In looking back over the past week, Latino Immigrants has succeeded in doing something profound and historical, that should the rest of us on ethnicity ignore it, we do so at our own peril.
I know many of us are smart, successful, hard-working and want what everyone else wants: the opportunity to succeed on our merit and provide for our families. America has long advertised itself as the "land of opportunity" and this is why many people from countries where they experienced oppression risked life and limb to come here.
For African-Americans, our historical experience was different. We were brought here on slave ships, and those who died on the way, were considered blessed to have escaped the centuries of oppression and forced servitude that awaited us. From the Civil War that freed us, to the Civil Rights movement 100 years later; to the deaths of three Civil Rights workers whose only crime was that they felt Blacks should be able to vote without intimidation from Jim Crow; to Affirmative Action, which, contrary to popular belief, is NOT a quota system - it means to take positive action to rectify or prevent discrimination in organizational systems, be it educational or economical.
Yet, we, as African-Americans, have managed to make a life here in America. For many of us, while we still have our history, it is time to embrace a new passage of our journey, and that means standing with our immigrant brethren. I don't want to hear about how the immigrants are taking away jobs - just WHAT jobs are they taking from African-Americans? Are you going to go into the hot fields of Florida or Central California and start picking fruit? Cleaning hotel rooms, cooking; in other words, all the used-to-be considered "menial" jobs, which are really translation for "honest day's work"? Because if you are out there competing for those jobs, then maybe, you may have a point, but it's still no reason for you to refuse to support our immigrant brethren and rebuff the racist policies being expounded by Congress.
If anything, Monday's protests telegraphed the message loud and clear; when you discriminate against one ethnic group, WE ALL LOSE. When I drove to work Monday, I got to my office in less than 30 minutes. It generally takes me an hour because of traffic. As I drove along, I saw construction crews looking really skimpy. And the fact that the traffic was almost non-existant, said volumes to me, about how important immigrants are to our country and our economy, but more so than that, the absence of them means our country becomes culturally and morally bankrupt. We can all learn from different cultures - our country is a "melting pot" is it not? Why does everyone have to be the same? It'd be very boring in this life if it weren't for being able to interact with people of all ethnicities and religions and cultures.
My parents were, by profession; dad a crane operator, and Mom a nurse's aide/janitor. They did those jobs willingly and made the sacrifice so my brothers and I would get a good education and translate into good jobs. But they also told us to be ready to work hard at any job necessary to achieve those goals because money was tight and they couldn't guarantee anything once we got to college.
Two of my brothers went into the military; the other one and I went to college. But if we had to go into a field and pick fruit or clean offices, work as day laborers or work at Mickey D's (in fact, I worked at Wendy's in my senior year of high school)to make ends meet, we did just that. And my mom remarked one day, "Since when did Black people become TOO GOOD to do a janitor's job" - meaning that when did Blacks start thinking and believing we had a right to engage in the same discriminatory class warfare among ourselves, that has now translated to generating unneccessary controversy behind the immigration issue?
My mother made those comments back in 1986 - 20 years later, her words come back to remind me that African-Americans cannot afford to be a part of a racist agenda. We know and have first hand experience of what it's like to be considered inferior, savage, and have watched, if not participated in the orchestration of developing systems designed to pit one person against another, or keep groups of people oppressed because of their ethnicity, or their religion, or their gender. We KNOW what it's like.
Because we know what it's like, we, of all people, must keep the door open for reconciliation of those who are thinking they will get brownie points from Bush by buying off on this schtick. I'm talking about Linda Chavez, Shelby Steele, Michelle Malkin, Clarence Thomas, even Claude Allen; because the time will come when they will be reminded of their backgrounds, no matter how far they try to distance themselves from it.
And because we know what it's like to be discriminated against, we have no right to subject anyone else to a system that our ancestors themselves fought against, and taught us about their fight so we would never forget it.
