Blacks Are Losing Their Communities(The following article was written by Terry Anderson, a black American immigration reform activist and a supporter of DASA. A similar article was published in the San Francisco Examiner on February 3, 1999) In his State of the Union speech, President Clinton said, "The promise of our future is limitless." But the future appears very limited and sometimes frightening to black people who are overwhelmed and displaced by immigrants. What I say comes from my experience living in my community, which is South Central Los Angeles. This place feels increasingly less like my home and country as it turns into the Third World before my eyes. This once predominantly black neighborhood is becoming largely Hispanic. South Central is being transformed by many homes holding 20-30 immigrants each. They keep goats, grow corn in the front yards and hang their wash on the front fence. I have roosters waking me in the middle of the night. Here, we talk about "black flight." People are leaving their old neighborhoods where they have lived for years because they don't feel like they belong there any more. President Clinton promises job opportunities to inner cities and said that "our children are doing better." But black teenagers here can't get after-school or entry-level jobs without knowing Spanish. When I was 16 and 17, I had jobs at McDonald's, Burger King and Jack in the Box. In the late 1970s, I used to sell parts to body shops, and I knew Americans who were making $20 an hour repairing dented fenders. Now 95% of body shop jobs here are held by recent immigrants making $7 or $8 an hour. The President says immigration is "revitalizing our cities and energizing our culture." Is it "revitalizing our cities" to lower wages to the point that black Americans can't compete because they don't live dozens of people to a house? President Clinton told us that schools have improved and scores are up. He can't mean our schools. Black kids are forced to listen to Spanish all day. Prop. 227, which was supposed to change to teaching in English, is a joke. Nothing has changed. We have schools that were 80-90% black that have become 80-90% Latino in just 10 years. No way are black kids getting a decent education now in Los Angeles public schools. The President says he wants to decrease class size, but how can that happen with the large numbers of immigrant kids constantly coming in? We will never catch up. People in Washington don't want to know how harmful immigration is for us. Even our black leaders are no help. They don't want to hear our troubles because they are liberals and think of immigration as a good thing, period. Black people are pushed aside and nobody is listening. Our only black mayor, Tom Bradley, died a year or so back, and I'm sure we'll never have another. President Clinton likes to talk about "things that affect people's lives." There is nothing that affects our lives in this neighborhood more than immigration. It would help my community more than anything else to have an immigration moratorium for at least five years to slow this thing down. That would be a beginning to getting our community back and giving our kids a chance at that limitless future. All we are asking is to give us back the town we used to have some 15 years ago. |
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