Mickey Kaus points to a post by Earl Ofari Hutchinson, Why So Many Blacks Fear Illegal Immigrants, Pt.1

Kaus calls it a

a forceful and admirably BS-free post on a dirty little un-PC secret of the Democratic coalition: Anti-illegal immigrant sentiment among blacks. … Is this the real, little-noted reason why President Bush made only miminal gains among African-American voters while he was wooing Latinos with his guest worker and quasi-amnesty proposals?

After explaining the economic facts of life, (thoroughly familiar to VDARE.com readers) Kaus goes on to say

P.S.: I’m not saying economics is the only reason for anti-illegal fervor among blacks. Cultural resentments may be a big part of it. I’m just saying the economic argument is rational. …

Both Kaus and Hutchinson feel that this feeling of displacement African-Americans get is not racism:“African-Americans (as Hutchinson concedes) aren’t racist just because they reach that conclusion.”

Really? It’s not racism? I thought it was when whites complained about “Chinese cheap labor” in the ninteenth century, and when Jesse Helms made his “white hands” commercial decrying affirmative action.

The economic displacement of black Americans is a legitimate problem, and we here at VDARE.com have been pointing it out out for years. (And Peter Brimelow pointed it out in 1995, and Booker T. Washington pointed it out in 1895.)

But actual black racism is a real problem, with a real potential for violence.

The SPLC’s Hatewatch has, for a change, highlighted an incident of genuine anti-immigrant violence.

At William T. Tilden Middle school, a 13-year old boy was beaten by black schoolchildren because he was an immigrant. From Liberia. The details are here in an AP story. (By the way, I guesed who had committed the crime as soon as I saw the Hatewatch headline–if it had been white kids, they would have said so.) One man is quoted in the story as saying “A lot of regular kid stuff ends up getting labeled as ethnic conflicts”

Are savage beatings of young boys accused of cooperating with the law enforcement authorities “regular kid stuff” at inner city schools? They may be, William T. Tilden is on a list of unsafe schools compiled in 2003.

Boy’s vicious beating raises fears in Philly’s Liberian community
KATHY MATHESON
Associated Press, Jan. 22, 2006

PHILADELPHIA - The boy’s beating was brutal: He was punched in the mouth and then stomped on by a group of youths until his jaw was broken and he had bleeding on the brain.

Jacob Gray, the 13-year-old victim of the Oct. 31 attack, had only been in the country six weeks. A Liberian, his family had just moved here from a refugee camp in Ghana.

The city was appalled - not only that it had happened to a boy on his way home from middle school, but that the reported motive for the attack was simply that Gray was an immigrant.

Members of the Liberian community, who number about 15,000 in this city of 1.5 million, said the beating was evidence of long-standing if rarely documented tensions between the city’s black immigrants and American-born blacks.

Though authorities said it appeared Gray was attacked because he was mistakenly labeled a snitch in a drug arrest, the schools and city have taken steps to ease the fear and anger the beating stirred in the city’s Liberian enclave, one of the country’s largest.

Update: Two readers pointed out that I had written that Strom Thurmond was the fellow pilloried for the “White Hands” commercial. Actually, it was Jesse Helms. I’ve changed it, above.

When Ozzie Guillen, manager of the world champion Chicago White Sox, recently became a U.S. citizen he said some pretty nice things that you’d expect to hear from somebody just given the opportunity to live in this country legally, including:

“Winning the World Series was not my dream, it was my goal. This [citizenship] is my dream.”

Glad to see that Ozzie has his priorities straight.

But then he went and ruined everything:

“A lot of people fight and die to be American citizens. [What??] A lot of Latin people are dying to be where I am right now . . . Do you know how many people die every week just to live in this country? Hundreds,” Guillen said. “That’s a dream. A lot of people want to be Americans. It’s not an easy thing to do.”

That’s what the ChicagoTribune posted in its early online edition, but look how the three-time All-Star shortstop was quoted in my print edition:

“Do you know how many people die every week trying to be an American? It’s not an easy thing to do.”

Hmmmmmmmmmm. Somebody in the Tribune Tower apparently woke up and wisely suspected that Ozzie’s death count was high and away.

(Assuming that Ozzie is talking about only those illegals who die attempting to cross the desert, the number for all of fiscal 2005 reached a record 464.)

As a life-long White Sox fan (I became infatuated as a teen-ager with the “Go-Go” lineup of the 1950s), there is no question that Guillen knows how the game should be played and how to get the most out of his players. He doesn’t take crap from anyone, and he enjoys telling sportwriters what they can do with their often boneheaded questions.

(Psssssst! Ozzie: Speaking of the media, now that you’re an official American, it doesn’t mean you have to act like so many of our citizens, i.e., taking as gospel everything spewed out about immigration by the MSM, “immigrant rights” groups and the many disloyal, vote-pandering politicians in Washington.)

Ozzie’s commentary, which made as much sense as a pitcher deliberately drilling a batter with the bases loaded, was no doubt gobbled up by certain groups among us as being further proof that our immigration policy is “broken” and can only be fixed with an amnesty. The majority of those who foolishly ignored the warnings against making the trip to El Norte were far more interested in U.S. dollars than they were in becoming “Americans.”

When Ozzie boasts he now knows more about America than “50 percent of Americans,” then I hope he also accepts the idea that those who genuinely want to be Americans begin the process by entering this country in accordance with our immigration laws and then refrain from asking the rest of us to surrender our culture in order to accommodate theirs.

Anything other than this is, well, you know, strictly bush league.