photo credit: Kevin Coles (NYC Immigrants’ rights march)
Do white discrimination and the white racist frame still target Latinos, both immigrants and the US-born? You bet they do, according to a large-scale research project by the Southern Poverty Law Center, Under Siege: Life for Low-Income Latinos in the South. Researchers recently interviewed 500 low-income Latinos, especially immigrants, in Nashville, Charlotte, New Orleans, rural Georgia and several towns in Alabama.
The poignant report begins with personal stories:
In Tennessee, a young mother is arrested and jailed when she asks to be paid for her work in a cheese factory. In Alabama, a migrant bean picker sees his life savings confiscated by police during a traffic stop. In Georgia, a rapist goes unpunished because his 13-year old victim is undocumented.
The southwest has traditionally been the home for most Latinos, but the Latino population in southern states is now the fastest growing, with many seeking low-wage jobs in manufacturing and construction. Since the 1990s the states of Arkansas, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee have been privileged to add 1.6 million Latinos, mostly workers and their families. As with other Americans of color, these hardworking Latinos often face intense and
widespread hostility, discrimination and exploitation. They are routinely cheated out of their earnings and denied basic health and safety protections. They are regularly subjected to racial profiling and harassment by law enforcement. They are victimized by criminals who know they are reluctant to report attacks. And they are frequently forced to prove themselves innocent of immigration violations, regardless of their legal status. This treatment – which many Latinos liken to the oppressive climate of racial subordination that blacks endured during the Jim Crow era – is encouraged by politicians and media figures who scapegoat immigrants and spread false propaganda.
So much for a post-racial America. We might note that the principal discriminators are not named as white in any sentence in the 64-page report. Indeed, the world “whites” never appears in the report, and the only place “white” appears is in a few references to “white supremacist” groups. Even in critical research reports like this there seems to be an etiquette of not offending white dsciminators explicitly, but leaving the elite and ordinary white actors as “implicit” in the commentaries, unless they are part of supremacist groups. We see this in this next comment from the executive summary:
And as a result of relentless vilification in the media, Latinos are targeted for harassment by racist extremist groups, some of which are directly descended from the old guardians of white supremacy.
The report does recognize the problem is larger than these supremacist groups. Using general or vague language, local government “agencies” (again not named as white) are called out for discriminatory legislation being passed against immigrants, especially the undocumented:
A number of Southern communities, for example, have enacted ordinances designed to limit services to undocumented immigrants and make their lives as difficult as possible, with the ultimate goal of driving them away. In addition, many law enforcement agencies in the South, armed with so-called 287(g) agreements with the federal government, are enforcing immigration law in a way that has led to accusations of systematic racial profiling and has made Latino crime victims and witnesses more reluctant to cooperate with police. Such policies have the effect of creating a subclass of people who exist in a shadow economy, beyond the protection of the law.
Those who face discrimination have already endured many dangers and barriers in order to build up the South, to do the hard and dirty labor of
building skyscrapers in Charlotte, harvesting onions in Georgia, slaughtering poultry in Alabama and rebuilding New Orleans after Katrina. Many of these new arrivals left their homes in Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and other Latin American countries to escape poverty, which some experts believe has been worsened by U.S. trade policies. Many crossed the border illegally, risking their lives and freedom for opportunity in the United States, while others were originally “imported” by employers under the guest worker system. Many others are legal residents or U.S. citizens, caught in the crossfire of America’s war on “illegals.”
Given this metaphorical “war” on them, it is not surprising that the interviewers found many Latinos living in great fear of the police and other government agents, as well as fear of cheating employers and criminals seeking to take advantage of them. In addition, as José Cobas and I have also found (see articles here, for example), it is not just the undocumented Latinos who face discrimination, mostly at the hands of whites. A great many Latinos face that discrimination:
Even legal residents and U.S. citizens of Latino descent say that racial profiling, bigotry and myriad other forms of discrimination and injustice are staples of their daily lives. “The assumption is that every Latino possibly is undocumented,” says one immigrant advocate in North Carolina. “So [discrimination] has spread over into the legal population.”
The racism is systemic, once again. And the relevant white discriminators need to be called out and named as principal actors in this sorry societal-oppression reality.
Latinos are still very much affected by institutionalized racism here. I live in a city dominated by Latinos, and it’s common to hear all the garbage they have to deal with. It doesn’t take a genius to know that the whites still dominate the key positions (as do those Latinos who have “sould” out to the white man according to some Latinos here).
But there’s also the feeling of a “black” vs “Hispanic” spirit here due to competition and other factors, with roots that lead back to, unsurprisingly, the racist structure that this particular society is embedded in (but that’s not to say that the places some of these Latinos come from aren’t racist or just as racist).
Even within the Asian, Latin, and black communities, internal racism (e.g., the lighter you are, the better) is very important and often overlooked when discussing U.S. racism. It’s unfortunate that the media and what have you tend to give the lion’s share when dealing with U.S. racism to “black” vs “white” racism. The gray areas (Native American, Asian, Latino) are just as important.
On another point, I just wanted to say that this “blog” is great. I hope you guys also shed more light on internal racism within the “minority” communities and even the racism that “bi-racial” people such as myself face. I also would like to see more on white vs white racism here in the U.S. and abroad, from past to present. My best friend is half Italian, half English, and for some bizarre reason, both families don’t like one another…
I just truly think it’s ironic that a “melting pot” such as the U.S. would be so violently and poisonously racist. I mean come on, there’s only one race–the human race! Things and ideas have been crisscrossing for thousands of years.
But I’m grateful at the fact that you can always take measures to alleviate its evilness.
Jeff, thanks for the good comments, and we do/will try to get into the issues that you raise. Internalized racism is very serious in this society, as it is a major way that racist sytems and other oppressive systems perpetuate themselves. Views that the groups you mention hold, such as Latino views of Blacks, and Blacks of Latinos, often come out of the old white racist framing of each group. The teaching and socializing of (ultimately white-generated) racist ideas, emotions, and images begins very early and affects most every member, you and old, of the society. However, the research on internalized oppression is pretty scattered and in need of butressing.
I was looking at the data in my diss. and noting how after a group is heavily demonized such as African American women (by Reagan throughout the 1980s) there is a steady uptick in the % who get sterilized. In fact, for African American women, it is an explosive “uptick” (is it choice or coercion, a mixture of the two?…racial disparities alone cannot tell us)
Mexican-origin women historically had lower rates of tubal sterilization (even given this, there were well-known cases of Mexican-origin women being coerced…see Elena Gutierrez’s recent book Fertile Matters).
Beginning in the mid-1990s, as per the National Survey of Family Growth and given the demonization of Mexican people, there is a steady uptick in the % of Mexican-origin women undergoing sterilization into the early 2000s (latest available NSFG data).
Hmm…
Unfortunately those latinos whom everyone seems to worship and portray as helpless victims of oppression have brought the following cultural changes to NC. An increase in gang related violence, drug sales, prostitution, spouse abuse and sexual assaults, numerous alcohol related accidents where the perps often escape and head back to latino/latina land.
I’m sick and tired of hearing about the internalized white racism, systemic racism, sub-conscious racism and all the others as if only white people carry such notions. Want to see racism and sexism-take a trip to India or Pakistan-but whey go that far-when Mexico is only a few hours drive away.
Sorry. No worshipping here. I’ve only had negative comments ever thrown my way or towards my heritage. So where is all this adoration you speak of? I’d like to find it. Because frankly, I’m over people like you and people like this:
http://www.diggersrealm.com/mt/archives/002482.html
Oh and in reference to your comments about drug peddling….who do you think peddles the most amount of drugs in the world? A wealthy country like America or poverty stricken country like Mexico?
Never use another race as a scape goat for our nation’s problems such as “gang violence”, “prostitution” or “sexual assaults”. It didn’t work for Hitler. Why do you think it would work for you?
Toby, do you have some research data on your charges about Latinos. Generally, the data show that whites have the illegal highest drug use, or equivalent to any other group. Do you know any policing agency anywhere that has made young whites, like college students who are major uses of powdered cocaine, targets of drug policing?? Why not?