Many Blacks Split With Civil Rights Leaders On Immigration

(NewAmerica.org) — The cameras homed in on the Reverend Al Sharpton as he led thousands to the Arizona state capitol building in Phoenix in an old fashioned, energetic, shouting, chanting, sign-carrying civil rights style march. The marchers demanded the repeal of Arizona’s hotly contested immigration law. Meanwhile, on the periphery of the march, a small band of counter protesters shouted, hooted, and hectored Sharpton and the other marchers. Their action drew almost no news mention. However, their counter-protest was different. They were mostly African American. The temptation is to laugh off their pro-SB 1070 countermarch as a comic sideshow. After all, Sharpton, President Obama, all major civil rights groups, the Congressional Black Caucus and nearly all local black Democratic state and local officials unequivocally champion immigration reform and oppose the Arizona law.

But many blacks don’t agree with them.  In fact, there is a quiet but glaring disconnect between civil rights leaders’ outspoken support for liberal immigration reform measures and the unease, wariness and outright antipathy that many blacks feel toward illegal immigration. That disconnect is evident in blog posts, chat rooms, Web sites, letters to newspaper editors, and radio talk shows. Many blacks blame illegal immigrants for the poverty and job dislocation in black communities.

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