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.