MyBlack^® Career

How bosses benefit from Black/Brown animosity

We're pitted against each other, but is it a product of social engineering?

Source: The Loop 21

In my opinion immigration is, and will always be a civil rights issue. Sure, immigrants should come legally. But our immigration system is broken, inefficient and on an institutional level quite racist, making it virtually impossible for Latinos to migrate legally. Having lived several years in Los Angeles, I think Latino immigrants can teach us Native-born Americans a few things: about family, about community, and yes we could also learn a thing or two from their fierce work ethic. With that said, I understand the resistence many Americans feel to illegal immigration. I especially understand that resistence from the perspective of poorer Americans, and even more so among poor Black Americans. We are socially engineered to resent immigrants. It’s not about patriotism but survival. Hard to compete at home Twenty years ago, the vast majority of construction-sector jobs were held by either Black or white working-class native-born Americans. In terms of good-paying blue collar jobs, construction and manufacturing have historically been the avenue leading many families out of poverty and into the middle class. But over the last 20 years, Latinos have all but taken over the construction sector. In 2006, according to the National Association of Homebuilders, Latinos made up nearly 50 percent of that job market. By 2007, 14.7 percent of all Hispanic workers were employed in construction. With the collapse of the housing market, that number has slid to some degree. But the message many of those employers sent to many blue collar Black and white men is that they had been replaced by Hispanic workers, many of whom were willing to work for less and work harder. They were often younger than Native-born workers. And to boot, due to the tight-knit nature of the community, a foreman could easily fill an entire site with an entire crew of Latino workers -- which obviously makes recruitment a lot simpler.

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