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."
-- Bill Fletcher
Visit the following links to read about differing viewponts in response to Coalition for the Future American Worker's ad:
http://my.opera.com/salventura/blog/the-future-american-worker
http://www.fortwayne.com/mld/newssentinel/news/editorial/17139597.htm
Comments
re: "If you don't know where you want to go, any road will get y
Mr. Fair,
Is completely blind to the fact that historically speaking, he will go down as "black racist", who just wanted to make an extra buck.