February 17, 1988, Portland Observer, Page 5
Identity &
Survival
Perspectives
by Professor McKinley Burt
bv J.M. Gates, MBA
Immigration: Does History Repeat?
During the past year there has
appeared in the Black press a rash
of articles citing the negative eco
nomic impact of Southeast Asian
emigration to the urban centers of
this country. The authors perceive
as quite real the possibility that
these immigrants of color will cause
the further disintegration of an al
ready precarious Black economic
situation.
Their concerns range from the
competition for increasingly fewer
jobs at the unskilled and semi- skill
ed level I a category where the bulk
of our under 25 age group is to be
found) —to the rapid acquisition of
'small businesses' in Black neigh
borhoods (where the bulk of Black
entrepreneurship is fou n d). If the
prognosis is correct, Blacks are
facing the greatest economic dis
aster of their post- slavery exper
ience. But it has happened before
and with almost point- to- point
correspondence with certain histo
rical
'Immigration
Benchmarks'
which I shall cite here.
Something has been said, I be
lieve, about the fate of "people who
learn nothing from history." There
may be readers who think they are
not threatened because of their civil
service or union status. But cer
tainly a number of economic events
occurring under this administration
should disabuse them of this false
sense of security. Daily media re
port of layoffs, cutbacks and out
right abolition of large public agen
cies reveal that neither civil service
or union seniority qualifies as a
"safety net."
It has been said that if white
European immigration had not been
cut off by submarine warfare during
the First World War (1914-1918),
Blacks would have long since joined
the Indians on reservations. Al
ready, by use of restrictive cove
nants, mortgage discrimination,
disinvestment and violence, Blacks
had been forced into central city
ghettos across the nation. Within
these 'Bantustans' only whites (for
the most part 1st and 2nd genera
tion immigrants) could obtain bank
loans to finance business enter
prises or commercial property. Nor,
for the most part, were Blacks
granted franchises or distributor
ships for consumer goods ranging
from appliances to clothing, from
buggys/automobiles to hardware or
jewelry. These Verks'were reserved
by the financial and industrial esta
blishment for the immigrants, and,
through quotas and blood line pre
ferences, for successive generations
of their relatives.
As a prologue and companion
piece to this scenario —the new
slavery — we find that with the
period highlighted by the Plessy vs
Ferguson' decision of 1896 ("sepa
rate but equal") there came about a
very rapid loss of the few gains
Blacks had made since the Civil
War. A case in point is that where
Blacks had begun to make some
gains in the skilled trades (DuBois,
Franklin, Rudwich, Meier, et a ll,
by the turn of the century, the craft
unions, burgeoning with poor white
Europeans, now voted the Blacks
out, (Metal Trades, Plumbers, Ope
rating Engineers and Northern
Building Trades). And with the ad
vent of the A.F.L. -Am erican Fe
deration of Labor —there came the
exclusionary clause in these unions:
"For White Males Only."
But his cruel and divisive Ameri
can social phenomenon did not be
gin here, but was institutionalized
by government beginning with the
"South Carolina Immigration Bill of
1866" (Commager, Documents of
American History, Document No.
257). We quote below:
'The demand for industrial
labor, the opening up of the
west, and the disorganization
of the labor system of the
South, all led to official as well
as unofficial efforts to encou
rage immigration. Most South
ern States attempted to attract
immigrants to take the place of
the negro worker, but uni
formly without success'.
In
South Carolina a state com
missioner of agriculture was
created and a pamphlet adver
tising the attractions of the
state published in several lan
guages and 'distributed widely
throughout northern Europe'.
See F.B. Simkins and R.H.
It is easy to be confused by
filters of illusion and delusion.
When the dust settles, what
do you see? For example,
"scope and sequence curri
culum committee."
If an auto factory had a
committee to write a blue
print plan and another com
mittee to produce the auto
without accountability or stan
dards of relevancy, chaos
would prevail. A defect in the
blueprint would produce a
"lem on" auto. So it is with
Portland
Public
Schools
scope and sequence; Millner's
name appears on a policy
statement but not on the im
plementation lesson plan vo
lumes (even though opera
tional reality is a part of any
product). The operational
reality leaves many ques
tions.
On page 97 of the above-
mentioned statement, Grif
fith's "Birth of a Nation" is
cited without any notation of
Afro-American film develop
ment during that period. Said
deficiency continues in lesson
plan volumes. Is equal oppor
tunity education being served
by omitting existence of
minority-initiated films as his
torical facts? The same omis
sion continued in recent com
munity events with a featured
speaker publicly statflig that
Black film development would
not be cited (not even as a
resource footnote).
What,
then, do we celebrate?
Woody, South Carolina During
Reconstruction, p. 243 ff.
But the disclaimer, given above,
" . . . uniformly without success" is
obviously pure fiction as we know
from experience and the quote be
low from the 'Shell Manifesto'Jan
uary 23, 1890 (Charleton News and
Courie):
'The peculiar situation now exist
ing in the state, requiring the united
efforts of every true white man to
preserve white supremacy and our
very civilization even has tended to
'make permanent' the condition
which existed before the war. Fear
of a division among us and conse
quent return of a 'negro rule' has
kept the people q u ie t. . ."
The ' immigration caper' did not
end here. No sooner did the Black
Ninth and Tenth Cavalry assist in
'protecting'western railroad building
from the Indians, than we find the
Union Pacific and other railroads
establishing 'Immigration Offices'in
the key port cities of northern
Europe. They advertised for whites
of 'good stock" to come to America
to occupy at little or no cost the
bountiful lands astride the new
transcontinental railroads -none for
the "Buffalo Soldiers."
It would seem a matter of the
most urgency that our leaders and
national social agencies be about
addressing the current economic
problem before history indeed re
peats itself. The only thing that
will help is massive economic plan
ning ( and implementation, for a
change) by Blacks, for Blacks, and
with Blacks. That 'capitalization
of Black buying power'we have al
ways talked about will have to be
done, or else we may face in the
new future a poverty unforeseen in
modern times. There was not room
here to detail here the more
recent course of American immi
gration policy. It is not that good in
the racial sense. For the interested
reader a good overview is to be
gained from reading the September,
1966 issue of 'The Annals of the
American Academy of Political and
Social Science: The New Immigra
tion.' You can find it at your public
or university library.
PORTLAND O BSERVER
"The Eyes and Ears of the Community
C ity C om m issioner Dick Bogle (L) and fo rm e r M u ltn om ah
C ounty S he riff Lee B row n (R), n o w the Chief o f Police in H ou
ston, Texas, to o k tim e o ut to v is it at a recent gathering of
the n atio n al Policy In s titu te , an educational conference of
Black elected and appointed officials, in W ashington. D.C.
Bogle and B row n shared tho u gh ts on crim e prevention - the
top p rio rity in both Portland and Houston — and the im p o r
tance of neighborhood crim e prevention e ffo rts . B row n was
a panelist in a discussion of A tta c k in g Crime in the Black
C o m m u n ity ."
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