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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 2447
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 08:59 am: | 
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Looks like the Blacks are teaming up with the Hillbillies.
The "Minutemen" are trying to recruit Blacks.
Here are two opinions. What are your opinions, how do y'all feel about it?
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Blacks and the Minutemen: Two Views
New America Media, Commentary, Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Jasmyne Cannick, May 03, 2006
Blacks And Minutemen Make Strange Bedfellows
By Earl Ofari Hutchinson
Editor's Note: The Minutemen hope to recruit poor blacks to join them in their anti-illegal immigration efforts by capitalizing on a deep split over immigration in the African-Amercan community. Earl Ofari Hutchinson is a contributing editor to New America Media and the author of "The Crisis in Black and Black" (Middle Passage Press). The Hutchinson Report blog is now at www.earlofarihutchinson.com.
LOS ANGELES--At first glance it seemed ridiculous that Minutemen leaders would pick a park in a predominantly black neighborhood in Los Angeles as the May 3 jump-off point for their national caravan to Washington, D.C. The caravan will stop in 13 cities including President Bush's hideout in Crawford, Texas. Since the Minutemen first toted their cameras, beach chairs and binoculars to the Arizona-Mexico border last year to shame politicians into taking action to stop illegal immigration, they have been roundly lambasted as a racist organization.
Minutemen Project leaders bristle at the charge. They claim they do everything to shoo racists away from their organization, and that the FBI does background checks on potential members (the FBI denied this claim). They also say they have a multi-ethnic, diverse membership.
Yet, the avowed white supremacist National Alliance group, Neo-Nazis and an assortment of kooks, cranks and crazies all flocked to the border last year to join Minutemen protests. Stormfront, the white power Web site, implored the "white nationalist community" to back the Minutemen project.
The Minutemen have few visible black supporters, and up to a week ago their presence had been nil in black communities. They have been denounced by mainstream civil rights organizations, black elected officials, and have taken no public stand on issues such as affordable health care, failing public schools, police misconduct, the extension of the Voting Rights Act and unemployment. These are issues that most concern blacks. Their Web site is filled with xenophobic, nativist and race-tinged, code-word taunts about the "invasion" of "hordes" of "illegal aliens."
Yet the Minutemen's pitch to blacks is a shrewd, cynical ploy to capitalize on the split among blacks over illegal immigration. That split is wide and deep. The NAACP, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Congressional Black Caucus vigorously oppose the punitive Sensenbrenner House bill and have generally supported the massive immigrant rights marches. A Field Poll in California in April found that blacks by a bigger percent than whites and even American-born Latinos back liberal immigration reform.
But many blacks express views that are wildly at odds with the black leaders and the polls. Black callers have singed the phone lines at black radio talk shows with anti-immigrant tirades. They continue to bombard black newspapers with letters blasting illegal immigrants. They complain that Latinos are hostile, even racist, toward blacks.
The issue that pricks a raw nerve is the issue of jobs. Economists are deeply divided over the extent that illegal immigration depresses wages and helps fuel joblessness among blacks. But the increased visibility of undocumented workers in low wage service and retail, construction and light manufacturing jobs, in which blacks once were employed, has stoked resentment. It has reinforced the perception among some blacks that illegal immigrants take jobs from blacks.
Then there is the issue of law enforcement. Polls show that blacks increasingly are more supportive of the police and back tough crackdowns on gang and drug violence. They also rankle at what they perceive as the kid-glove treatment of illegal immigrants by authorities. While there is no evidence that is the case, the perception remains.
Minutemen leaders have tapped into the anger and anxiety of some blacks over the economic free fall of poor blacks, and their tough-on-crime sentiment has managed to corral a handful of black supporters. The week before the start of their caravan, they held a noisy flag-waving rally at a park in South Los Angeles. A few days later they joined a small group of anti-illegal immigrant black activists in a march for jobs to an employment office in South L.A.
The Minutemen have set an ambitious goal of 500 new chapters nationally by the end of the year, and over 1 million new members. They're convinced that the majority of Americans agree with them that illegal immigration is a plague on the American society, and that only harsh employer sanctions, tough criminal penalties and the militarizing of the border is the only way to eliminate it.
They also hope that thousands of blacks will agree with them, and join their chapters and jump in their flag-festooned caravan to Washington in protest. That's not likely to happen. But those few who do will join a group that has checkered ties with racist organizations and that has done nothing to promote civil rights and fight poverty. It just goes to show that the volatile issue of illegal immigration, like politics, can make strange bedfellows.
The Minutemen Wedge: Blacks Must Unite, Not Split Over Immigration
by Jasmyne Cannick
Editor's Note: Blacks need to come together on issues of concern to the black community, not make alliances with extreme groups like the Minutemen, the writer says. Jasmyne A. Cannick is a member of the National Association of Black Journalists. She can be reached at www.jasmynecannick.com.
LOS ANGELES--The alliance between blacks and the vigilante group the Minutemen is very similar to the alliance between black Christian evangelicals and white Christian evangelicals and conservatives on the issue of gay civil rights: suspect.
The Minutemen have made a concerted effort to reach out to blacks on the issue of illegal immigration, playing into the fears and hysteria of many in the community.
At a rally and press conference for the kick-off of the Minutemen's Washington, D.C., caravan -- held in a Leimert Park, Los Angeles, one of the few primarily black neighborhoods left in Los Angeles, tensions were high as many blacks joined their white counterparts in denouncing illegal immigrants.
Similar to the 2004 presidential election debacle where blacks were being persuaded to vote for President Bush because he opposed civil rights for gays, blacks are being used by the Minutemen to support their illegal immigration agenda.
By and large blacks have little in common with the Minutemen. As with white conservatives, on any other issue important to blacks we would probably be on opposing sides with Minutemen members.
But by the same token, immigrants rights supporters have done virtually nothing to counteract the messaging to blacks by the Minutemen. The Latino leadership has done very little real coalition building with blacks on common issues, and for the most part do not include blacks in their planned protests and marches, except for the occasional token speaker.
The Minutemen, love them or hate them, have done what the immigrant rights supporters have not done with blacks, and that's talk to them.
What we are seeing happen in the immigration debate is not new. We saw it in 2004 with gay marriage and President Bush's Faith Based Initiative Program, which brought black mega-church pastors to the White House for photo ops and press conferences denouncing lesbians and gays.
This is a deliberate attempt to divide the black community.
We are expected to either side with the vigilantes or the illegal immigrants, neither of which have blacks' best interests at heart.
It's time that blacks start to care about their own interests and stop being bamboozled by groups like the Minutemen. Siding with the Minutemen is like siding with the KKK.
Illegal immigrants aren't the cause of the apathy found in black communities around the country, blacks are.
The Minutemen are here today in our communities and will be gone tomorrow, but we will still be here living in the same conditions as before.
America does need immigration reform. But blacks cannot fault illegal immigrants for doing what blacks should have done years ago: unite.
The last time the masses of blacks gathered in Los Angeles was for the funeral of Stanley Tookie Williams. The irony is that not once in Los Angeles did the number of activists trying to save Williams life ever get anywhere close to the thousands of people who showed up for his funeral.
While illegal immigration has affected the black community, it's black people who are to blame for the current crisis in black America. Siding with the Minutemen is not going to change that.
It's time for black people to wake up and start handling business in our community. |
Crystal
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Crystal
Post Number: 267
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 11:46 am: |
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Yes, I'm sorry to say this ignorance happened. But I'm not surprised. I've said before how much black people around here hate "meskins". Apparently so much so that they will join with the racist minutemen against them. And this at a time when black/brown violence is becoming a major problem in our community. We'll see if the minutemen have our back when that goes down!
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 2450
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 11:49 am: |
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I'm not sure I like this idea about the "minutemen"....
But...
a cousin from South Carolina complained to me about the problems she was having on her job. She's married with three kids and four grandchildren, whose mothers she is committed to supporting with child care, while one of her sons is in the military and one is preparing for college. She said that the hotel where she works had been flooding with Hispanics, more rapidly as the months went by. At the time, she had been working there for more than twenty years, fifteen in relative comfort, considering her position is housekeeping, an unskilled job. But the influx of immigrants changed that. She could no longer rely on the raises she used to get (immigrants brought the wages down). And even worse, she was afraid she'd lose her job because many of her co-workers were being replaced. This was five years ago--and she hasn't lost her job yet--but she's in constant fear that it will happen... the more immigrants, the bigger the threat. Meanwhile, since her income is not what it used to be, she now has to rely on donations from myself and other family members. She's not a radical, black separatist, a gang banger, or an unfit mom.... I understand that Blacks brought things on themselves, as Cannick said, but what did working mothers and fathers do (except work hard)? They are the ones who are suffering--(maybe not the middle class, maybe not yet)--so why isn't the NAACP or The Black Caucus concerned about the masses? What have working people done wrong?
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Grind
Newbie Poster
Username: Grind
Post Number: 19
Registered: 04-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 04:55 pm: |
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"I've said before how much black people around here hate "meskins"."
Sweety, you've got it backwards, your average black doesn't have 1/10 the hatred for Mexicans that your average Mexican has for blacks.
-Do black gangs target Mexicans who walk through black neighborhoods for murder, as Mexicans in Southern California do to blacks?
-Do black men routinely murder Mexican men for dating/screwing black women, as Mexican men have murdered numerous black men for dating/screwing hispanic women?
-Do blacks gangs have alliances with white supremacist organizations, as Mexican gangs do in and outside of prison?
-Do blacks routinely attack Mexicans in jail and prison, as Mexicans are doing to blacks in places where they outnumber us?
What's really hilarious is that you have blacks condemning other blacks for allying with a non-racist group like the Minutemen, when Mexicans in and outside of prison are openly allied with white supremacist organizations that want to wipe blacks off the face of the earth.
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Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1229
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 05:22 pm: |
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this is a regional issues that will eventually become national as new immigrants encounter people of color who are either native or have been here for a long time. |
Zuriburi
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Zuriburi
Post Number: 126
Registered: 11-2005
Rating: 
Votes: 1 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 06:03 pm: |
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Yokio I would disagree with you. This is not a regional issue. It is my understanding that all over Latin America Blacks are subjagated and marginalised by our so-called Brown brothers. I'm not making any blanket statements about Brown people, but I think that it would behove us to act in our own interest, whatever that may be.
I see no benefit from an alliance with 'the minutemen' except our continued dependence on white america for low wage jobs. I do agree with the article in that we are responsible for our condition of perpetual reliance on non-blacks for our survival, but to suggest that we have some innate allegiance with Latinos is naive and stupid. Like all groups who still possess some remenant of cultural cohesivness, Latinoes have and will always look out for themselves first and foremost; atleast while they remain physically distinguishable from Caucasia.
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Brownbeauty123
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 212
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 08:00 pm: |
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There aren't that many Mexicans where I live--yet.
At my job, a team of Mexicans come in and clean the store at night when it closes. They're very short people, kinda like dwarfs especially the men, and pretty much keep to themselves. Although when they see me, they look at me as if I have horns on the top of my head. I know they've seen black women before. Anywho, I usually don't make conversation with them cause they seem to really keep their distance from black folks.
Why do they hate us so much? What is the history? |
Yukio
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Yukio
Post Number: 1230
Registered: 01-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, May 04, 2006 - 10:53 pm: |
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zuriburi:
You are correct, that is if you are talking about what happens outside of the U.S.
I would make a clarification, however. If you are talking about Latin America, then you need to differentiate socalled color (your usage of "our") from nationality. It is probable that if you met a dark skinned venezulean, for example, that he could call you a nigga as quick as a pale venezulean would.
If that is the case, and it is as a matter of fact, then your usage of "brown" is only appropo in an U.S. context.
At any rate, I say it is regional in the U.S. because Mexicans, as bb123 suggests, do not have substantial demographics everywhere around the country for them to behave as they may on the west coast or southwest.
On your on comment about "Latinoes have and will always look out for themselves first and foremost; atleast while they remain physically distinguishable from Caucasia[ns]." I would say this will always be an issue.
First of all, people who were colonized by the Spanish comprised South, North, and Central America as well as the Caribbean. Consequently, as I mentioned above, your brown and black categorizations is off. Consequently, the perpetual presence of discernible african features, as well as cultural behavior, precludes that the majority of these people will ever really be white. Second of all, many of them do even like eachother. . .and why should they they shared a common oppressor, therefore language, but thats it! They all do even accept the term Latino, so this is much more complicated than we like to think...
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Tonya
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Tonya
Post Number: 2451
Registered: 07-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 05, 2006 - 01:32 am: |
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"I do agree with the article in that we are responsible for our condition of perpetual reliance on non-blacks for our survival, but to suggest that we have some innate allegiance with Latinos is naive and stupid. Like all groups who still possess some remenant of cultural cohesivness, Latinoes have and will always look out for themselves first and foremost. . ."
Exactly, Zuriburi, that's precisely what I had in mind when I agreed with Cannick. But the Blacks that are being affected (in terms of finance) don not have strong opinions about color. They are not multiculturalists (radicals, imo) or black separatists like me. They tend to be apolitical; their concern is simple: caring for their families. Yet these are the ones that are being displaced by a multicultural agenda and the self-interest/greed/cowardliness/deception - the sleaziness of Black scholars and so-called Black leaders: Al Sharpton, Jesse Jackson, Cornel West, Henry Louis Gates, The Black Caucus, NAACP, ect.
P.S., yes, I admit to being a separatist, loud and proudly. |
Zuriburi
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Zuriburi
Post Number: 127
Registered: 11-2005
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 05, 2006 - 11:50 am: |
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Yokio I don't think that the issue has to be so complicated. If there are dark skinned/ black skinned poeple (whether they are from spanish speaking or Arab countries) who are hostile towards those who would define themsleves as black/african/negro peoples then they are, if not our enemy, certainly not any group that we amy want to align ourselves with.
I guess my usage of the term Brown encompasses those of brown and darker hues who do not categorize themselves as black/negro/of african ancestry. But most impotantly those Browns who are hostile to those who identify as black/negro/african.
Tonya, I too do not understand Cornel West's (an acedemic that I often agreee with) position when he suggests unifying with Illegal aliens to strengthen the working class movement. Just ablout the only thing that I trust in this world, is the unchanging predictability of human nature. These people are coming from the same white supremist mindset that exists here, the same rules apply, blacks on the bottom, upward mobilisation attained by identification and imitation of whiteness. Being brown staight haired people, how long will it take the majority of latinoes to disappear into the white landscape. When given the opportunity to join the ruling class few would refuse.
I hurts me to say this, but I am pessimistic about the future of black people on this planet. We can theorize all day, but the chances that we will wake up, fall in love with ourselves and thrive as a group are minescule (splng?).
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Chrishayden
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Chrishayden
Post Number: 2165
Registered: 03-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, May 05, 2006 - 03:22 pm: |
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I was listening to a lawyer from Dallas on the radio this morning. Black woman.
She was wondering why the blacks did not form coalitions with the Chicanos there. The blacks said that the Chicanos were used to being classified as white. Told her that they took sides with the white folks against them every time.
She said she didn't believe it but saw it.
I say that we lay back and let them fight it out--but if you live in any part of what used to be Mexico you better start learning Spanish and going for Puerto Rican or something. |
Msprissy
Regular Poster
Username: Msprissy
Post Number: 39
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 06, 2006 - 11:22 am: |
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Here's another angle I've been thinking about. Why haven't the Latinos demostrated in their homeland for a decent living wage? If they were smart, they could run the American corporations back to the USA if pressure were put on them. This would serve everyone's purpose: they would leave these very low paying jobs in America, opening up better paying jobs for undereducated AAs; go back to their country and be with their families and loved ones; actually finding work when the American companies pull out because the profits are reduced, and suffer increased expenses to remain in a foreign country.
SAVE YOUR OWN COUNTRY.
African Americans did not run back to Africa when faced with prejudice, discrimination, and bias. God knows we've seen it all and, despite some potholes and detours, we've survived. True, we can't stop fighting; we were not promised a rose garden all the time.
As a last thought, Mexico's cost of living is much lower than America's. They can survive in their home. Something to think about.
P.S.: I believe the demonstrations were fueled by American companies and small-time employers. How else could so many be given time off from BUSINESS to demonstrate. There's more to come about that. There have been hints of firings.
Minnie E Miller
www.millerscribs.com
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Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4584
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 06, 2006 - 11:39 am: |
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Msprissy: "Here's another angle I've been thinking about. Why haven't the Latinos demostrated in their homeland for a decent living wage?
Probably because they'd fired and starve. Or they'd get shot dead and then dumped into pit of at least a million other wannabee Mexican radicals.
Msprissy: "African Americans did not run back to Africa when faced with prejudice, discrimination, and bias."
Well, actually, some freed Black American slaves did return to Africa in the mid 1800's. They with the aid of America created a country in western Africa called Liberia. You might have recently heard some things about Liberia. Liberia recently became the very FIRST African nation to elect a female head of state: Ellen Johnson Sirleaf. |
Brownbeauty123
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Brownbeauty123
Post Number: 215
Registered: 03-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 06, 2006 - 11:57 am: |
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Why were those slaves allowed to be freed? |
Abm
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Abm
Post Number: 4590
Registered: 04-2004
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Saturday, May 06, 2006 - 12:19 pm: |
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Brownbeauty123,
Many of Blacks had bought their freedom or were descendents of such. Others resided in parts of the north that had already abolished slavery prior to the Civil War. And some slaves had their freedom bought/sponsored by (mostly religious) abolitionist groups. |
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