May 05, 2007
In fear of a dark-skinned Communist mobIssues
This past week, on May 1st to be precise, our country witnessed a second wave of immigration reform rallies that were noted more for their violence (by the police) than for their size. These rallies weren’t nearly as large as those held to influence the mid-term elections last year. Those rallies were also in response to particularly harsh anti-immigration positions by some members of Congress (positions far less likely to pass with Democrats in charge). However, these demonstrations increasingly pose a problem for me. They are no longer just about immigration (to be fair I wonder if they ever were). They are rallies by the working class against the elite. I worry that conflating these two separate battles will lead to a maelstrom. I worry more that these battles will increasingly become inseparable and that we will start to move toward a culture as in Europe where class and race seem to be inextricably tied and often lead to violence. Our strongest defense against self-immolation as a nation is to fight to de-couple race and class.
It might be useful to first understand what happened at one of these rallies. Here is a good clip that will give you a feel for what it was like to be on the ground in L.A. both before and after things turned bad:
As most of you know, SM’s readership is quite diverse. We have 13-year-olds that read us and sometimes send us nice comments. We also have older readers who might enjoy our unfiltered perspective. One such reader, Ruchira, emailed me about her daughter. Here is an excerpt from her blog:
Most of you have by now seen news reports of the May Day rally at MacArthur Park in Los Angeles which turned violent when some demonstrators threw bottles and cans and the LAPD opened “fire” with rubber bullets and charged into the crowd with batons (the CNN report here). Although the incident is reported in the media as an “immigration rally,” the afternoon event at the park was an International Workers’ Day gathering where undocumented workers too demonstrated for their rights.My daughter was present at the afternoon protest rally as an observer on behalf of the National Lawyers’ Guild along with other attorneys. She was caught in the middle of the melee when she tried to help move the back of the crowd away from the advancing police line. During her efforts, she was charged and beaten by a policeman. (full report on Indymedia here.) Some other attorneys, journalists, photographers and other non-protesting bystanders too were beaten and injured…
According to my daughter who reported Tuesday’s incident to her parents only on Wednesday (!!!), the Indymedia reports are a bit breathless and somewhat erroneous. She did not receive a blow to her kidneys. The policeman slugged her with his baton at least four times in the stomach. Oh, the report left out another detail. My daughter was also shot in the back with a rubber bullet! She is shaken, angry but otherwise okay and did not need to make a trip to the hospital.[Link]
This far into my post I am sure some of you are struggling with the same thing as I am. Was this an immigration rally or an “International Worker’s Rally?” The day chosen says a lot:
May Day also refers to various socialist and labor movement celebrations conducted on May 1, unrelated to the traditional celebrations, to commemorate the Haymarket martyrs of 1886 and the international socialist movement generally. The latter event is an important holiday in Communist and Socialist countries. [Link]
Is waving the flag of Mexico and other Central and South American countries on a day traditionally associated with Communism the best way to secure rights for immigrants in this country? Doesn’t it do the cause more harm than good? Lou Dobbs, with all his “throw the immigrants out bluster” demonstrates this point quite well by seamlessly mixing anti-communist rhetoric with anti-immigrant rhetoric:
What a spectacle, what a mess. What a day for thousands and thousands of illegal aliens and their supporters to march through the streets of many of our biggest cities demanding amnesty for illegally entering the country.Tuesday was given over to illegal aliens and their supporters to demand forgiveness for using fraudulent documents and assisting others in entering this country illegally. What a day for illegal aliens and their supporters to demand not only amnesty but also the end to immigration raids and an end to deportations.
May Day was a peculiar choice for those demonstrations, a day in many countries in which international socialism is celebrated and a reminder of those old Soviet Union military parades.
It was also an unfortunate and ironic choice on the part of the organizers of the demonstrations. May 1 in the United States is actually Law Day, a day first established by President Eisenhower in 1958 and ultimately codified into law in 1961 at the beginning of John F. Kennedy’s administration. The purpose of Law Day is to give all Americans an opportunity to reflect on our legal heritage, and by statute, encourages “the cultivation of the respect for law that is so vital to the democratic way of life.”
Millions of American citizens are going to agree with Dobbs. The way he writes it, it’s hard not to. If immigration rights=workers rights/socialism then this battle will be lost (or at least remain at a standstill) before it begins. Those who support immigration reform and those who support workers rights must be more strategic in their thinking. I support both groups but I lose my ability to articulately defend them when I can’t tell them apart. A dark-skinned communist mob will be all that the other side sees.
abhi on May 5, 2007 11:08 AM in Issues · T·r·a·c·k·b·a·c·k address · Direct link · Email post
People like Lou Dobbs are going to see a dark-skinned Communist mob anyway...Is it worth giving up strategic alliances between immigrants and workers' movements to try to sway him?
That all depends on whether you see this alliance as strategically useful or not and whether "People like Dobbs" are in the 100s or the millions. A lot more people like Dobbs get created when you choose a strategically poor alliance.
Abhi, this was not a pro-immigration rally, it was a pro-illegal immigration rally. Are you in favor of illegal immigration? It would appear so. If that's the case, I'm not on your side, sorry.
"However, these demonstrations increasingly pose a problem for me. They are no longer just about immigration (to be fair I wonder if they ever were). They are rallies by the working class against the elite. I worry that conflating these two separate battles will lead to a maelstrom. I worry more that these battles will increasingly become inseparable and that we will start to move toward a culture as in Europe where class and race seem to be inextricably tied and often lead to violence. Our strongest defense against self-immolation as a nation is to fight to de-couple race and class."
This is a stupid blowhard post and wrong. It is working class people that are the most virulently anti-immigrant; George W. Bush, and many other business people are quite alright with immigration as it keeps wages down. Poor people DO suffer because of immigration, and the only people that skate over that fact with idiotic corny 50s poetic "our strongest defense" garbage are those with no stake in the argument other than their precious intellectual/moral fragility.
First off, please be respectful. You don't sound very intelligent when you engage in an argument with a comment that demonstrates the very thing it is supposedly protesting.
Secondly, the reason that working class people appear to be the most anti-immigrant is because the rules set up by the elite class actually foster such working class vs. working class mentality. If you watch the video above one of the protestors states this in quite an eloquent manner toward the end.
Nada, you were probably never on "my side" and a fake apology is waste of comment space. Sorry.
The guy in the red bandanna said,'The border patrol and the cops are the same crappy shit.'
Thanks, I was wondering why the one woman in the video was too shy to translate.
Secondly, the reason that working class people appear to be the most anti-immigrant is because the rules set up by the elite class actually foster such working class vs. working class mentality.
oh, come now. people here make (or used to, it seems a bit abated now) cracks about 'crackers' all the time. do we believe that rural whites are simply manipulated non-agents in all this? i think the answer to why the working class is more anti-immigrant is two fold.
1) you said: Is waving the flag of Mexico and other Central and South American countries on a day traditionally associated with Communism the best way to secure rights for immigrants in this country? working class perceive immigrants as non-americans. their ties to this nation aren't abstractions rooted in ideas about the 'last man' and a democratic republic, they're rooted in god, country and family, patriotism. people waving mexican flags are patriotic too, just not american patriots.
2) who do you think is competing for jobs with the unskilled? we saw how terrified and angry white collar workers got during the outsourcing debate. well, working class people have been dealing with the transfer of manufacturing jobs abroad for a generation and direct competition with immigrants in labor intensive industries for a while now.
if there's two things i know about this whole 'immigration' controversy
a) people will use it to push their own agendas and presume about others.
b) the overclass will make sure that a large and cheap servile class exists to take care of their babies, do the lawn care and take the trash out (as some SM commenters have state in the past, 'i don't know what we'd do without maria!' [hint: you'd do your own chores]).
so i'm working hard to make sure i'm in the overclass ;-) hope the rest of your make it too, though i don't watn too much competition. there are only so many slots!
About may day, while it is true that communist governments appropriated that day (for its strong normative appeal to numerous working class people no doubt), it was never about "socialism" (whatever that might mean). It was about showing solidarity with the American working class. Its a shame that Communist and U.S government propaganda has succeeded to the point that the day evokes negative reactions among people; of course both governments had reasons to propagandize their respective citizenry, one to capitalize on the day's positive appeal among poor people and the other to discredit it by linking it to brutal repressive communist party dictatorships.
Huh?
Anyway, arent there riots in America in the inner cities every now and then? That's a class and race problem right there.
what the fuck was that dude wearing ? Is he trying to insult the protesters by dressing weird ? That's what it seems like from my perspective..
I guess the point I was trying to make is that if the "overclass" legislated a fair system, there would be less fear motivating worker class vs. worker class clashes. You'd never be able to erase this conflict completely but it would at least help. And yes, we all want to be part of the overclass (unless you want to be a good Blues singer)!
I don't understand how the waving of flags of Mexico would help the illegal immigrants or their legalization. If I am an illegal immigrant in country and would like to become a legal resident then I would show my allegiance to the that country.
Yes, but so far no terrorists. And, the riots are few and far between, unlike France for example.
I'm glad someone else said it first :)
what the fuck was that dude wearing ? Is he trying to insult the protesters by dressing weird ?
Indymedia people (I used to hang out with a lot of them) are generally a little freaky, that's why they wear stuff like the orange overalls the guy had on. The demographic is rich white kids in their 20s who are looking for excitement because they've lived in the suburbs their whole lives and are going thru a romantic power to the people phase, wearing Che Guevara shirts, etc. One guy I knew had like a 20-foot Free Mumia banner his group house had stretching across their living room.
They certainly enjoy provoking the police and then being there with a camera to document the atrocities. Like here.
I guess the point I was trying to make is that if the "overclass" legislated a fair system, there would be less fear motivating worker class vs. worker class clashes.
and what would that be?
The terrorists are a separate issue altogether, an ideological problem unrelated to class.
The recent riots in France are a French problem. Categorising it as Europe is too generalised. As well as being o a lower intensity in terms of fatalities, for example.
Ummm where you not in the US or near any media outlets when Katrina & the aftermath happened? Acting 'white' as expressed or,intimated by BOTH blacks and whites and not a few 'others' is a way to indirectly buy in the the hegemonic that excelling in academic pursuits, being middle or upper class, etc are by definition something only** whites can achieve. The country was founded on the de facto idea of one race, by default, being on top. I beleive that we have moved beyond that now, for the most part.
Welcome to my world! ** Of course some non-white (brown) people meet those criteria quite nicely,and are generally rewarded by being 'coded white'. Or in this case- just out and out 'promoted' to that status. I'm sure the commenter here really thought she was giving you an an upgrade.
Yeah, May 1 was the wrong day to stage a rally on immigration reform, and the non American flag waving.
I think Kinsman's comments are well within the bounds of blog etiquette. And so are yours.
The best way to let other people see as you would like to be seen is to steal the eyes.
Or in other words,
2/3rds of what you see occurs behind your eyes. Thanks to a Chinese proverb for that one.
Most of these arguments may be initially resolved by invading the power of those who set up all the rules in the first place. Education is one smart nonthreatening way to attempt to do that. Until then, yes protests are a way to advertize pseudo power, a form of checks and balances. You cannot protest every day nor can you align with every cause. So yes a strategy is needed to exert small checks. Lumping class with immigration can make their issues more or less difficult to swallow depending on who is doing the swallowing. Workers of the world unite I have freshly picked mangoes for all of you to sell.
What is important to bear in mind, since most people here love to be blinded by their otherness, is to look at one's home countries where one's otherness may be less of an issue and see that alot of the problems discussed here still persist in various forms, just different variables.
Great post, Abhi. Leaving socialism to one side, there does remain an intimate and necessary connection between immigrants' rights and workers' rights given the realities of the social and economic context within which immigration takes place. I don't think it's really all that easy to disentangle the two issues from each other, and advocating for both hand in hand is pretty important -- immigrant workers, for example, are more vulnerable to exploitation based on their immigration status when workplace protections for labor are weak. Also, for most of its existence the organized labor movement was one of the driving forces behind anti-immigrant movements -- their shift in recent years to a more pro-immigration position has been an important step towards advancing immigrants' rights, and that progress could be undermined if we don't continue to pay attention to the ways in which immigrants' rights and workers' rights are intertwined. But none of that is necessarily inconsistent with anything you're saying, and your point about strategy is very well taken.
bad link to this comment:
Obviously you just can't do stuff like that with out being white.
there does remain an intimate and necessary connection between immigrants' rights and workers' rights given the realities of the social and economic context within which immigration takes place.
american immigration is bimodal. there are indian doctors and the mexican farm workers. the problem i have is when people assert one narrative as definitive and universal in its applicability.
In a world of limited resources, even if class or race or gender were neutralized or all wedded together, the prevailing powers that be will always choose some other variables by which to self- dispense the fruits of the earth. (Not mangos)
from Gogol to the Corinthians.
Abhi:
Is this not an argument against open-borders with Mexico? By inheriting poverty created by Latin America's almost feudal system of social stratification--with strongly drawn (racially defined) class lines--are we not adding to our own race/class stratification, driving down wages for poor americans (although we're driving down prices too), and inheriting problems (gangs for example) that bode ill for race-relations? Not to mention allowing Mexico's hereditary plutocartic elite to put off free market reforms in their own country.
However, these demonstrations increasingly pose a problem for me. They are no longer just about immigration (to be fair I wonder if they ever were). They are rallies by the working class against the elite.
Poor logic Abhi, these are essentially Hispanic ethnic rallies agitating for amnesty et al. if they were just "working class" rallies they would have had sizable white and black components, which they did not. And the many flags of Latin American nations being waved is a clue, too.
It's unconvincing when writers try to use the word "brown" as a unifier of Mexican busboys and doctors from Delhi. I'm sure the two groups feel intimately connected and have similar lives.
i m in favor of immigration reform coz its the right thing to do. but these guys are not helping their cause by waving non-USA flags. Dont they know that usa is a patriotic flag-waving country. you do a protest with 500,000 people and there are usa flags being waved. thats when you convince the american people that you wanna melt in the pot, in their house and not stand out.
can someone go tell them that?
Yeah, but look at the vast commonalities, Razib. Both Indian doctors and Mexican farm workers are marked by their skin color. Even if the economic classes they supposedly belong to are on opposite ends, the 'rich' Indian doctor cannot fully escape hir skin color, and that goes across immigrant generation too.
Both groups have to deal with unreasonable barriers with regard to the free trade of their labor and services - whether it is discriminatory licensing (both in impact and intent), visa, and credentialing requirements on the one hand - or (lack of) 'legal status', far-below market ('low') wages, and persistent workplace oppression on the other. They are not identical in every way, I grant you, still, there are important similarities that it ill-behooves us to ignore.
The 'overclass' and its hacks can sure as hell be depended on to play up the differences, as a way of undercutting one element of solidarity. At the same time, there will be enough otherizing discourses under way that will make the 'upper-class elite immigrants' also severely uncomfortable, subject to discrimination, and thus downwardly mobile.
Why the quotation marks around 'rich' chachaji? Does class matter, or doesn't it?
One group is 'pre screened' to add value, another group is just (illegally) here. That line is blurring for some highly skilled 'good' immigrants, with tradedable jobs. They can be subject to abuse for the purposes of internationalcapital.
source
Many of the workers who have come over on the program who want to stay, can't. While the US based companies who say there are not enough skilled Americans- can have their cake and eat it to. They hire 3rd party outsourcing companies who operate in the US and India import the 'cheaper' labor ,and the big US company can say they are not sending jobs to overseas.
It both does and doesn't, depending on the specific circs. It might for you, and it might not for others. But more importantly, it can be made to matter in the larger debate by
convincingconning the 'rich' into thinking that they have nothing to gain and everything to lose by identifying with the Mexican farm workers. Thanks for noticing that, btw!Even if the economic classes they supposedly belong to are on opposite ends, (emphasis added)
yes, that US desis earn more $$ than US whites is just a rumour, as is the poverty of illegal Mexican farm workers. Their similar pigmentation will bind them together in the end, which is why I saw my urologist Dr. Tolani waving a Salvadoran flag in the footage.
dilletante, good points in #31. The international economy is evolving largely in ways that make most of the highly skilled jobs remotely do-able, and it's not just 'programmers' or even just medical transcriptionists any more, but radiologists, and someday soon, perhaps psychiatrists too. Computer-assisted surgery supervised by remotely located surgeons is also not too far off. Here the tradeability/outsoure-ability of the job gets the workforce to tolerate insecurity, reduce wage expectations, etc. And this is at the high end. At the 'low-end', since occupations are non-tradeable (maid, gardner, laundryman, etc), compliance is enforced the old-fashioned way - through brute force. Immigration, both legal and illegal, plays at both ends. So it is not really possible to conceptually separate immigration fairness and fair workplace rights.
Here's one attempt to vut through this big khichdi of arguments here:
1) It would be nice to disentangle race and class. But it is not the presence of socialists and leftists are rallies that entangles them, but the way that class society has developed historically. "Races" as we distinguish them today emerge directly from the processes of transnational systems of slavery and colonialism. (I am not saying that people did not have different skin colors before slavery and colonialism, but that people did not see people with different skin colors as being inherently different as we do now).
2) In other words, the cops were so vicious precisely because they see in the immigrants rights movement a workers' movement. Sure having reds there helps them to justify it, but that's not a reason to blame the reds. In fact, socialist groups like the one I'm a part of are not simply appearing around this issue once a year, but working with immigrant groups around the ICE raids, etc.
3) The fact that the immigrant-workers at these rallies have been mostly Latino does not meant they are no longer workers' rallies. It means that given the deep fragmentation among workers, a) many non-Latino workers do not see this as their issue, if they are not outrightly hostile to it, and b) many Latino workers also see it as a racial/ethnic thing as opposed to workers' thing.
4) On the date. The first massive rally happened in March 2006 in LA. Then there was one in Chicago. The May Day event in 2006 was organized as the first national event, and the significance was not lost on the Latino organizers who come from countries with rich workers' traditions (whether they regard it as socialist or communist or not). In most of the world, May Day is a workers' holiday and the association with communism/socialism is not as feared as it is here, even when people do not agree with it.
5) On waving other countries' flags. As people on this list should now, nationalism is a common response to when you're attacked for being an outsider. In fact, if you're opposed to folks waving non-American flags, it may be because you're simply reverting to your own form of nationalism.
6) Live with hybridity! Every movement has different edges and directions, merging in with other movements and ideas. On May Day, both socialists and Catholic priests turned out in large numbers, representing different isological wings of the movements. Do you think every mass struggle during Indian independence happened was driven by "nationalism" and "independence"? No -- a variety of grievances accumulated, mobilizations happened, and the Congress nationalists were the best equiped to give expression to them through the lends of nationalism. A variety of other people said wait, don't tie together these local struggle with the national one....
#29 chachaji: Are you for real? Why not extend this coalition of the oppressed a little bit further and include the Long Island Jappies as well? You see, because the otherizing discourse of anti-Semitism can resurface any day?
Sorry for the editing errors in the last post! The link that didn't work is www.internationalsocialist.org. For those who don't get why we should defend undocumented workers, check out this article.
For crikey's sake - are these statistics ever normalized for education and years of work experience? Is wealth looked at? When it is well known that desis are much better educated than the average white, why compare the average desi income with the average white? And why compare income, which can vary a lot, even for a single individual at different times in their career - and not wealth, which, normalized for age, inheritance and education, is a good index of lifetime economic achievement, where comparisons would show the impact of discrimination ('if any')? Of course, some desis will do well even here, but the average desi, by my sense, will not look particularly good relative to whites of comparable education and family status.
For crikey's sake Watch the language, pal ;)
- are these statistics ever normalized for education and years of work experience?
Not a relevant point, because it doesn't affect what you claim are the "vast commonalities" between (on average) poor Mexican and (on average) rich Indian immigrants to the U.S. that should lead to a wider brown identity.
It also is likely a factor in this that the Indian immigrants will probably have average higher IQ than U.S. whites, and the Mexican immigrants will have average IQ lower than whites.
By inheriting poverty created by Latin America's almost feudal system of social stratification-
Way to paint with a broad brush AND oversimplify, eh Manju?
As far as this being a communist mob goes, I don't think it really says communist mob so much as anarchists and they pretty much come out to any old rally they can, especially if there might be a confrontation with police. I think there are many agendas being pushed here and socialism/communism isn't even the big one...I just remembered Dr. King used to be called a communist rabble-rouser, since the perception of anyone agitating was linked to the communism.
The workers rights and immigrants rights movements have long been associated with socialism. I do know a few union leaders in Detroit and Chicago that are communists but they have their hands full with AFSCME rallies and such. Because they are usually single-issue focused, there isn't any anarchist presence with them. Of course, those folks are usually older than your average anarchist.
In the video,I think the drumming/horns etc. was the crash worship people, who like to lend chaos to rallies. Total anarchists.
Please don't ask why I would know that. ;)
He's been married to a Mexican-American for 25 years. Might want to read his recent "60 Minutes" interview before making any broad assumptions:
It is funny the word "illegal" is always left out when the term "anti-immigrant" is thrown around.
The commonalities stem from discrimination and otherization based on skin color, in their particular occupational situations. The wealth disparity, culled from properly normalized statistics, would have illustrated exactly that, therefore a very relevant point.
Right, like 'IQ' can be completely decontexted and legitimated as a 'figure of merit' in any relevant sense, and applied without correction across cultures and socio-economic status. It is barely meaningful, even after you make all those corrections and normalizations.
Chachaji,
Don't even bother with that troll...
The commonalities stem from discrimination and otherization based on skin color, in their particular occupational situations. The wealth disparity, culled from properly normalized statistics, would have illustrated exactly that...
OK, well good luck with that. I'm sure an Indian radiologist making 350K/yr. in a nice office in L.A. and a Mexican dishwasher making 20K/yr. doing shit work in the desi doctor's favorite restaurant will see things your way.
If they're not buying it, just show them some properly normalized statistics.
I noted that Abhi has asked a specific question here, namely the conflation of the immigration issue with that of workers' rights and if that is the prudent way to deal with either question. As I pointed out in my own post, the May 1 afternoon gathering in MacArthur Park was officially an International Workers' Day meeting although it is commonly being referred to as an immigration rally. In my own post I focused on LAPD's action/ overreaction due to the ordeal my daughter faced at the event. (Abhi, thanks for the link)
I would like to ask readers here also to weigh in on what they thought of the LAPD's behavior, regardless of what they may think of the immigration issue or even workers' rights. Can it be that the LAPD was emboldened to act recklessly because they too saw the rally as an "immigration" thing where the targets would mostly be undocumented / illegal aliens whose plight would engender little sympathy among "real" Americans? Whether my daughter who was assaulted while wearing the highly visible neon green hat widely associated with NLG observers because she too looked like one of "them?" Could my daughter's experience have been a case like the one Chachaji sagely warns about in comment # 29? That an educated, middle class, professional and LEGAL American too can be made to feel "uncomfortable" and downright threatened due to conflation of ethnic backgrounds based on skin color? Should we ignore the likelihood of such "conflation" of ethnicities at the street level when we split hairs about the "quality", "IQ" or the "usefulness to the economy" of different types of immigrants?
Actually desi-americans are more likely to be seen behind the counter of a quick mart or 7-11, or driving a taxi than as doctors or lawyers.
And desis in America have lower home ownership rates than hispanic and african-americans. Owning your own home is the american dream, and in the pursuit of this dream desis, including indians, fall way short. Whites have the highest home ownership rates followed by east asians and filipinos.
East asians are already seen as more or less the equal of whites. Desis on the other hand are handicapped by the stigma of being from one of the two most backward and poverty stricken regions of the planet. Besides being one of the two darkest races in a white and east asian dominated world that equates heavy pigmentation with inferiority.
I dont know if IQ data on desi-americans is available, but desis in general have lower tested IQs than hispanics, and even african-americans. Europeans and east asians have the highest measured IQs.
Reality check: mexicans, and other south american mestizos and native americans, have significantly lighter pigmentation than the stereotypical desi.
Reality check: mexicans, and other south american mestizos and native americans, have significantly lighter pigmentation than the stereotypical desi.
Reality check: we come in all shades of brown from pale, to gold, to black.
Can we please stop with the overgeneralizing about skin color, latin countries and IQ on this thread?
Could my daughter's experience have been a case like the one Chachaji sagely warns about in comment # 29? That an educated, middle class, professional and LEGAL American too can be made to feel "uncomfortable" and downright threatened due to conflation of ethnic backgrounds based on skin color?
no.
i know a woman who is an alfalfa heir who during her "hippie" phase decided to live in the shacks with her parents' illegal mexican help. an INS raid caught her and she was thrown in the wagon with all the illegals. it took a little while for her parents to intervene and extricate her from the mess. that doesn't mean that she, a white-skinned american who lives in a mansion, is now somehow of the same interest as the mexican illegals with whom she was temporarily confused.
chachaji, speaking of normalizing statistics, instead of talking, dig them up. it isn't that hard. i am willing to argue with numbers, and normally i am willing to spend time looking them up, but i have some genetics reading to do so i will leave it up to you to make this argument more empirical.
to follow up my last post: the sikh american taxi driver and sikh american professor have the same skin color and cultural background. to typical white americans they look the same. that does not mean their interests are the same. that's why i find a meta-narrative which compresses all "immigrants," documented and un, ph.d. and day labor, into one "oppressed" class to be unhelpful. there are points of commonality, but in the end we shouldn't be surprised when mexican americans show up with placards declaring how they're christian and not muslim to gain sympathy.
btw, "prema," i'm insulted, offended even! ;-)
Is this the same prema that made a comment about Koreans a few weeks ago that got alot of attention.
Abhi,
The folks who marched do not have the time to parse their reasons for being there. For them, life=work=immigration=survial.
So, this confluence was inevitable. And with the declining influence of unions, they will take their chances where they can.
One cannot rule out the mob mentaility that takes over whenever so many poeple gather. But, the LAPD - jeez!
As a legal immigrant, i am torn up about the issue of blanket legalization.
Aemrica is gradually losing its ability to tackle social issues as a First World nation would usually do. The lines are geting blurred and the solutions will have to be more creative, more on-the-fly. Which I think is a great thing. It will force us, as a nation, to think less clinically about societal ills, and more organically about them.
Actually, not all the studies that need doing get done even on the data that is there, and sometimes not all relevant variables even exist in the population-wide raw data, because nobody thought to ask that particular question that specific way. That's just the point.
But with a little bit of thought, you can identify the variables likely to be relevant, whether the 'data' and studies exist or not. However, nobody needs statistics to understand, for example, that income is an imperfect index of economic achievement.
Here's the US Census Bureau, based on a quick search, from their 'latest studies' tab.
Excerpt:
Notice the huge, factor-of-10 difference in net worth between whites - and Hispanics & Blacks.
Aemrica is gradually losing its ability to tackle social issues as a First World nation would usually do. The lines are geting blurred and the solutions will have to be more creative, more on-the-fly. Which I think is a great thing. It will force us, as a nation, to think less clinically about societal ills, and more organically about them.
losing the ability to tackle social issues as a first world country is a great thing, yes.
Hunh?
The folks who marched do not have the time to parse their reasons for being there. For them, life=work=immigration=survial.
no it isn't. mexico & central america are not brownland or africa. consider life exp.:
United States: 77.85 years
Mexico: 75.41 years
India: 64.71 years
mexican workers aren't dreaming of subsistence, they have that, and somewhat more, but a consumer lifestyle.
You should never assume a government by the people, for the people will protect you. Govt Warning: this government is more hazardous than smoking.
Racism sexism blah blah blah will never go away. Stop sanitizing the self and society with your high minded ideas.
Lower your expectations, be vigilant all times, and keep receipts of all transactions.
Notice the huge, factor-of-10 difference in net worth between whites - and Hispanics & Blacks.
so???? (i'm not a moron, i know very well the asset level difference between blacks and whites, i am curious about brownz) seriously dude, i thought there was something beyond the talk. i'm talking about brown M.D.s. if i were you i would dig up health statistics and what not, that would be a good starting point to show how the evil-white-man's-foot oppresses professionals making 300 K/year. as it is you're giving me this stuff about how statistics don't capture blah, blah, blah. in which case it's just your opinion vs. mine, and we go nowhere.
RTA,
Lose those numbers. Walk the streets - better still take (or wait perpetually for) an MTA bus L.A.
Nada,
Let me try this again...
...America can no longer tackle social issues as a monolithic first world country would.
America can no longer tackle social issues as a monolithic first world country would.
Sorry, but the U.S. is a monolith, Neale -- largest economy in the world, 3rd highest area and population, cultural influence, etc.
Again , Nada, you are talking numbers and suchlike.
Do you really think we are a monolithic society, when, for example, a town in Kansas becomes a haven for Somali asylum seekers? Or our richest county in CA is close-to-majority Asian? Or the constant snarky notes people leave on the office microwave aboout "heating spicy meals"? Or the luxury public toilets in downtown L.A. have signage in seven languages?
LA has buses??? i kid....
anyway, if you don't want numbers, why don't you whip out illustrator and throw together and impressionistic painting of 'amerika'? that'll be as intelligible as some of the stuff you're trying to get across (i think i know what you're saying, but you're not making it easy on the rest of us who don't speak nealese).
Specific data on asset levels at incomes of 300K/yr separated by *race*, controlled for education, inheritance levels, etc. Yeah sure, that data is just waiting out there for someone like me to dig it up. :)
My original point was simply that a focus on income is incomplete - that point was already made in the comment, and the Census piece makes it better.
300K (or 350K) /yr MDs had no place in my comment. Nada brought it up to contrast with 20K/yr dishwashers.
My point was about desi (recent, and not-so-recent) immigrant MDs facing licensure, credentialing, and other barriers, that I compared with legality status, low wages, etc. In both cases, their brown skin color is relevant to their occupational situations. Not having data might make this my opinion, still, it could be a very educated and nuanced opinion based on a lot of data on similar situations. However, not having quantitative 'data' does not by itself make an otherwise plausible assertion untrue!
That's all. I'm out of this one.
I think Rajiv Malhotra's essay on whiteness studies, would add to the discussion here
first, there is data out there which suggests that asians/immigrants/etc. get less $$$/per year of education. that's trivial to dig up, really.
My point was about desi (recent, and not-so-recent) immigrant MDs facing licensure, credentialing, and other barriers, that I compared with legality status, low wages, etc. In both cases, their brown skin color is relevant to their occupational situations.
yeah, i think the comparison totally trivializes the latter case. just like comparing white collar outsourcing trivializes the experience that blue collar workers have had to deal with over the past generation. everyone wants to be equally victimized today, and all oppression is somehow a different face of the same problem. i don't think so. this is an old issue, just like upper-middle-class elite students in the 1960s wanted to pretend that they were the new revolutionary vanguard since the proletariat wasn't sufficiently radical (or even reactionary re: vietnam war).
ultimately, this is the same issue that comes up when we try to figure out what common political points brownz as a whole, muslim, hindu, indian, pakistani, blue collar, white collar, liberal, conservative, have in common. i don't think there is a "brown" solid interest, there are points of commonality on occassion. but being brown doesn't mean your middle class status, or muslim religion, or leftist inclination, is some less relevant or doesn't generate fissures with brownz of other contrary inclinations.
as for the specific issue of immigrants. i have sympathy for the undocumented as humans, but i think we need to keep in mind that there are billions of underprivileged in the world. to some extent empathy is proportionate to distance, so the undocumented who labor in your fields and in your restaurants will garner more sympathy than the out of site and out of mind who starve in darfur or zimbabwe, but i find a pure appeal to moral principle in normalizing status tiresome when we live in a world filled with such gross and ubiquitous misery. whatever proximate yield we receive in good karma contingent upon our compassion i believe is more than balanced by the long term impact of legalizing those who proactively broke american laws to enter this country.
RTA,
Glad to be of any help :-)
Americans too pussy for a revolution? If this was the thir world we'd have had us a battle.
If you keep getting insulted and offended by facts and rational arguments you are in for a rough ride.
United States: 77.85 years
Mexico: 75.41 years
India: 64.71 years
Or compare the nominal per capita income of Mexico to that of South Asia or Subsaharan Africa:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita
The per capita income of Mexico is over $8000 and ranks it at 55th on the list, compared to India's per capita income of less than $800 which is low even by third world stahdards and ranks it at #134 on the list.
Or compare Mexico to India in the Human Development Index:
Human Development Index rankings
Mexico is ranked at #53 while India is at #126
It is laughable to see desis like Nada copping a superior attitude towards hispanics.
Hmmmm #1...I met a lovely journalist from Texas (of Mexican heritage) who made a half-joke about Mexicans "just taking back territory."
Hmmmm #2...I keep wondering if it wouldn't be better for Americans & Mexicans if the US just annexed the rest of Mexico, ya know? Aren't we about due for another star on ye ole flag? Of course, thanks to W et al, there's no money to buy Mexico, and no military to take it. Drat. And here I was hoping I could solve this bugger from my armchair like my esteemed peers... I'm not worthy...
Well that's a depressing list. The top 30 countries in the world are all European / European-majority, plus a few East Asian countries. The bottom 30 are almost all African.
Whats more depressing is that India is worse off than sub-saharan Africa when it comes to chronic malnutrition, especially of women and children; and in the number of little children working as slaves.
Is Prema the reincarnation of Doordarshan? : )
the overclass will make sure that a large and cheap servile class exists to take care of their babies, do the lawn care and take the trash out (as some SM commenters have state in the past, 'i don't know what we'd do without maria!' [hint: you'd do your own chores])
I have heard this line of reasoning quite a few times. Yet to see any evidence to back this up. It may or may not be true.
Yeah, that must be what RTA means. all makes sense...koreans, IQ, etc.
You look good in drag, doordarshan, but you can't pull a shanghai surprise on razib, he's too clever.
I can't believe people are actually arguing that a desi's class privilege negates their racial status. My mother is a doctor, but that doesn't stop her from getting shitting service or getting harrassed over her Bengali accent. Oh, or assaulted in her workplace by a 300-pound man.
Well said Razib ;-)
I can't believe people are actually arguing that a desi's class privilege negates their racial status. There's no such thing as a glass ceiling? Perhaps you should check out my father's (an engineer) workplace. My mother is a doctor, but that doesn't stop her from getting shitting service or getting harrassed over her Bengali accent. Oh, or assaulted in her workplace by a nearly three hundred pound man.
Agh, I meant *shitty service.
People of color with class privilege can buy some protections against harassment, but at the end of the day cannot buy white privilege. And obviously (this shouldn't even need to be said), not all desis are rich. I don't think anyone was claiming that Mexicans and Indians are exactly the same. But there can't be very much progress in combating discrimination until people find the commonalities they do have and work towards building coalitions.
Some Data from 'Asian Nation' indicates that Asians earn less money than whites with similar educational attainments. Found here.
"That is, beyond a high school degree, a White with 4 more years of education (equivalent to a college degree) can expect to earn $2088 per year in salary. In contrast, returns on each additional year of education for a Japanese American is only $438. For a Chinese American, it's $320. For Blacks, it's even worse at only $284. What this means is that basically, a typical Asian American has to get more years of education just to make the same amount of money that a typical White makes with less education."
Also, here is an abstract from an academic paper by Waldiger and others of the difference in income among Asians immigrants and White natives with the same educational attainment over time.
R. Waldinger, M. Bozorgmehr, N. Lim and L. Finkel. In Search of the Glass Ceiling: The Career Trajectories of Immigrant and Native-born Engineers. January 1998. 23 pages. $5.00. DOWNLOAD (PDF)
ABSTRACT
"This paper reports on an effort designed to search for the glass ceiling, through a study of the career trajectories of native white and Asian immigrant engineers. Using data drawn from a survey of the M.S. graduates of the engineering school at "Southern California U," we find that some form of labor market segmentation, so common at lower levels of the economy, is also restricting the mobility of highly skilled foreign-born engineers. Our key finding shows that immigrants receive a significantly lower return to experience than do their native-born counterparts. Consequently, the immigrant's career takes a distinctively different shape after 17 years of experience, native-born engineers surpass their immigrant counterparts, enjoying continuous earnings growth."
This data proves
1. Asians earn significantly less compared to their white counterparts with similar education.
2. Asian Immigrants earn less than native whites.
Therefore, there is a racial liability. Asians in general might try to compensate this liability with higher education which translates into class privilege.
*To qualify my second statement, I meant Asian immigrants have a significantly lower yield for their experiences compared to whites after a 17 year trajectory period.
Also, keep in mind that the data from Asian Nation might not be entirely accurate due to its bias against the model minority myth about Asian Americans. There might also be a significant difference in wages between more assimilated ethnic groups (like the Japanese) and less (like the Chinese). I will also try to find a paper that might address South Asians directly and that is downloadable like the second abstract.
Whats more depressing is that India is worse off than sub-saharan Africa when it comes to chronic malnutrition
Pathetically racist statement. Why is it MORE depressing that Indians are worse off than the equally colonized and plundered Africans? It's because you hold them to a lower standard.
the overclass will make sure that a large and cheap servile class exists to take care of their babies, do the lawn care and take the trash out (as some SM commenters have state in the past, 'i don't know what we'd do without maria!' [hint: you'd do your own chores])
To expand on what I said earlier, I am not sure that people who hire illegals for doing domestic chores will necessarily end up supporting amnesty for illegals for that reason.
78 Boris:: Perhaps think of it this way: by assuming that class privilege doesn't matter, rich people of color co-opt the struggles of the lower class. Obviously, being a member of the overclass, it is in your interest to claim your victimhood to be the most precious. But by doing so, you are also building a wedge between the white and brown working classes (or doing little to bridge the gap that is already there). By many indicators, class division in the US is growing and the American working class (including the white one) has been screwed over in the last ~20 years, and frankly, my empathy would go with people of any race who are nickeled and dimed. Of course, racial issues are an important question, but it is very much class-dependent and it is ridiculous, even insidious, to claim solidarity on basis of racial otherness alone.
Don't be a carpetbagger, Boris.
razib, this is a rather simplistic and one-sided characterization of the social and economic realities of undocumented immigration. to a considerable extent, people "proactively break american laws to enter this country" because american society structures, facilitates, and encourages both their ability and willingness to do so. that's an important part of the moral equation here.
How so?
Torpedo quoting Boris:
Darn, I suck at this quoting thing. Lemme try again...
Torpedo quoting Boris:
Ooops...I must've missed the post where Boris made that assumption... Or could it be Torpedo assumed that Boris assumed...?
Yeah, cuz then you would be in the company of Jesus, Bobby Kennedy, and Hillary Clinton...all of whom were called carpetbaggers...
Oh, ya'all are just too fun on this blog!!! How am I ever going to get any work done???
non-enforcement of immigration laws
sanctuary cities (like SF)
police ordered to not cooperate with immigration oficials
walmart forced to provede day worker shelters
taxpayer funded day worker centers
texas prosecuters refusing to bring charges against illegals until 6th arrest
corporations hiring illegal labor
catch and release program
fair enough.
Always pictured you to be too butch to have
boyman crushes.Manju, those are all government actions/inactions, not done by society. There is a difference between actions by elites and actions by the masses. Polls show most Americans want an end to illegal immigration but it is blocked by the political elites at every turn.
chachaji
Thats such bullshit, move to France or Germany and experience real ethnic discrimination, that is when an Indian doctor cleans a toilet. Sorry, but the very fact that Indians earn more than white people tell us that you get the jobs that you are educated for and not "France first" as in socialist European countries.
"Pathetically racist statement. Why is it MORE depressing that Indians are worse off than the equally colonized and plundered Africans?"
Maybe because we did it by our own hands and haven't had a war in Bihar as they have in Sierra Leone, Nhruvian-Socialism made our coutry poor. Nothing else.
Well Doordashan was being all femme, but luckily Razib always knows what's in ones genes, allowing this butch to avoid a crying game moment.
There are some seriously delusional folks here (Nada, Manju et al) imagining that they belong to a highly "privileged" community in America, and acting all superior to african and hispanic americans, and low income whites.
But if you listen to the above-mentioned types, desi-americans must all be doctors, lawyers and engineers who are the toast of America. They probably are also delusional enough to buy the BJP propaganda: "India is shining; the world is in awe of us" :)
Facts like the following cannot shake these pathetic creatures from their fantasies:
http://www.sepiamutiny.com/sepia/archives/003799.html
"Poverty: One doesn't think that poverty affects the desi community -- looking simply at the median household income we see that it is higher than the national and higher than non-Hispanic whites at $45,576 for Pakistanis, $52,392 for Sri Lankans, and $61,322 for Asian Indians. Bangladeshis we see fall the lowest at $37,074. When delving further we see that 15% of Bangladeshis and Asian Indians have 3 or more workers per family. Pakistani at 14%, Sri Lankan at 12% -- the national number is 12%. But when comparing these numbers to the percentage of people below poverty level we see that all South Asians have a higher percentage than whites (8%): Bangladeshi 23%, Pakistani 18%, Sri Lankan 10%, and Asian Indian 10%. Seeing such 'high' numbers of poverty in our community, it's sad to see that public assistance for this community is far less: 4% of Bangladeshi, 2% Pakistani, 2% Asian Indian and 1% Sri Lankan.
Housing: Though nationally, 66% of Americans own homes, and 72% of whites own homes, the numbers for South Asian Americans is less than this. 25% of Bangladeshis, 40% of Pakistanis, 47% of Asian Indians, and 50% of Sri Lankans. Unfortunately, the overcrowded housing issue is far worse -- 6% nationally live in over crowded housing, 2% of Whites, where as 43% of Bangladeshis, 31% of Pakistani, 21% of Sri Lankans, and 18% of Asian Indians."
Desis have the lowest home ownership rates and the highest(?) over crowded housing rates in America; and higher poverty rates than whites. Add the fact that desis are a very dark-skinned race in a society that considers that a stigma signifying inferiority, and one can see that all this talk of being a "privileged community" is very silly.
Compared to you Manju, of course he is :)
Many people mistake academic language and pretentiousness for knowledge and wisdom. You are not alone.
Interesting discussion. Seems most of the discussion has fallen way off the initial question that Abhi asked. I agree with Scarletguju (comment #35) and Neale (comment #53). This was a rally to