Thread: NAACP faces questions over ties with Hispanics

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Thursday, July 13, 2006
NAACP faces questions over ties with Hispanics

By Sean Mussenden
MEDIA GENERAL NEWS SERVICE


WASHINGTON

As the NAACP, the nation's oldest civil-rights group, gathers for its annual convention here this weekend, it is increasingly joining forces with the newest minority power in American politics - Hispanics.

NAACP supporters say that working with Hispanics is crucial in maintaining relevance in an era when Hispanics, the fastest growing minority, outnumber blacks.

But critics say that the relationship has hurt the the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People's core constituency in the continuing battle over immigration.

Frank Morris, the chairman of Choose Black America, a group that favors strict immigration controls, said that the NAACP has lost touch with the needs of low-income blacks.

"The leadership has really divorced itself from the African-American grass roots, who are really concerned about the high rates of illegal immigration," Morris said.

The NAACP has joined with pro-immigration Hispanic groups to lobby for a more orderly, open-door immigration policy that allows current illegal immigrants to receive documentation and legally work.

Economists debate the effect that low-skilled, poorly educated illegal immigrants have on the ability of citizens to find jobs.

But some studies suggest that blacks - who as a group tend to be poorer and have less formal education than whites - are hurt by the influx of immigrant workers.

Currently, illegal immigrants cannot fight for higher wages, giving employers an incentive to hire them instead of paying more for low-skilled legal blacks, said Hilary Shelton, the director of the NAACP's Washington bureau.

Giving illegal immigrants legal standing would raise wages in many low-skilled sectors - such as construction or the service industry - and give employers more of an incentive to hire blacks as well as new arrivals, Shelton said.

Some NAACP watchers see other motives behind the group's support of a less restrictive immigration policy.

As the nation's Hispanic population has soared, increasing its political clout, the black population has grown much more slowly.

Years ago, the NAACP was the dominant political force in the civil-rights movement, but the group's influence and membership have dropped, said Robert C. Smith, a political scientist at San Francisco State University.

"In order to advance the civil-rights agenda, they needed to make an alliance with the largest, and fastest growing, minority group in the country, even if they had differences on certain points," said Smith, who has studied the NAACP and black politics extensively. "They're thinking long term."

After the 2000 census showed that Hispanics had moved ahead of blacks as the nation's dominant minority group, "the media tried very hard to frame the growth as a competition between Latinos and blacks," said Cecilia Munoz, the vice president for policy for the National Council of La Raza, the country's largest Hispanic civil-rights group.

Instead of competition, Munoz said, the two sides have increasingly found common ground on such issues as strong voting-right protections, anti-discrimination laws, health-care access and equal education financing.

Bruce Gordon, who became the NAACP's president a year ago, spoke last month to the annual convention of the League of United Latin American Citizens, another influential Hispanic civil-rights group.

La Raza's Munoz said that "having two sides of a minority group with similar goals and a similar agenda means we're a stronger force for change if we work together."

But the NAACP's critics question whether those agendas should be identical, at least on the subject of immigration and jobs.

A poll by the Pew Research Center in April found that four out of five blacks said that jobs were hard to find in their community.

Half of the whites gave that response.

One of three blacks said that immigrants take jobs from American citizens, compared with one of four whites.

Slightly less than a quarter of all blacks said that they or a family member had lost a job to an immigrant.

The NAACP convention will begin Saturday and end Thursday.

• Sean Mussenden, a reporter in Media General News Service's Washington bureau, can be reached at smussenden@mediageneral.com or 202-662-7668.

One of three blacks said that immigrants take jobs from American citizens, compared with one of four whites.

Slowly but surely people are opening their eyes. Now if they'll just get off the couches.

Slightly less than a quarter of all blacks said that they or a family member had lost a job to an immigrant.

And the NAACP is still working with THE RACE?