Schooling Fools: Race, LGBT Rights and Immigration

MadProfessah friend Hans Johnson has written an interesting piece in the Huffington Post which connects the dots between anti-gay purges of the past and the current anti-immigrant legislation coming out of Arizona. In it, he says:

The past is not the only guide toward greater solidarity with immigrants. One would think an entire decade of antigay ballot measures that played on stigma and bigotry to ban recognition of same-sex partners' freedom to marry would make the gay community staunch foes of anti-immigrant bias and its deployment in state law. That is mostly the case, in part because thousands of LGBT people are themselves immigrants or have partners or family members who must navigate the exploitation, suspicion, ignorance, and outright hate that greets immigrants, undocumented and otherwise.

Yet gay people are not immune from fecklessness in the face of anti-immigrant rhetoric and policy-making. In a well-publicized essay from 2006, lesbian commentator Jasmyne Cannick from Los Angeles all but told immigrants then denouncing a hostile bill in Congress and demanding reform that provides a path to legal citizenship, to wait in line behind the native-born. "It's a slap in the face to lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people to take up the debate on whether or not to give people who are in this country illegally any rights when we haven't even given the people who are here legally all of their rights," Cannick wrote.

Whether callousness or merely lack of foresight, one chilling consequence of what Cannick voiced came to life just two years later in the outcome of California's voting on Proposition 8, which eliminated access to civil marriage for same-sex couples. Many California immigrants, Latino and otherwise, ignored gay people's pleas for justice and against being singled out by the policy-making process and voted to add Prop 8 to the state constitution. Thanks to that ballot measure, it is now embedded there. The lesson may be clear in retrospect. Turning away from unfairness, and spurning a chance for coalition, can cause reciprocal injury.

It's pretty amazing that any disenfranchised group would tell another "the line to get equal rights starts behind me" but that's arguably what the short-sighted Cannick was saying (and Johnson was laudably calling her out on).

Cannick's pieces have appeared at the Black politics blog Jack and Jill Politics, but happily there are people there who see understand the importance of solidarity and coalition building. In "What Part of ‘If You Ain’t White’, don’t you understand?" rikyrah points out this disturbing response to Arizona's recent xenophobic actions:

Nearly two-thirds of Americans back Arizona’s new anti-illegal immigration law, which makes it a state crime for a person to be in the country illegally. The law also requires local and state law enforcement officials to question people about their immigration status if they suspect they’re in the country illegally.

Sixty-four percent favor this law, while 34 percent oppose it. But those numbers are essentially reversed among Latinos — with 70 percent of them opposing the law, and only 27 percent supporting it.

Even though almost two-thirds of the public supports Arizona’s law, nearly an identical number (66 percent) believe it will lead to the discrimination of Latino immigrants who reside in the U.S. legally.

The point here is that Americans are willing to support a law which they admit will discriminate against some people, because they don't think that law will impact them. rikyrah also points out the direct correlation between Arizona's SB 1070 and its explicit legalization of racial profiling:

There’s a Black person, more likely, a Black Man, racially profiled EVERY DAY in this country.

The only way that we’ve remotely been able to fight this, is because it was ILLEGAL.

Now, if this happens when it’s ILLEGAL, what do you think is going to happen if they make it LEGAL?

Well, I’m not willing to find out.

IS there a Black person out there that thinks that doesn’t recognize THAT WE ARE NEXT ON THE LIST?

Please point to me something in the history of Black folk and Law Enforcement in America that could make me conclude anything OTHER than this?

So, it’s opposition to SB1070 for the selfish reason of SELF-PRESERVATION for me

So, to summarize, there are clear reasons why LGBT people should support immigration reform and oppose anti-immigrant legislation (especially if we expect immigrants and non-gay people to oppose anti-gay legislation) and there are clear reasons why Black people should be interested in promoting immigration legislation and opposing xenophobic public policy (anti-immigrant furors are always based in race, and will not remain targeted at non-Black racial groups for long).

You'd think someone who is Black and gay wouldn't need to learn these lessons in 2010 but, happily, there are several people, including yours truly who are prepared to school fools on the greater good.