Bridging Black and Brown

With immigration debate raging in Washington, local group seeks black understanding of immigrants' plight.Leonard McNeil, a San Pablo city councilman, stood in front of an audience of about 25 in the city's Mission-style council chambers on a spring Thursday evening and asked, "How many people know who Vicente Guerrero is?" Only a few raised their hands. Guerrero was, in fact, the first black-Indian president of Mexico, McNeil explained. Though in office for less than a year, Guerrero signed a decree banning slavery in Mexico in 1829. It's one of the little-known historical facts connecting African Americans and Latinos — a commonality upon which McNeil hoped to shed light at this meeting hosted by the Black Alliance for Just Immigration. The Berkeley-based group, which formed last year, claims to be the only one in the country fostering black support for immigrant rights. Black voices have been largely absent from the debate over the Senate's immigration reform bill, McNeil says, and the group hopes to change that. In April, the alliance organized a delegation of fourteen black leaders from the Bay Area, Seattle, Philadelphia, New York, Los Angeles, and Mississippi for a four-day trip to "investigate human-rights abuses of immigrants and indigenous peoples on the US-Mexico border." What they discovered only strengthened their belief that black Americans should become vocal allies of the nation's immigrant communities."It's about social, economic justice, and struggling against racism," McNeil told the crowd, an ethnically mixed group of blacks, whites, and Latinos. The councilman views blacks and Latinos as not only having a shared history, but similar concerns. "If you look at health, housing, the digital divide, incarceration, Chicanos/Latinos and African Americans, we have common issues," he said.Yet, outside of this meeting, McNeil's perspective tends to be in the minority. Nationally, black organizations like Project 21 and Choose Black America have taken active anti-immigration stances. Recently, a study by Vanderbilt University professor Carol Swain based on Pew Hispanic Center data concluded that illegal immigration is hurting black Americans, and that any parallels made between the two groups' experiences are unfounded. Some blacks have even joined the Minutemen. SOURCE OF THIS STORY