Yeah, everyone. Good evening. My name is
Ellington Graves. I'm the director of Africana Studies and
I wanted to welcome you all to this installment of Black
Lives in the New South speaker series. Our speaker
tonight will be Dr. Jennifer Jones. Dr. Jones is at the University
of, in the Department of Sociology and Institute for
Latinos. Studies. Right. Uh,
and so she'll be talking to us about her ethnographic
work in Winston Salem north Carolina. Looking at relationships
between Latinos and African Americans. So thank you.
Thanks so much for being here this evening. Thanks
for having me. I can't tell you how much
I appreciate leaving the depths of the polar vortex.
I think that was the one day that I could
get out of town. It stops going. So
never been. So having being 40° in all my
life. Um, so the title of my talk
today is we don't have any problems. Black regulations
in the New South. I know that maybe some
of you are also aware that I do some more
about afro mexicans and I'm not going to talk about
that extensively today. But they are research population in
this study looking at questions about that may be happy
to sing or U N A. Mhm. So
as many of you know, in recent decades,
we've undergone a really swift and dramatic demographic change in
the United States. Census estimates predict that in the
us we will be majority minority by 2042. And
for the first time ever, there were more nonwhites
born in May 2012 than whites, significant increases in
the latino population and the spread of this population throughout
the United States have really played a very significant role
in this shit. And indeed more than half of
the growth in the last decade was due to growth
in the Latino population. So put another way as
this slide shows from 2000 to 2010, Latinos have
increased their share of the total population by about four
and that's alongside gains and all other racial and ethnic
minority groups moving us closer to the majority, minority
nation and a relatively short period. And as we
might expect, this growth in latino population has huge
implications for race relations. Latinos are now the largest
minority group and as such, the role in shaping
issues such as electoral politics, policy, generational change
and a host of other social concerns are now plots
. And in addition to this massive broke latino populations
during this period, spread out faster than any other
immigration wave in U. S. History. And
that's internal or external. And this includes the great
migration of african americans from the south to the north
. And while Latinos certainly continue to settle in traditional
destinations between 1990 and 2000, the number of Latinos
living in the south quadrupled, and then there were
another 57 from 2000 to 2010. So by 2010
about 36 of Latinos. So so in less than
two decades, the racial composition of the south has
really shifted from a racial binary to a multi ethnic
region now known as the New Sound. And for
the South East in particular, this population ship raises
important questions about racial formation, immigrant inc and intergroup
relations in a region that has a complex racial history
and has not ever dealt with immigration in a meaningful
way. And the shift has upended much of what
we know about immigration and the latino population. So
states like Georgia and north Carolina now rank in the
top 10 of states with the highest population of unauthorized
immigrants, despite having very few just a couple of
decades ago. And as I showed you, immigrant
newcomers are now less likely to settle in areas with
long histories and permanent settlements, resulting in new circumstances
where municipalities have to develop policies, specific programming to
adjust these new populations. So in short, newcomers
are finding themselves in a variety of southern towns and
suburbs where their presence is challenging and in many cases
not welcome. And so this project was designed to
uncover if and how these new dynamics are changing race
and race relations on the ground, particularly in the
south, where blacks are already a significant minority and
race relations have long been complex. In other words
, how demographic change reshaped interview relations and the next
step. And while I'm interested in these changing dynamics
throughout the region, I build my analysis through a
case study Winston Salem metro area, which is circled
here. Um, this is a force of county
and the northwest quadrant of north Carolina and in north
Carolina, they experienced some of the fastest, most
dramatic growth in the latino population in the entire region
and the county experience some of the fastest ST just
to give you a sense of the area to zoom
in um, in this like green dots, I
hope you can see everything. Green dots represent white
. Uh, blue dots represent the black population and
orange dots represent Latinos. And so most people are
clustered in the Winston Salem and Greensboro areas. And
you can see that Winston Salem has slightly more Latinos
then across the county and blacks and whites remained relatively
segregated from one another, which is important. Yes
. And in the larger book project, I'm investigating
and explaining how these dynamics of increased migration to the
south and these new southern destinations have responded to this
change. Looking at this relationship between demographic change,
mexican rationalization and intergroup relations. Today, I'm focusing
on the slice of my work that focuses on how
this demographic changes reaching into minority relations. And I
explained surprising dynamics at work in this context. So
just real quickly, I'm sorry that slide up a
little bit there. Hopefully you can read along,
follow along as you can um for what we know
about interpret relations in the literature, prevailing wisdom would
predict that racial groups are uncommon, moreover, much
of the literature on black ground relations asserts that relations
between these groups is particularly for despite their sensible shared
interests. Indeed scholars, journalists and conventional wisdom all
indicate that throughout the U. S. Tensions between
blacks and Latinos are five and in the small but
growing literature on race relations in the New South.
That is what scholars find Greece. Race relations between
blacks and browns seem to be riddled with complex competition
and a strong sense of threat, so at best
and to a lesser extent, and the actions of
complex scholars by an ambivalence between the two groups.
Now, much of this complex publix is explained through
theories of competition and threats, and so the vast
majority of intergroup literature posits that groups experience a sense
of threat when new groups are in close proximity and
among blacks and browns in particular. This is theorized
as competition due to the assumption that both groups share
relatively equal position at the bottom of the social structure
, and therefore, they have a relatively tenuous relationship
to the labor work. And indeed, a number
of studies that explore new destinations do find evidence of
competition between minority groups, not only in the labor
market, but also for housing and other resources such
as health care and education. And this competition is
understood to be a catalyst for instigating stereotypes and negative
interracial attitudes. And yet despite these theories are growing
evidence of alliances and cooperation between these two groups in
2000 and eight, for example, in Greensboro and
African American minister and lectured attendees of a Tri county
blackground unity conference on his efforts to support immigration reform
and labor unions urging the African americans and their audience
to be a voice for immigration reform as human beings
. He said we need to do this. We're
connected. Similarly in october 2011, the Alabama double
A C. P. Joined the Alabama Coalition for
immigrant justice to collectively opposed the passage of Alabama's HB
56 they continue to work together to pressure the state
to repeal HB 56 alongside restrictions on voting rights.
And in fact wade Henderson, who's the African American
President of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights
, was one of the first to denounce that law
, noting that it was designed to terrorize the states
latino community and other local african american leaders have notably
called it a one provo comparing it to Jim Carlin
, both letter and spirit. And while these are
just a few examples of african american leadership taking up
the cause of immigrant rights in the south, evidence
suggested such blackground coalitions are on the rise and indeed
my examination of mexican incorporation into Winston Salem reveals a
case in which cooperation and positive relations are common for
mexicans and African americans. Through my fieldwork, I
found that positive relations emerged in three key ways which
was through a sense of physical and social closeness,
a sense of solidarity and shared discrimination or consciousness and
an emergent sense of sense of length fate. Now
. Because positive blackground relations are neither predicted normal,
explained by the literature, how do we account for
this divergent outcomes? Well, because the bulk of
intergroup relations literature, including this more recent inter minority
relations scholarship overwhelmingly finds that racial ethnic conflicts, you
know, very little about the emergence of these positive
relationships and yet as coalition building throughout the U.
S. Including these efforts by the to include immigration
on its civil rights agenda, cooperation seems to be
an emerging norm and the intergroup relations literature focuses overwhelmingly
on the role of socioeconomic status in shaping intergroup relations
. I argue that this framing assumes both a shared
low socioeconomic status among minorities and also fails to consider
the role of race and shaving integral relation. So
, drawing from existing theories about coalitional politics, intergroup
contact and ethnic identity and social movements, I argue
instead that a dual status framework better captures how inter
minority relations are forged with unequal economic status and equal
racial status, leading to positive relations. So,
using this framework, I offer four conditions under which
positive intergroup relations may emerge. First, low resource
competition isn't necessary, but not sufficient condition under which
positive religions may hurt. Second, and this would
be in terms of thinking about race and equal racial
status, perceived threat may be ameliorated by sustained positive
contact. 3rd, the development of sense of shared
discrimination can cause can develop positive relations, and finally
, there is a need for a perceived sense of
a shared external threat to organize and frank grievances against
. So the remainder of this talk, I'm going
to show how closeness is emerging on the ground.
Alongside a framework that explains its emergence, I'm gonna
begin by going over some of my research methodology and
elaborate in the context of the community. I'm going
to highlight some of the key aspects of this community
that shape to study. And then the both of
this talk is going to be focused on describing how
blackground relations are folded on the ground of my brief
discussion. So the methods, So this study is
part of a larger project in which examined mexican migration
, both sending and receiving communities. Um in this
talk, I'm focused on targeted participant observation and interview
data that I collected Winston Salem, but I'm happy
to answer questions about any part of the see here
. Uh huh. I study was developed as a
community ethnography of Winston Salem, which is a small
, compact city of about 230,000. And while in
Winston Salem, my field work centered on three t
churches that have significant latino populations. I also observed
in a number of other sites, including sl of
course, is community meetings, government events, latino
advocacy groups and so forth. I chose these churches
, in part because they were distributed across different neighborhoods
and also had outreach programs to Latinos as well as
other community. So these sites gave me ample opportunity
to make contact with and observe Latinos as well as
interracial interactions. A driver, Winston Salem, historians
like Turkey, of course, and others like much
of the south churches, are very important civil society
institution in many towns. There are really key entry
points in my study. They also served as access
points for snowball sampling, Um, and accessing community
events because I started my study in 2008 at the
height of the economic recession, I really felt that
doing a workplace study would not be heard. Great
place to understand dynamics and that it would be a
volatile location for undocumented immigrants and they wouldn't be trusting
in there. Mhm. Also because churches are relatively
low risk institutions and provide services and access uh and
resources to newcomers, I thought that there would be
a better level of access. Um of course there
are limitations to this approach. Church membership is very
common among both african americans and Latinos, and it's
very common throughout the Southeast. Um and it's actually
one of the few ways in which there is political
leverage in the city. This is a low union
town. There's not a lot of political activity outside
of this contact and it's used by a number of
scholars for research. In addition to this ethnographic fieldwork
, I rely heavily on data gathered from 86 formal
Enbrel interviews with mexican newcomers as well as black,
white and latino leaders. And these are some of
the key descriptive statistics which are pushed aside. Um
so I love on that side you have a judge
18 to 30 which is about 40% of the sample
. 31 to 50 about 50% was a fairly reasonable
gender balance. You can see that there are afro
mexicans in the study as well as the sea.
So mexicans. Um and this was relatively representative of
the so um this is also the native born advice
sample. Again, relatively older age range. There
also uh good distribution among racial groups, but this
is also a relatively more affluent population. I focused
my interviews have been more leaders in the community to
get a sense of how people were thinking and talking
about these issues. Rather than trying to get a
representative sample in terms of name and form. You
see um questions in the interview schedule included things about
perceptions, original identity relationships with other groups, community
climate and so so in the rest of this talk
I'm going to focus on the types of positive relations
that emerge and what mechanisms played a role in relation
. And so I divide my analysis of closeness into
four sections community context, in which I explain how
some of the dividing features of Winston Salem shaped black
around relations. Mexicans perceptions of flat ground relations,
which includes how they understand their contact with blacks,
which I already really shapes their relationships of anti immigrant
attitudes, which I argue play an important role in
establishing sense of sheer discrimination, as well as a
common enemy or external threat. A community partnerships,
which I think played a supporting role in sort of
reinforcing positive contacts with black but also establishing external threat
. And then finally, I'm gonna talk about counter
narratives, there were a few groups of people who
didn't neatly fit into this narrative, including progressive whites
, but also stopped working class blacks. And I'm
going to explain how they didn't get a lot of
traction in terms of the larger display. So,
throughout my study, I uncovered that Winston Salem context
played a really important role in understanding why cooperation or
conflict between blacks and browns emerge and what sets race
relations here are from from previous studies. So,
like much of the region, Winston Salem underwent massive
demographic change due to increased migration in the 19 nineties
. So this year is a map of Winston Salem
in 1990 squared concentration of latino residents. There's virtually
no Latinos there. Uh 2000, there's a significant
growth in the population, And by 2010, the
Latino population is pretty substantial. So this change meant
that new Latinos were settling into a context where there
were a few long term co ethnics and into an
area that had long been known for its segregation of
blacks and whites. So in this way, Winston
Salem is similar to other cities and towns in the
region that experience significant population growth as a result of
both economic expansion, um and other forms of democratic
change shown another way this is Winston Salem blowing up
a little bit again. Here, you can see
the population distribution of blacks. Um whites and Latinos
, blacks are blue dots, Latinos are orange and
whites are green. You can see that blacks and
Latinos tend to be clustered near the city center,
while some of the outer census tract remaining almost entirely
white. Of the churches that I did, My
field work out our margin dots and where are you
? How is marked with a star. And so
as the Winston Salem economy shifted and expanded in the
19 nineties to include more white collar positions available to
african americans last began to move out of the rental
, lower quality housing units near the downtown area and
into large single family homes, but often in the
same neighborhoods. And this is not an uncommon product
practice as mary Patillo work on the black suggests working
and lower middle class minorities often live in the same
communities here in Winston Salem, the less expensive lower
quality housing stock, however, created an easy pocket
of available housing for mexican newcomers to move into either
in or near black neighborhoods in town. So as
a result, Latinos moving into its and say,
I'm really very quickly settled into relatively stable middle class
african american communities or over because there was little competition
for housing respondents indicated that this transition was relatively smooth
. Many refer to this as kind of revitalizing because
properties that were empty were now being populated by families
and as a result, mexicans experience of living in
black neighborhoods where they shared institutions and space created lots
of opportunities for social context. Moreover, latino settlement
in black neighborhoods meant that contact with blacks was juxtaposed
with the dirt of interpersonal relationships with whites. And
what sets Winston Salem apart for many neighboring cities is
that blacks consistent upward mobility despite segregation was possible in
part because Winston Salem has always had a relatively strong
economy due to its position as a center of tobacco
manufacturer, continually had a need for outside labor and
has drawn workers from around the state who were looking
for the promise of stable blue collar jobs and over
the cost of living. Winston Salem has also always
been an educational center with three universities within its city
limits, including historically Black University. And this photos
from 1908. Um, and then again in 1965
and this university has a long historic history. The
Winston Salem community has been the source of lots of
upper mobility for its president. And so it's a
political power of the tobacco companies and also Hanes hosiery
, which was based in town, served as the
cornerstone of the labor market for decades, began to
recede in the seventies and eighties. The economy actually
expanded in the eighties and nineties. There was still
big tobacco, but also they welcomed corporate headquarters in
the financial and airline and manufacturing industries as well as
medical research. And so this really increase the number
of white collar jobs available in the area. As
a result, many blacks, particularly those educated at
historically black colleges, were able to move into the
managerial professional occupations. So through this combination of increased
mobility among blacks, economic expansion and over entertainment,
employers in the region had a great incentive to recruit
and a variety of skill levels. So in the
1990s, Latinos came in to fill jobs for labor
, service and construction and demographic change. As I
imagine, the switch. Still, blacks and Latinos
did not generally compete for the same jobs to this
side of employed blacks by occupation sector. And just
descriptive statistics here show that blacks really began to move
very quickly into white collar occupations. So the red
line on managerial and professional, professional and the gray
line are laboring jobs. And so you can see
that the class position is beginning to switch. It's
also should be noted that there was not a decline
in the population that actually grew steadily during this period
. Or rather, that the economy was expanding.
Also upwardly mobile blacks releasing Blacks and Latinos did work
together in steel construction and service, but there was
also a lot of opportunity into these heels into this
development state as well as overall, uh, over
employment, particularly until 2007. Um, So here
you can see a concentration in 2000, uh,
blacks, whites and Latinos and various later. So
Latinos were concentrated overwhelmingly and labor and service occupations.
How wild blacks are more evenly distributed. Um,
and in fact, in 2005, a few report
on the new south indicated that there were actually no
signs of black displacement in this north Carolina anyway,
due to immigration. Mhm. So in Winston Salem
, like the conditions of many previous studies, mexicans
have settled into community where the local and state government
contacts has changed to become more hostile towards immigrants,
increasing a sense of discrimination among Latinos. At the
same time, however, Winston Salem maintain a robust
minority, middle class and stable labor market, reducing
the sense of competition between Latinos and groups. Additionally
, because Latinos were newcomers, there were few opportunities
for lines building with no ethics or other immigrants.
And so instead, their ideas about race and race
relations were produced largely through their relationships with whites and
blacks. And this way, the community context provides
an essential backdrop of low resource competition alongside alcohol opportunities
for intergroup context. So, in this next section
, I expand on how the qualities of this contact
served to shape Mexicans perceptions of blacks as friends and
allies and of similar racial status. So I noted
that blacks and Latinos are living and working in the
same neighborhoods. And while it's certainly possible that conflict
would have emerged, I respondents highlighted positive relations between
the two groups. One was a Mexican migrant have
been living and working in with sincere for over 10
years described relations between blacks and Latinos and his neighbors
. He said, I've heard this, that there's
a lot of attention, but that's not been my
experience. I live in a black neighborhood and I've
never had any problems with my neighbors. People are
very nice and we get along love. I haven't
had any problems. My Children attended mostly black school
and they don't have any problems. Eliana, a
young Mexican woman who had come directly to Winston Salem
from when she was 12 years old, told me
a bit about her experiences. When I asked her
how people got along with her neighborhood, she explained
, well, it's almost like my middle school,
there were more African American people Hispanics, there were
almost no white people there. So they all got
a lot, there wasn't a problem there. High
school, same thing. It's mostly African Americans.
Hispanics, maybe five Hispanics. And african americans get
along very well. And I asked her how close
this relationship was, whether students were actually having relationships
with one another and she nodded and said, yeah
, they're talking, they go out together, they
go to parties together, something like that in the
movies. And I asked her if they carried over
into other realms of her life. And she noted
, well, yes, in church they worked together
african americans, health. I know a lot of
african americans who are the Latinos who are here illegally
to become legal and to try to do something to
help. When I asked her if she felt the
same support existed for whites in her community, she
demurred, noting that some do, but it's not
the same as it is with blacks. Ramon,
another respondent had similar positive feelings regarding blacks that he
did not feel were replicated among the whites. Ramon
was an undocumented worker for Mexico City who arrived in
the US in 1996 and I asked him about his
experiences as his job in construction, he informed me
that most of his co workers were black and american
, which was code for white and you got along
with all of them. However, he said,
listen, I get along better with the americans.
I get along well, but my chance, I
get along better with blacks, get along much better
with them and well, I've never had any problems
with anyone that was americans blacks, but I have
better relationships with blacks. When I pressed him on
why he thought this was the case, he stated
, well it's because since I left school, like
I told you a word deconstruction and in factories and
I don't know. My friendships have always been with
blacks and I began to rely more on, I
want to talk like them and everything. Well I
don't know my best friends, I have lower black
friends and Americans. Sometimes they come over to my
house. There's one black guy was 45 years old
. He looks really young and I always says my
mom is his mom. He's always been a friend
of my family and he is still, he goes
to my house and eat together. Whatever I have
good relationships with them curiously. Yeah. And I
asked him why do you think this is curious?
And he said well because supposedly supposedly they say blacks
and Hispanics don't get along, but it's just much
easier to call a black person a friend than an
american with me and the americans. I don't know
why I can't, What we collide a lot is
if they don't like what I do and I don't
like what they do. I don't know why.
I don't know. I get along with blacks because
they've gone through what we're going through. You know
, the problems that after years from slavery and all
that, the americans have treated the blacks badly to
this day, they have the same problems. We
have racism because of this, we get along.
So the bone wanted Eliana, we're comfortable english speakers
and therefore have more opportunities not only to meet blacks
and whites, but also to get to know them
better. So they seem highly disinclined to develop relationships
with whites. And similarly, other mexican respondents pointed
to the relative openness of african americans to socialize with
mexicans in comparison to whites. Mexicans. Throughout my
study, perceived blacks as helpful and friendly while whites
were perceived as unresponsive. In the cases where some
mexicans did report for experiences reflect they often dismissed these
as uh, individual out letters and not represented group
. And so as a contact literature suggests, this
positive contact, combined with an assets of resource,
competition and really no sense of threat, helped facilitate
good relations. But this positive conduct alone was not
sufficient and shoring it up. There was also a
need for a common sense of status and purpose,
a key frame through which a collective minority status could
be established. In this next section, I outlined
how a shift in policy and attitudes against immigrants was
instrumental in facilitating changed. So rapid economic expansion was
at first welcome and necessary for economic growth. In
north Carolina, unemployment remained low, and in counties
were working class whites and african americans were upwardly mobile
Latinos uh filled unnecessary economic void. And indeed from
1990 to 2000 local and state policy towards immigrants as
well as a community level reception was largely positive.
However, over the next few years, that reception
quickly chilled and by 2005 North Carolina reversed much of
its welcome a process that facilitated a sense of discrimination
, ensuring minority status for Latinos with Africa. So
while the 27 G provisions of the Immigration and nationality
act was established in 1996 and this allows local governments
to partner with ice and put vocals into deportation proceedings
. This clause really wasn't used until 2000 and six
when the passage of the real I. D.
Act in many states made obtaining a driver's license illegal
without Social Security. And so as a result,
driving with add Eliza became a way that one could
be deported. So between 2006 and 2010, this
was a key mechanism through which deportations occurred. Um
and his recent lawsuits filed by the Department of Justice
suggests their use was very discriminatory. North Carolina had
more agreements than any other state. And because Real
I'd made individual subject to inquiry at any traffic stock
everyday life suddenly became quite perilous for undocumented mexicans and
riddled with discriminatory incidents for other. In addition to
the use of 2 87 G participation and I sponsored
programs such as secure communities, also statewide anti immigrant
measures that they enacted, such as banning undocumented students
from their community college systems really produce an onslaught of
negative repercussions for latino immigrants and the study nous of
this shift were over and that for many it wasn't
about immigration status rather a deliberate attack As a result
. By 2008 when I came to within Salem most
Latinos in the area really talked about the sense of
being suddenly and unfairly targeted for discrimination as racialized minorities
. And the sense of exclusion was not unfounded as
it was often coupled with nasty rhetoric which was intended
to purge further marginalized Mexicans. Another Latinos is fundamentally
different than for north Carolina. For example, Sheriff
stevens L. Johnson County, which is, which
was a 20 energy applicant publicly acknowledged that this goal
getting uh, partnership was to reduce if not eliminate
the immigrant population of johnson County and he's been known
to publicly described mexicans as trashy people breed like rabbits
and rape fraud and murder. He said this to
many newspapers over the years. So unsurprisingly, many
Latinos in the area began to feel paralyzed by fear
, unable to go about their daily life with that
significant trepidation, as ELISA puts it, I feel
afraid. I have a lot of fear for my
Children. Well because if they take me my Children
, where are they going to stay? I have
my son here and I think about this a lot
. I have to drive because I have to go
to work or take my Children to the doctor to
my parents. I have to drive as are you
always afraid? She said, yes, I'm so
afraid when I see an officer go by or something
. I feel sick. I pray to God,
I tell them, please God take care. So
this growing sense of exclusion while extremely detrimental to the
well being of mexicans was essential to building bridges between
blacks and Mexicans through what they perceived as a common
experience of racism and discrimination. For example, Diego
who was an undocumented immigrant from Guerrero, indicated that
he had four experiences with white in comparison to black
. He noted that in some places I go and
restaurant or store, I've had more bad experience with
whites and people of color. No. And I
asked him if he would give me an example,
examples if I asked them for something and I asked
them something and they don't answer me. They turn
, they look at me and turn around or some
white people who have, I parked my car accident
, they turn on the security guard in the car
. I think I'm going to rob them. This
is what I've noticed many times many, many times
. Well, it's easy to understand what they're doing
, what they want me to understand these things that
they do where they clutch their bags. And he
said, Oh, what do they want you to
understand? I mean, he said, well,
it's the same thing you see with someone of color
. They do the same thing. I asked him
, declared by the white students. People of color
said yes, yes, of course. And the
people of color have never know that, never have
I seen them up close their bag or clutch their
first because they see me walking next to them.
So so Diego's noting of these parallels between being perceived
as criminals are strong signals of what he believes to
be the shared commonality with glass and a distance from
white. And later Diego and I were discussing how
he thought these things might unfold in the future in
terms of the politics of the state and the nation
and whether he thought relations between blacks and Latinos might
turn into something you could have. So he said
in response. I think so. I imagine so
. I would like it if it were true because
they have suffered in a sense. They have also
had their leader martin Luther king who also fought for
their rights. So I believe they identify more with
us because they also lived in a situation like us
. It can happen sometimes it's a little bit,
but the president is something new has never happened before
and he's helping not just african american. He's not
only making a difference for them or just for he's
doing something for the entire nation. And there are
presidents who have come before. I imagine at best
they didn't do much for african americans and less for
Hispanics. Right? So Diego's feelings that black leaders
could address uh latino issues in a way that whites
had not or could not was not unusual. Model
respondents and this growing sense of discrimination as a result
of both negative attitudes and policies, not only produce
a sense of shared minority status and Latinos, but
also triggered a sense of length fate with africa americans
. So, as I show in this next section
, community leaders played a pivotal role in reinforcing mexican
sense of people says with glass and a common enemy
planes. So, as noted prior to 2005,
few exclusionary policies around the books and discriminatory practices against
Mexicans in the southeast were relatively uncommon. So as
the negative public rhetoric around immigration increased. So did
the sense among African American leaders that Latinos were entering
a realm of discrimination. I was contrary to their
views on civil rights and frankly not so different than
their experiences in the recent past. Moreover, the
2008 election and force of county was marked by vitriolic
, often hateful discourse against Latino immigrants on the one
hand, and this popular rhetoric, hopeful rhetoric about
a populist African American leader on the other. And
there were always these examples of the national local level
that substantiated mexican perceptions of black leaders were willing to
stand with them and whites actively sought to discriminate against
them. For example, the National Black Police Association
signed a letter to President Obama demanding an end to
the to 87 G program as early as 2009 at
the 2010 executive director of rope op EDS for various
newspapers, voicings, organizations opposition to not only that
program, but also secure communities and Arizona's SB 10
70 A similar letters by local chapters of the organization
were submitted across the country. Conversely, the National
Sheriff's Association, which is almost exclusively older white men
, passed the 2010 resolution in support of the ice
enforcement program And the North Carolina Sheriff's Association, which
is also about 85 white establish a formal partnership with
ice in 2007, which is the only one of
its kind of country. And this was important because
despite the roles played by white liberals and advocating for
immigrants, they were often overshadowed by the political right
facilitating the perception that discriminatory practices were divided among racial
lines. As a result, african american leaders emerged
as an important counterweight to the anti immigrant discourse.
While white shares political figures and a conservative media were
perceived as a key promoters of enforcement policies globally.
The African american police sheets and Winston Salem and Greensboro
refused to endorse any local federal partnerships and black council
members were also vocally against enhanced policing, targeted Latinos
dictionary. In the fall of 2000 and eight,
a two day conference, as I imagine, is
held in neighboring Greensburg. This included civil rights activists
, Church leaders, you can organizers of Greensboro,
Winston, Salem and other surrounding communities with the purpose
of forging blackground relationships, gathering in a local baptist
church and community center, various pastors and community representatives
, both african american and latino. I spoke to
the similar structural conditions faced by black and brown communities
, problems with gangs for schools, employment, institutional
discrimination, violence and exploitation and the latino participant noted
, my wife lost her license and cannot get it
renewed and she can't leave to go anywhere. When
the black community, my church realizes they went to
the houses that they didn't know that I was illegal
. I live in an Afro American community and they
got together 100 signatures asking the Department of Immigration not
to deport me. They spoke with lawyers and the
police chief not to work with ice Latinos can't do
this, they can't pass for them, but blacks
can't. The Office of Human Relations includes a black
hazards open to seeing this experience of this stuff.
We have the potential and capacity to work together to
create a difference in our communities and I'm happy with
the support of the black community. The church is
a good place for this. I understand the story
of what happened in the acro community leaders have emerged
to talk and work with us. They don't speak
spanish, but they're they're with us, working to
bring our communities together. So the sense of empathy
and support from African american neighbors and fellow church members
served to really concretize latino sense of sharing discrimination and
positive intergroup relations. Moreover, this perception was bolstered
by the stratification of abuse on immigration enforcement race,
both locally and nationally. Why key white leaders often
represented an enforcement view, while black leaders of navigated
for immigrants, using their higher status selective support.
And african american leaders explain their position in two ways
when they argue that it was unfair and discriminatory and
created obstacles and their ability to build good relations with
their constituents. But they also noted that black families
were being affected by increased policing because checkpoints and raids
and other forms of targeted policing against Latinos took place
in neighborhoods are also heavily african american local black such
as Dr johnson was a local teacher and church leader
expressed to me that they were being caught up in
this dragnet of racial profiling and discriminatory policing. We're
really just made by the lack of general interest in
improving conditions for all minorities. And the City's Human
Relations Commission also responded to these despaired minority concerns by
doing a local popular soul and salsa form. And
this highlighted a number of topics from preventing a statewide
lottery gangs, to economic development, to the use
of tasers by police force and one for my latino
women in the audience passed up. The captain Hispanics
are more and more receiving the kind of treatment that
African americans are getting on the street for police and
I speak from personal experience. But it was frightening
and I was terrified. What is frightening is that
both communities are identifying what color most of the time
and that makes them target table. And the difference
between the two is that Hispanics are perceived to be
So. These public expressions of concern regarding issues that
face both the latino and African american communities were not
isolated incidents, but rather were part of an ongoing
effort to build coalitions around their shared issues as minorities
. To black leaders argue from the pulpit as well
as elsewhere, that civil rights leaders must speak out
against these situations in their communities because our experiences with
it's different. These experiences of institutional discrimination, combined
with a sense of african american, empathize with them
and supported them was key and producing connections between the
two groups. And in this context where competition for
resources was not an issue and Latinos were incorporated into
the stable resource rich communities. It was the most
salient framework in which race religion produced. And this
was in turn reinforced by positive community relations and finally
, why these findings overwhelmingly dominated the atmosphere. Winston
Salem, I don't want to suggest that there window
here. So, as I really imagined earlier,
there were significant numbers of progressive whites who attempted to
reach out to Latinos and advocate for tolerance and immigrant
rights. And in two of my church sites,
outreach programs were staffed primarily by white long tears,
though it should be noted that many respondents from those
sites still said that they felt a lot of distance
from whites and blacks. But despite these pro immigrant
positions held by many in the white community among most
of the mexicans. In my study, whites were
contracting negatively with them. Um, for most,
this was the case in part because Latinos had very
little contact with them and in part because they saw
lights as part of this larger power structure that was
depriving them of rights and privileges they needed to work
and live in north Carolina. So for progressive whites
, they were often in conflict with the groups they
represented and therefore their approach was often to tap in
to be taken seriously in the context of widespread anti
attitudes and South mexicans even perceive this as a ruse
designed to trick Latinos into trusting them one mexican woman
and for me that Anglos were in spanish. So
they use it against and causing me careful because they
say they're friends, they're racist. So by the
same token, not all blacks were strongly disposed,
building close relations with as a local black book store
manager told me when I indicated as interested in learning
about immigration, she said, I'm not happy at
how Latinos are taking over the test scores. For
example, black Children in the third grade at my
school have remained black. White latino Children are improving
because they're getting more resources. I'm not thinking against
Latinos personally, but it dresses it fair and apart
. Her comments indicate a sense of resource competition,
which can be a frequent precursor to conflictual relations and
it's more common among the working class poor minority wants
to. But she also tempers are common so that
they're not read as interpersonal hostility, but rather concerned
over community resources. And whether she makes this distress
and moved to align herself with more broadly accepted views
, or because she's making a point that there is
a distinction between having limited resources and having hostile attitudes
is not clear. But what is important that the
extent to which these attitudes were expressed, they were
still uh, simultaneously being admonished by leadership significantly who
used their significantly higher socioeconomic status and access to resources
to leverage support for immigrants. So, as I
noted at the outside of this talk in his speech
on workers' rights at this conference, uh, Mr
phillips, who is african american men and lean are
you doing here? Spoke of his participation in the
freedom rides in which activists, church members and community
members, chartered buses from Washington, D. C
. Advocate for Immigration reform in 2000 and four,
and he noted to the audience that the members of
his union didn't understand what he'll be riding the bus
with Latinos from a new town. So he lectured
them saying employers divide workers along race, gender,
and immigration status. That is the history. It
bugs me when I see folks talking about them,
puts them folks that folks having benefits, writing up
to the office and cadillac you were in this position
three years ago, Don't forget, we're not going
to let employers do that to us this time,
divide and conquer. Immigrants can't participate ought to just
pack them up and send them back. Well,
that's a whole lot of packing to do. And
it makes no sense. So Mr phillips Speech in
which he goes on to quote Martin Luther King specifically
admonishes blacks who don't see the connection between the struggles
of African Americans and Latino immigrants in the community,
and he draws on the stereotypes of black welfare recipients
in the 1980s, as well as connection to the
civil rights movement and immigration reform to make his case
. And these words really struck a chord in the
audience. People were shouting amen, and he encouraged
Latinos in the audience to stand up and testify to
talk about their experiences of discrimination. These efforts were
intended to reinforce the connections between the two groups and
undermine anyone who questioned the solidarity approach. So,
as a result of being tamped down by the more
vocal black and white leaders, counter narratives really only
bubbled to the surface and they didn't create much of
an impact on intergroup relations as a whole. Mhm
. So, in the case of positive relations from
mexican perspective, despite efforts by progressive ways to provide
an alternative for many mexicans and Winston. Salem enforcement
was synonymous appointments by contrast, the experience of discrimination
combined with the size that african americans empathize with that
experience and supported them was key in producing connections between
the two groups. So I'm focusing on these conditions
with sensor provides a lovely example about how under certain
conditions a sense of like ground solidarity can emerge.
So, by taking into account these two forms of
status, socio economic and racial. I've identified these
conditions as quality of contact, level of resource competition
, parallel signs of discrimination and external threat, achieving
the way that groups really. Yeah. And as
I previously noted, it's important that while the literature
highlight social status, um it doesn't it only focuses
on socioeconomic status, but that works often want to
apply to black white relations. But when thinking of
inter minority relations, the role of race plays an
important role. Um And so while the study is
confined to a single community, by examining the conditions
in recent research that examines black relations can explain not
only conflict a conflict ambivalence and shifting relations. For
example, inter intermediary relations by a more suggests that
positive intergroup contact need to positive attitudes while Lopez Sanders
finds that attitudes our labor market competition increases. I
argue that by applying applying this dual set, the
findings of the study don't need to be counterintuitive that
we apply a local context announces to understanding and cooperation
. More importantly, they can provide insights into community
law change elsewhere. Okay, in other words,
while demographic change introduces new empirical conditions relations, the
mechanisms that shape relations may be fairly consistent across the
time space. Future research must test and refine these
mechanisms across contacts. The implications of this include that
qualitative research is an important role in identifying key areas
for large scale study in comparison that aggressive enforcement policies
have important unintended consequences for shaping religion, enjoying a
new coalition, and indeed, as states and municipalities
intensify their use of punitive policies, policies towards immigrants
, african, americans and leadership positions are intensifying their
resistance to them. The expansion and strengthening of the
coalition suggests not only a coherent sense of shared minority
status, but also that such shifts are likely to
have a significant political impact. They both the local
and national level. And I suspect that these changes
may be indicative of a major shift in the power
dynamics for years to come with that the evidence and
have mm.