By Judith Browne-Dianis
Good Morning Black people, this is your wake up call! The time is Unity Time. The date is now. As the events in Arizona unfold, Black folks must realize the fight is not about “them,” it’s about us, all of us.
Let’s put the Arizona law that criminalizes looking like a Mexican in context. Immigration policy in this country has always been about race and capitalism. When the economy needs cheap labor, immigration policy encourages importation of poor people of color to fill the jobs. Africans were enslaved in order to provide free labor in this country. Yes, slavery was an immigration policy. Chinese immigrants then came in the 1800’s during the Gold Rush and to build our railway system. Currently, the debate is around the influx of immigrants from Latin America, who are here filling low wage jobs where they are exploited and have no protections to fight back.
In the face of the need for cheap labor, there is one consistent issue across the generations that collides with this need – race. As each population of immigrants has come, whether by bondage or by choice, their status as “Americans” has been determined by degrees of whiteness. The whiter you are, the easier it is to be identified as “American.” African slaves were property and measured only as three-fifths of a person. A tight economy led to a suspension of the immigration of Chinese nationals with the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act when our government found that this group “endangered the good order” of our country. Japanese Americans were rounded up and thrown in internment camps and designated “non-American” in a time of war. So here we are in 2010. Arizona is ready to criminalize anyone who looks Mexican. Wake up, folks!
This debate exists also in the context of the current political discourse. The first African American President has been asked to prove he’s American by showing his birth certificate. Just like Arizona asks of our Latino brothers and sisters, right-wing bigots want to know if he has “papers.” Who designated them the keepers of who is American?
Further, this birther movement is bolstered by its cousin movement, The Tea Party. These folks talk in old Jim Crow code language about states rights. The same states rights they wanted to protect in the Confederate war. The same states rights they fought to preserve when they did everything they could including killing four little girls and scores of others, including our most revered leaders, in order to maintain segregation and control. Wake up, Black folks!
Even more, the new best right wing seller is called, Take Back America. Who are they taking it back from?
The Arizona struggle is about who gets to be “American.” Is “American” a designation only bestowed upon those of the White race? It’s about who gets to vote and govern this country. It’s about “us,” people of color. By 2040, this country will be majority people of color. This fact causes a lot of angst and fear among those who have been in power since this country was taken from our Native American family. It’s our time to build unity not dwell on divisions.
For the Black folks for whom immigration is a difficult issue, let me offer this. Our immigration system is admittedly broken and Congress and the President must move quickly to fix it. The economy is bleeding and people of color are most hurt by this. But do not blame immigrants. Instead, blame the corporations who feed off exploiting unskilled labor by lowering wages and too often robbing immigrants of their pay altogether. The fix for our system requires cracking down on these employers, which will raise pay and work standards for all. It also necessitates border enforcement and a practical path to citizenship for the immigrants who are here. Our government cannot round up 12 million immigrants and send them home. It’s impossible. Instead we need to bring immigrants here without documents out of the shadows, allowing them to apply for citizenship and requiring that the small minority that doesn’t already pay taxes, do so.
This is a wake up call, no time to push the snooze button. We must stop laws that subject anyone to profiling or criminalization on the basis of race. For too long, African Americans have endured the brunt of these practices, we cannot let anyone else suffer. In fact, the immigration question involves not only Latinos but African and Caribbean immigrants also; so you too might be impacted by such profiling. Ultimately, this issue boils down to the fact that there is a backlash in this country that is grounded in what W.E.B. DuBois called the dilemma of the 20th century, “the color-line.” The backlash seeks to close up our borders and take back control not only from “them” but from “us” too. It’s time to fight this movement together; there is too much at stake and we have come too far to go back.
Browne-Dianis is co-director of Advancement Project, innovative civil rights law, policy, and communications “action tank” that advances universal opportunity and a just democracy for those left behind in America.
