What African-Americans feel about the great Mexican immigration debate is a question I have asked many times. As can be expected, there are a lot of mixed feelings about the ever-burgeoning numbers of illegal immigrants to many American urban centers.
I believe it’s unfair for people to just walk across the border and expect America to welcome them with open arms. But then there’s a bit of me that envies Mexicans their geographic advantage over places like my homeland, Africa.
Black Americans have always been suspicious of immigrants, from the Europeans at the beginning of the 20th century to Asians in the middle of the century who were viewed by Anglos and blacks with suspicion.
Some blacks believe brown- skinned people have hijacked and usurped what many years of black civil rights struggles wrought. They think African, Caribbean-born blacks and others are riding on the caboose of black America’s struggles. Many blacks, from erudite Harvard graduates to violent inmates, feel boxed in by the nation’s new arrivals.
Less than 30 percent of Harvard’s 500 black undergraduates come from families where all four grandparents were born in America. Professors Henry Louis Gates and Lani Guinier of Harvard took umbrage with Harvard and other leading American universities that admit foreign-born blacks to attain racial diversity. To Gates and Guinier and many black professionals, those immigrants take away opportunities for American blacks.
Racial fights in Los Angeles County’s maximum-security jail in February left several inmates dead and many injured. There, as in many prisons across America, they fight for power and dominance. Black inmates resent Hispanic gangs that of necessity muscle in on their businesses: drugs, prostitution, etc. There’s an ever-increasing competition for limited resources.
Whether we like it or not, Mexicans are here to stay. Immigrants will always be with us. Black America and the new arrivals must learn to adapt to, accept and learn from each other. Instead of resenting each other, immigrants and America’s blacks should embrace and get to understand each other.
America’s like a lake into which many rivers flow; it will always welcome immigrant streams, even as each wave causes conflict and discord among the economically disadvantaged. Blacks must accept them or live in permanent despair and learn to become financially and academically savvy.
Dialogue and reconciliation between African-Americans and Mexicans might solve some of today’s immigration’s problems – but what of tomorrow’s? To repatriate 12 million Mexicans is impractical; labelling anyone who gives them succor a felon is irrational.
The solution lies in Mexico, much of which is a poor, unproductive place amid brutalizing corruption. Since Mexico’s way of governance greatly influences American affairs, America’s Latinos and blacks must work together to force a change in Mexico.
We who have traveled 10,000 miles to bring about democratic changes in a Muslim country can also influence Mexico. It needs to clean up its corrupt ways, institute democratic transparency and become more responsible for its own disenfranchised poor.
Until Mexico has its affairs in order, Mexicans will continue to come north. No matter the walls we might build, the deportations we might endeavor, the numbers of Mexicans here will double, then triple, in the next decade. For all of our sakes, we must get Mexico to change and become a true democracy.
For now, blacks need to learn how to live alongside Mexicans and other Hispanics. Blacks must remember that no matter how these immigrants got here, they are just poor folks trying to do the best they can.
Pius Kamau of Aurora is a thoracic and general surgeon. He was born and raised in Kenya and immigrated to the U.S. in 1971. His column appears on alternate Thursdays.
