[Mb-civic] A Hispanic Civil Rights Movement - Juan Williams - Washington Post Op-Ed

[William Swiggard]

A Hispanic Civil Rights Movement
<>
By Juan Williams
The Washington Post
Monday, April 10, 2006; A17

The massive demonstrations by Hispanics across the country have the look 
of civil rights history. The crowds protesting punitive immigration 
legislation have been huge, rivaling or exceeding the gathering for the 
1963 March on Washington. Is this in fact a major new civil rights movement?

Until now Hispanics have not been a political force or a major factor in 
national discussions of civil rights, though they have become the 
nation's largest minority. The politics of race are still dominated by 
conversations about black-white relations, and blacks remain the 
gatekeepers of racial representation on school boards and in city halls. 
In Congress, African Americans have a caucus more than twice the size of 
the Hispanic delegation (43 to 21), even though they are a smaller 
percentage of the population.

One big reason Hispanic power has been slow in maturing is that most 
Hispanics do not identify themselves as such. Their group reference has 
tended to be to homelands -- Mexico, Puerto Rico, the Dominican 
Republic. And of course there are racial differences, especially between 
black and white Hispanics.

But that changed recently, with marches that drew hundreds of thousands 
and created coalitions across the lines of Hispanic national identity. 
People from disparate Hispanic nations coalesced around the debate on 
illegal immigration. It took a radical step by the House -- giving 
serious thought to dragnet arrests of all illegal immigrants and 
charging them with a felony -- to achieve this. To some, the level of 
hatred and racism against immigrants seemed to match that once directed 
against blacks in this country.

Indeed, this is the same dynamic that struck sparks in the 1950s and 
'60s and flared into the black civil rights movement. The Supreme 
Court's 1954 decision on school desegregation implied a movement toward 
racial equality throughout American society. In response, 
segregationists launched a campaign of "massive resistance" to 
integration. Initially, very young people took the lead in the civil 
rights protests, much as they have in the current immigration rallies.

The facts of relatively low unemployment and strong economic growth say 
that immigrants -- as innovators, business owners, workers and customers 
in the U.S. economy -- have a future here. And Hispanic voters have a 
future in American politics. President Bush arguably won reelection in 
2004 because he pushed the level of support for a Republican 
presidential candidate to new heights among Hispanics.

The organized power of the Catholic Church, both as a force in American 
politics and as the heart of the "sanctuary movement," to protect 
illegal immigrants from abuse is analogous to the role the black church 
and its white allies played in the civil rights movement.

The power of organized labor is being revived by immigrants -- legal and 
illegal. Add to this the growing power of Hispanic media and one senses 
a gathering force that could produce a true civil rights movement for 
the 21st century. But not without resistance. Polls show that large 
numbers of Americans, white and black, want the current wave of 
immigration to slow and even stop. The numbers reveal a large element of 
xenophobia in the form of accusations that immigrants are taking 
low-wage jobs from native-born Americans. In fact, immigrants, legal and 
illegal, add to economic activity.

Sadly, anxiety over the increasing Hispanic population has caused some 
leaders of the Congressional Black Caucus and the NAACP to become 
tongue-tied on the subject. Privately, these members of Congress point 
to prison riots in California between blacks and Hispanics and turf 
fights between black and Hispanic high school students as evidence of 
rising tension between minority groups. There is a reluctance to counter 
this fear-mongering with a forward-looking vision of new coalitions 
among people of color. Instead there has been a lot of pandering to the 
worst instincts of people who often share with Hispanics the problems of 
bad schools, high incarceration rates and life at the bottom of the 
economic ladder.

Of course, the angriest voices are still heard on the far right, asking, 
"Whose country is this anyway?" and denouncing "amnesty" for immigrants. 
Sometimes it's a thin cover, with strong racial overtones, for opposing 
any rational approach to letting people who are already here, holding 
jobs and paying taxes, become legal. There may be short-term benefits to 
this sort of pandering, but, as has been shown before, it can come back 
to hurt politicians.

The real issue is whether America can come to terms with the reality of 
change. The next question is whether an activated Hispanic coalition can 
hold together on issues beyond the current fight over immigration 
reform. Imagine the power of Hispanics joined with other minorities to 
stand up for better schools and pressure politicians for national health 
care.

We've seen a movie a lot like this before -- about 50 years ago. It 
ended with a country being transformed by a movement that called for it 
to live up to its founding ideals of equal rights for all. Here's hoping 
for another happy ending.

Juan Williams is a senior correspondent for National Public Radio, a 
political analyst for Fox News and author of "Eyes on the Prize: 
America's Civil Rights Years, 1954-1965."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/04/09/AR2006040900515.html?nav=hcmodule
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://www.islandlists.com/pipermail/mb-civic/attachments/20060410/02453eee/attachment-0001.htm