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.
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p> 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.
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.:
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.
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:
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blockquote>78 Boris:: Perhaps think of it this way: by assuming that class privilege doesn’t matter
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blockquote>
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???
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 support immigrants rights. And it was framed as one in which immigrants and those in solidarity with them would not work on that day and instead would rally together. In this situation obviously workers rights and immigrants rights are integrally related. So I don’t quite agree with you abhi but appreciate you posing such a question and agree to differ :>. Ruchira, so sorry for what happened to your daughter. I’d love to see more discussion on how this action by the polic was absolutely uncalled for (WHETHER the guy interviewing wore a stupid red overall getup or not) and not about whether indians are this or that, or whether the racist pig lou dobbs has any relevance. This kind of intimidation and violence against ANYONE, whether people of color, immigrants, otherwise, or whether or not people are carrying American or Mexican flags, is absolutely intolerable.