our ancestors,
Bro. Pruitt, Chairman, Committee for African-American Reparations
(CAAR)
6614 South Western Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90047
[letter of 31 May 2006, distributed
by John Wilmerding, CERJ@igc.org]
****
I do not think it is possible
to change the type of thinking expressed by Brother Pruitt; it
represents a justifiable frustration within a limited conceptual
framework.
In framing a response I will
use the word "native." If this makes you cringe, good,
I want you to think about why this is so.
Colonial administration always
relies on creating dissension between subjugated "native"
tribes and populations. The fundamental white-power core of the
American ruling class manages the nation in the colonial style.
It sees itself as a small elite of elevated race (with a sprinkling
of approved and tested tokens) that must control a vast, lower-class
population. Setting the natives against each other in petty jealousies
helps to fragment any opposition to their true masters.
The "carrot" always
offered to subjugated natives is the chance to "sit at the
right hand of the master, at his table." This is an avenue
of advancement for a select few -- the Clarance Thomases, the
Alberto Gonzalezes -- to implement the rule of the elite to the
detriment of their own tribes, but for personal gain. Such people
have been termed the "comprador" class in the literature
of colonial administration. These are the "native bosses"
who buy the labor needed for elite projects (e.g., native troops
and native police), and keep current on doings in the tribes,
to ensure the elite can quell independent thinking should it
threaten to arise (e.g., weed out opposition leaders). They also
man the facade of "diversity" and "equal opportunity"
which all colonial administrations find useful for public relations.
See the movie "Burn" by Pontecorvo (1970, starring
Marlon Brando).
What can frustrate many natives
is that the comprador option is just a cynical ploy, not an indication
of real avenues of opportunity. So it is only open to a few,
and these must be both highly capable and thoroughly compromised.
Thus there can be much frustration among natives who are taken
in by the ploy yet unable to actualize the false promises. Many
want to "sit at the table" and believe themselves worthy,
either on the basis of their own talents and achievements or
by association with a reliably exploitable tribe ("we deserve
it").
Some, like Malcolm X, come
to realize that there will NEVER be a time when their kind will
be welcomed "at the table." I could say "at the
table of the (Great White) Father" to add the religious
connection generally implied by the hierarchical concept enshrined
in Judeo-Christian religions; this concept is melded to a racial
hierarchical concept. Mark Twain was one clear voice about this
racist reality of American religious conceptions. But, I digress.
When you argue with others
about whose suffering under oppression is worse, then you play
the oppressor's game. When you make common cause with others
who are oppressed, then you build power against oppression. Let
me give some examples.
Between the War of 1812 and
the presidency of Andrew Jackson, ethnic cleansing of the American
Indian tribes was prosecuted in the American South east of the
Mississippi River. Survivors and escapees from this, for example
the Cherokee Trail of Tears to Oklahoma, hid out in Florida,
still officially Spanish territory, and an undeveloped wilderness
of swamps and wetlands. This became a destination for runaway
slaves, whom the Indians took in. From the relations of these
diverse oppressed populations arose the Seminole Indian tribe,
and they fought a pair of wars with the United States, defeating
armies headed by Andrew Jackson, among others, who were involved
in purely genocidal "search and destroy" missions,
eerily analogous to the Vietnam War a century and a quarter later.
The Seminoles were eventually
abandoned to their Everglades hideouts, as the US gained possession
of Florida, and concentrated its development on the high ground
further north, and the coast. This development was plantation
agriculture with black slave labor. An expanding economy based
on slave labor spread west and penetrated Texas. There were very
prosperous American slave-owners in Texas, having settled on
large spreads of land. However, there was a slight problem with
these American Texans, they were in Mexico, not the United States,
and there had been an official banning of slavery in all of the
Spanish territory liberated by the Bolivarian revolutions of
the 1820s and 1830s. Mexico was a republic with slavery outlawed.
Well, we know the story, Jim Bowie and Davey Crockett and Sam
Houston made a gallant effort to defend their freedom to enslave
others, by precipitating a war between the United States and
Mexico (1846 for the Alamo, where the slave-owners died in a
battle immortalized by a John Wayne movie; 1848 for the US-Mexico
War).
So all those Mexicans killed
in the years of war with the "Colossus of the North"
over the situation in Texas were fighting not just for the territorial
integrity of Mexico against a US land-grab, but also for an anti-slavery
way of life. Mexico lost dearly. One imagines it could have sold
out Texas and keep other lands, or simply carved out a slavery
exception in its legal structure to satisfy the American settlers
-- really illegal immigrants seeking special rights (to echo
the complaints of today). But they didn't; perhaps a little respect
is deserved them for nobility so ill repaid.
As has been noted, because
of this unjust war (Lincoln, Grant, Thoreau, and others were
aghast at its illegality and immorality), that part of Mexico
from the Gulf of Mexico near San Antonio, up to the Pacific Ocean
near southern Oregon was taken over by the US. "We didn't
move, the border did." Mexico lost much (1/3?) of its arable
land (i.e., California Central Valley). How stomachs work and
where crops can grow does not change with the change in political
fortunes and political borders, so it hardly seems strange to
see many Mexican workers following the plantings and harvests
along the North American south-west.
One can continue with modern
day (20th century and today) examples of appreciation and respect
shown African-American ballplayers and musicians who traveled
to Latin America: no segregated travel, no segregated hotels,
no segregated pay, adoring women fans. This despite the fact
Latins are aware of the role of black troops being part of the
many and bloody invasions, interventions and occupations by the
US in Latin America. Being aware of their history and of how
colonialism and slavery are implemented, they knew such blacks
to be "native troops," an inevitable feature in the
coercive force of any imperial & racist power (I think it
impossible for imperialism to be non-racist).
Latin America is the land of
coffee and chocolate, they are accustomed to it from coconut
white to velvety black. Latin America is a land of Mestizo people,
a blending of American Indian, black and Spanish (see the movie
"The Motorcycle Diaries," 2004). There simply isn't
that same hyper-racism that is endemic in the US, and most explicitly
expressed in the North American South up through the 1960s. North
American blacks unused to Latin Americans may over-react to them
because they have been over-sensitized by the sheer brutality
and rabid virulence of North American white-power Christian racism.
I have read that, proportionately,
black Americans feed more tips turning in illegal aliens than
any other officially tracked US ethnic category. I don't know
if this is a bit of disinformation disseminated in the service
of colonial control (to stir up native inter-tribal friction),
or if it is an actual fact. If so, I pity the deluded, but I
understand the delusion as being a product of colonial control.
Now, about "English only."
First, you must understand that it is impossible to be completely
uncomprehending of English and make a living in the US. EVERY
Latin American knows enough English to minimally get work as
a day laborer. Many Latin Americans are bilingual and trilingual,
simply because language instruction is broader even in very poor
communities as compared with the US, where it is abysmal. Second,
quite a number of Latin Americans are also "Indians"
-- real natives -- or members of communities that were themselves
immigrant to Latin America. Also, there is a large exchange of
travelers between Latin America and the rest of the world, often
tourism and business from North Americans and Europeans (and
Japanese and Chinese); and there is quite a bit of participation
by Latin Americans as "foreign workers" whether at
holiday and resort industries, cruise ships, at overseas locations,
as foreign factory workers, and of course US agricultural workers
(95% of kitchen help in US eateries is Latin American, I know
a Mexican sushi chef). So Latin Americans will at least speak
Spanish and a local language, or Spanish and pidgin English plus
any local language, and possibly Spanish and/or Portuguese and/or
a local language and some English. This minimal English of most
Latin Americans is insufficient to pass timed tests, especially
with questions requiring particularly North American white concepts
and idioms. However, this minimal English is always beyond the
zero Spanish of the typical "English-only" 'Murcan.
The complaint about "English
only" can have several components:
1, I object to people who can
learn a second language having an advantage over those who can't
(won't?);
2, I object to the expansion
of the field of candidates I must compete with, if you allow
others to take examinations and/or fill out official forms and
legal requirements in a language other than the one I use;
3, English is already a second
language for me, because among my own people I speak in a way
that the ruling class in the US cannot understand, so if I have
to speak in this official way to carry on my life in this country
then I demand that any immigrant also be forced to verbalize
in this official manner (US English) in any activity in which
I also have to use English (e.g., school, legal documents, public
appearances, on the job).
Behind such complaints is the
frustration of the marginalized "native," the "I
resent newcomers getting ahead of me on line to sit at master's
right hand at the table." This is all to the good of colonial
control: "better the natives, both new and old, are at each
other's throats than united in opposition to our command."
Divide and conquer.
As I have already said, I think
none of this can penetrate a mind confined by limited conceptions
to bitter resentment over the undeniable crime of colonial (racist
imperialist) oppression. Unite, that justice may prevail.
"The tendency to see the
poorer immigrant as an intruder and in some measure as a burden
is something the good society rejects. It sees the immigrant
worker in the full light of the service he or she performs. It
is understood and accepted that life in the advanced countries
would be difficult without a steady foreign contribution to what,
admittedly, are the lower, more arduous levels of the labor force.
Accordingly, those coming and so serving should be both welcomed
and encouraged and, needless to say, should encounter no discrimination
or hostility based on race, color, language or cultural difference."
--John Kenneth Galbraith [The Good Society, 1996]
Manuel Garcia, Jr. is a physicist who studies fluid flow,
electricity and energy. He can be reached at: mango@idiom.com
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