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Portraying African Americans As Anti-Immigrant: What NumbersUSA Doesn’t Want You To Notice

By Guest Blogger on Oct 31, 2012 at 4:20 pm

Our guest blogger is Daniella Gibbs Leger, Vice President for New American Communities Initiatives at the Center for American Progress.

Every election cycle is different, but there are a few tried and true tactics that get pulled out every year. One of the most annoying and cynical ones is the efforts by opponents of immigration reform to put a wedge between the African American community and Latinos. NumbersUSA is an anti-immigrant group that has a history of producing racist ads aimed at causing controversy and division. They are fond of running ads portraying black people as hostile to immigration because, as their story goes, immigrants take away jobs from black people. Their goal is to pull African American support away from pro-immigration candidates and ballot initiatives like the Maryland DREAM Act.

Groups like NumbersUSA don’t let little things like the facts get in their way. For one, there is strong support for immigrants within the African American community. Earlier this year, a coalition of prominent African American clergy from across the country who supported immigration reform joined with Hispanic clergy to push for reform. In April, the NAACP and other African American groups teamed with immigration activists to not only commemorate the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, but also to speak out against Alabama’s severe, anti-immigrant HB56 law. In Maryland, 70 percent of African Americans voters support the “Dream Act.” And across the country, Black legislators have led the fight against harsh Arizona-style bills. Civil Rights leaders and members of the Congressional Black Caucus have stood firmly on the side of pro-immigrant groups because they understand the pain of discrimination and that racism and injustice must be fought no matter where it is found.

Second, immigration is a net positive on our economy. In just one example, if Congress actually passed the DREAM Act, the qualified undocumented immigrants who became legal residents could actually pursue higher education, get higher salaries, spend more and pay more taxes. The economic impact of this alone with be $329 billion and 1.4 million new jobs by 2030.

And third, while the Black unemployment rate is unacceptably high, it is not something that can be pinned on immigration. This isn’t something that just happened once immigration started picking up. Going back decades, Black unemployment has generally been about double that of the White population. If you look at the employment of Blacks and Whites on a graph, they will move up and down with each other, but they will never meet. It is undoubtedly true that some unscrupulous employers use the vulnerability of undocumented immigrants to undercut their existing workforce. But that is a problem addressed by enforcing labor laws against abusive employers and by reforming our immigration laws so that employers cannot lord immigration status over them.

It’s easy to point to high unemployment and the justified anxiety it creates and then launch into the blame game to further your political agenda. But if these groups were serious, we’d be having a real conversation about why African American unemployment is so high and what can be done about it. If conservative groups were really interested in bringing down the Black unemployment rate, they wouldn’t support cuts to programs that support job training or the candidates who propose them.

If there was one thing that really bothered me about the presidential debates, it was that none of them touched on the employment, wage and wealth gaps between people of color and Whites. As we race towards 2050 when there will be no clear ethnic majority in this nation, it is critical to ensure that the communities that are growing the fastest see their disparities dissipate. It’s not just beneficial to African Americans – it will help guarantee a prosperous America in the future. If NumbersUSA was really concerned about the plight of the African American worker, they would put their money into real advocacy and not racist ads. But don’t be fooled. They don’t care. They are only interested in fear mongering and pushing their anti-immigrant stance. They’re just hoping we don’t notice.

Related Posts

LGBT

Baltimore Sun Endorses Question 6, Rebuts Anti-Gay ‘Scare Tactics’

By Zack Ford on Oct 31, 2012 at 4:19 pm

The Baltimore Sun published a detailed endorsement Tuesday of Question 6, Maryland’s referendum on marriage equality. Not only did the editorial board affirm that the law would “treat everyone the same” and protect religious freedom to not solemnize same-sex unions, but they took ample time to dispel opponents’ “scare tactics,” rebutting claims made about straight victims and kids learning about same-sex marriage. Instead, the Sun points out that marriage equality will benefit children and families:

As for Maryland’s children, this law only improves their welfare. Thousands of Maryland children are being raised by same-sex parents in this state already. Allowing their parents the chance to marry strengthens their families and provides them with crucial protections under the law. More fundamentally, it recognizes that their families are equal to everyone else’s.

The board also points out that out-of-state same-sex marriages are already recognized because of a recent court decision, so rejection Question 6 is pointless sacrifice of state income that helps nobody:

If that happens, Maryland will lose more than the money those couples would have spent here on cakes, photographers, caterers and florists. Some couples, no doubt, will return to Maryland to settle down, but others will surely decide to stay someplace where the law fully recognizes their value as members of the community.

Nothing short of marriage equality will accomplish that. Civil unions and domestic partnerships in some states have sought to afford gay families the same packages of rights and benefits as married couples — a difficult and usually incomplete task, given the number of laws that reference marriage in one way or another. But that approach creates two kinds of marriage — one for straight people and one for gay people — and that inevitably relegates same-sex couples to second-class citizenship.

Polls over the past few months (August 2, September 26, October 1, October 18) have all shown strong support for marriage equality, though a new poll this week shows a much tighter race. The Baltimore Sun has spelled out a very clear case for supporting the measure, but now it’s up to voters to ignore conservative fear-baiting and vote in the best interest of Maryland families.

Security

Hidden Tapes & Secret Emails: Right Wing Now Throwing Kitchen Sink At Obama On Libya

By Hayes Brown on Oct 31, 2012 at 3:49 pm

Newt Gingrich

In the closing days of the election, Republicans are throwing everything they can think of at President Obama to rattle his position on national security. Though a CBS poll taken immediately after the final Presidential debate had 64 percent of undecided voters believing Obama would be better on national security than Mitt Romney, the right remains convinced that Libya will be Obama’s undoing.

Despite former Bush administration Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice imploring that attacks be held off until an investigation is complete, more partisan Republicans refuse to heed her advice. To facilitate this, the right wing is floating almost any theory, no matter how implausible, in hopes of bringing Obama down, for example:

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) on Fox News this morning claimed, without offering any evidence, that veterans no longer trust Obama post-Benghazi:

MCCAIN: I’ve been traveling all over the country on behalf of Mitt Romney and I can tell you, our veterans are angry. They’re angry, and they no longer trust their Commander-in-Chief. Because this debacle has been — not only what has happened infuriated them, but also the cover-up.

John Bolton, seeming to take cues from conspiracy theorists Frank Gaffney and Aaron Klein, speculated on Tuesday that the U.S. may have been buying arms from terrorists in Libya to give to Syrians at the time of the attack:

BOLTON: Well, there has been speculation about it. I’ll just say my personal opinion. If we were buying weapons from the al Qaeda or terrorist militias in Benghazi to give to the Syrian opposition, I’m outraged by that because these surface-to-air missiles and other weapons from Gadhafi’s arsenal falling into the hands of terrorists is bad enough. For the U.S. to be transmitting them to opposition forces in Syria I think would be beyond the pale.

Also on Tuesday, Newt Gingrich referred to “rumors” about emails implicating the White House in incompetence:

GINGRICH: There is a rumor — I want to be clear, it’s a rumor — that at least two networks have emails from the National Security Adviser’s office telling a counterterrorism group to stand down. But they were a group in real-time trying to mobilize marines and C-130s and the fighter aircraft, and they were told explicitly by the White House stand down and do nothing. This is not a terrorist action.

And Rep. Randy Forbes (R-VA) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-GA) think Obama’s anti-torture pledge is keeping one of the arrested suspects away from U.S. interrogators:

CHAMBLISS: Once the president in January of 2009 signed the executive order, saying we are going to shut down Guantanamo … any enemy combatant, as this individual is, there are no policies in place to take possession and interrogate him in a way to gain valuable information.

Meanwhile, Sean Hannity is now claiming to have sources who heard “damning” audio tapes of those under attack in Benghazi:

HANNITY: [D]on’t you think, in fairness, in the complete spirit of transparency that the Obama administration promised, that if there are tapes that we could hear that caused Ty Woods to disobey orders, risk his military career, his life, and then he gave his life, why not release them to the American people before the election so we could get a picture of the full truth?

Watch all of their claims here:

As varying and disparate as they are, these right-wing claims all focus more on attacking the Obama administration than any desire to seek the truth on Benghazi. For the last month and a half, after Ambassador Susan Rice’s Sept. 16 appearance on several news shows, the right has taken every opportunity to try to politicize the attacks. So far all of their attempts and claims have gone down in flames.

In comparison, the State Department’s investigation is set to be completed in the coming weeks, which will lay out in full any security failures. Likewise, the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence will be convening hearings after the election to determine what intelligence failures actually happened on Sept. 11.

Health

NYU Hospital Lost Thousands Of Lab Mice And Years Of Research After Hurricane Sandy

By Aviva Shen on Oct 31, 2012 at 3:40 pm

While New York struggles to restore power and transit after extensive damage by Hurricane Sandy on Monday night, some of the storm’s greatest losses will take years to recover. Years of research and thousands of lab mice were lost when NYU Hospital’s generators failed and forced a mass evacuation during the storm.

The New York Daily News reports that the black-out destroyed many special enzymes, antibodies, and DNA strands that had been painstakingly produced in NYU’s research laboratories and stored at extremely cold temperatures. Scientists are trying to salvage what they can. Additionally, lab mice that were vital to ongoing experiments drowned in the flooding:

Even more alarming, thousands of mice that are used by scientists for cancer research and other experiments, drowned during a flood. It is unclear how the mice died, but the source told the News that many of these mice are genetically modified for certain research and took years to produce. It will likely set back several scientists’ work by years, the source said.

The storm flooded seven hospital buildings with up to ten feet of water on Monday. When the generators failed, roughly a thousand medical staff carried 215 patients, including the hospital’s chairman, Kenneth Langone, down many flights of stairs by flashlight. The patients are now being housed in other New York hospitals including Mount Sinai, Memorial Sloan-Kettering, and St. Luke’s Hospital.

Alyssa

‘Ghosts Of Ole Miss’: The Complicated History Of Racism And Football In The South

By Travis Waldron on Oct 31, 2012 at 3:34 pm

Ole Miss students rally against integration, 1962 (via Associated Press)

This fall marked the 50th anniversary of the “last battle of the Civil War,” the 1962 integration of the University of Mississippi, when President Kennedy sent the National Guard and ultimately the U.S. military into Oxford, Mississippi to force the school to enroll James Meredith, its first African American student. That fall, the Ole Miss football team went undefeated and untied and finished ranked third in the country, and the program hasn’t reached a similar level of success since.

The history of Meredith’s enrollment and the riots that ensued on a campus that still openly celebrated the Confederacy is one that goes under-taught in history books across the South, and the story of the all-white Ole Miss football team that conquered the Southeastern Conference that fall is one that doesn’t get remembered much by SEC football fans outside Oxford. But ESPN’s Wright Thompson, a Mississippi native, and documentary director Fritz Mitchell captured both stories beautifully — and addressed the past, present, and future of racial relations in Mississippi and at its flagship university — in “Ghosts of Ole Miss,” a documentary in ESPN’s 30 For 30 series, last night.

The hour-long film weaves through the history of Mississippi segregation and racism, and the pride Ole Miss fans take in the school’s football program, up until Meredith’s enrollment, when riots that remain a sore spot for the campus and the community erupted. Football played a role both in exacerbating and alleviating the warfare that took place on the Ole Miss campus. It was at halftime of a football game between Ole Miss and Kentucky that a Nuremberg-like rally broke out when Mississippi Gov. Ross Barnett fed off a frenzied, rebel flag-waving crowd and ultimately reneged on a secret deal he had made with the Kennedy brothers to allow Meredith to enroll. It was a football player, Buck Randall, who saw the carnage of the original riots and attempted, to no avail, to stop them. And it was football that both acted as a point of pride for ashamed Mississippians — “We’ve got to show the world that we’re not all bad,” head coach Johnny Vaught told the team before a game against Houston — and highlighted the lack of true equality afforded Meredith, who couldn’t attend football games because of safety concerns.

Despite the connection, though, football and the 1962 Ole Miss team are a mere proxy for the overall story of self-exploration undertaken by Thompson, who wrote in an introductory piece yesterday that he hoped the lesson of “Ghosts of Ole Miss” would be that people from outside Mississippi would see how far it has come, while people from inside Mississippi would see how far the state had to go. Perhaps to an outsider, that seems a convenient narrative, a wishing away of the South’s racist past with a “yes, but” tale of how Mississippi has changed. But as a “southerner” (I’m a native Kentuckian, southern to some, not as much to others) whose native state has its own seminal racial moments in college sports, Thompson’s inner struggle with the history of his home state and its home school felt familiar. It is a struggle felt by anyone who is proud to be where they’re from but who has waded into our history, anyone who has resisted Southern tradition and conformity on racial issues or any other. It is a struggle felt by anyone who is constantly reminded by the inside world that we want to change too fast and by the outside world that we are not changing fast enough.

That struggle is apparent today on the Ole Miss campus, where the Confederate flags are gone but the Confederate statues remain; where the school has abandoned Colonel Reb but still uses the “Rebels” nickname that was spawned by the students who left to join the Confederate army in 1862; where students elected a black student body president this year but the band still plays “Dixie,” the unofficial anthem of the Confederacy, during football games.

Those are conflicts Thompson addresses, and they are complicated. There are moments of reflection from players from the 1962 team (“I’m appalled that we treated another human being that way,” one admits. “You sit by, and you wonder why.”) and there are moments of introspection about the present from Thompson himself. “I like ‘Dixie’ too,” he says near the end of the film, “even as I know how it must sound to black Mississippians. It’s hard to reconcile these thoughts.”

But you can feel the pain of truth in Thompson’s narration as he says it: it may be hard to reconcile those thoughts, but to continue, we must. “There are questions Mississippians won’t ask because we’re not prepared to hear the answer,” Thompson says. And as much as his story is about Mississippi, it is really about us all. Without those answers and the exploration it takes to find them, from Mississippians, Southerners, and Americans in general, it will always be impossible to reconcile the ghosts of our past with the promises of our future.

Climate Progress

Green Party Candidate Jill Stein Arrested Protesting Keystone XL Pipeline: ‘I’m Here To Connect The Dots’

By Climate Guest Blogger on Oct 31, 2012 at 3:30 pm

by Katie Valentine

After more than two months of protests against construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas and Oklahoma, the arrest count has reached 33.

Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein was the latest to get arrested after she brought supplies to activist treesitters attempting to block construction of the Keystone XL pipeline in Texas. Stein issued a statement criticizing both President Obama and Governor Romney for their policies on fossil fuels:

“I’m here to connect the dots between super storm Sandy and the record heat, drought, and fire we’ve seen this year – and this Tar Sands pipeline, which will make all of these problems much worse. And I’m here to connect the dots between climate devastation and pipeline politicians – both Obama and Romney – who are competing, as we saw in the debates, for the role of Puppet In Chief for the fossil fuel industry. Both deserve that title. Obama’s record of ‘drill baby drill’ has gone beyond the harm done by George Bush. Mitt Romney promises more of the same.”

Stein’s arrest follows the Oct. 4 arrest of 78-year-old great grandmother Eleanor Fairchild, who was charged with trespassing on her own land after standing in the path of bulldozers. Fairchild, who was joined in her protest by actress Daryl Hannah, said in a video that she blocked the bulldozers for environmental reasons beyond her land.

“This is not just about my land; it’s about all of our country,” she said. “It needs to be stopped.”

Protests and acts of civil disobedience have been going on in Texas and Oklahoma since mid-August, after construction of the pipeline’s southern leg, which runs from Cushing, Oklahoma to the Gulf Coast, began in Texas on Aug. 9. Activists have chained themselves to logging machinery and pipeline transportation equipment and have hung banners at equipment storage sites. On Sept. 24, eight people climbed trees outside Winnsboro, Texas and refused to come down until pipeline construction stops, beginning what is said to be the first tree blockade in Texas history. As of last week, there were two protesters living in the tree houses and platforms constructed in the 80-ft. trees, each with no plans of coming down.

Though the arrest count has remained low compared to last year’s protests at the White House, interactions between police and protesters have been far more contentious. Last month, police reportedly used pepper spray and Tasers on two protesters chained to logging equipment before eventually removing and arresting them. Tar Sands Blockade describes police interaction at the tree blockade site:

During the last month TransCanada has tried everything to deter us from doing what we know is right. They’ve encouraged police to use torture tactics, operated heavy machinery dangerously close to peaceful protestors, confiscated our cameras, hit us with a SLAPP law suit, hired local law enforcement to set up a police state around the blockade, denied us food and water, arrested journalists, subjected blockades to 24/7 surveillance and floodlights…the list goes on.

The latest round of Texas protests also comes as Canadians protested the Northern Gateway Pipeline in British Columbia. Last Wednesday, in a show of solidarity, one protester hung a banner from the gate she chained herself to, which read: “Defend All Coasts from British Columbia to the Gulf Coast.”

Katie Valentine graduated from the University of Georgia with a degree in Journalism. She is currently an intern with the international climate team at the Center for American Progress.

NEWS FLASH

France Reportedly Hits Google With $1 Billion Bill For Tax Dodging | Google is one of the worst abusers of tax havens, using complicated strategies to run its tax rate down into the single digits, even as it makes billions of dollars in profits. As Bloomberg News reported, Google’s profits “wind up in island havens that levy no corporate income taxes at all.” In France, at least, lawmakers have had enough, reportedly slapping the company with a $1 billion bill for past tax avoidance. France has been trying to pressure Google to pay more taxes on revenue made in the country. Google has denied receiving the large tax bill.

NEWS FLASH

Two Final Ads Make Case For Maine Marriage Equality | Mainers United for Marriage, the campaign working to pass marriage equality in Maine, has released two final ads to make its case for Question 1. The first features the son of a lesbian couple hoping that he will have the opportunity to see his mothers marry. The second features two parents, one of whom is a teacher, who openly discuss LGBT people and related issues with their children without concern. Watch them:

NEWS FLASH

Texas Poll Worker Wrongly Presses Voter For A Driver’s License | In August, a federal court refused to pre-clear Texas’ voter ID law, effectively preventing the voter suppression law from taking effect. Nevertheless, a Texas journalist who voted last weekend discovered that not every poll worker appears aware of this decision after an elections supervisor repeatedly pressed him to show ID beyond what is required by Texas law. Although this is just a single incident, it is consistent with a broader pattern of state officials inaccurately portraying voter ID requirements in ways that discourage voting.

Security

FLASHBACK: Netanyahu Said Iraq War Would Benefit The Middle East

By Hamed Aleaziz on Oct 31, 2012 at 2:41 pm

Benjamin Netanyahu on CNN's State of the Union

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu yesterday told a Paris-based magazine that a military strike on Iran would be beneficial to the region. Netanyahu’s statement was published on the eve of a meeting with French President Francois Holland, during which the two planned to discuss the Iran issue among other topics. Netanyahu cited Iran’s lack of popularity in the Middle East:

“Five minutes after, contrary to what the skeptics say, I think a feeling of relief would spread across the region…Iran is not popular in the Arab world, far from it, and some governments in the region, as well as their citizens, have understood that a nuclear armed Iran would be dangerous for them, not just for Israel.”

Sound familiar? Netanyahu’s statement echoes a point that he made in 2002, when he advocated for a strike on Iraq on the grounds that, among other things, it would benefit the region:

“If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region…the test and the great opportunity and challenge is not merely to effect the ouster of the regime, but also transform that society and thereby begin too the process of democratizing the Arab world.”

It hardly bears repeating that Arabs in the Middle East did not react favorably to the Iraq war. The year the war began, the Los Angeles Times reported from Syria and found that negative views of America had hardened. One Syrian told the Times ”What they are doing is worse than what Saddam [Hussein] has done.” Brookings Institution polling from 2003 backed up the anecdotes. More than 60 percent of Arabs saw the Iraq war causing “less peace” in the region and more than 70 percent said it would result in “more terrorism.” Shelby Tahimi, a Middle East expert and the creator of the poll, found an “unprecedented tide of public opinion running against the United States” after the Iraq war.

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