Preferences & Group Conflict
On Saturday the New York Times ran a long, interesting article about increasing tensions betweent the black and Hispanic communities. The high, or low, point for me was the following quote from Keith Murphy, host of a radio talk show in Milwaukee with a mostly black audience:
"It's still a matter of distrust," he said. "It's a feeling among African-Americans that Latinos are coming in and getting the jobs and are getting preferential treatment."I've never heard Keith Murphy's program, and so I don't know whether he thinks preferences based on race or ethnicity are bad in principle or bad only when they go to Hispanics. His comment, however, exemplifies one of the most corrosive (as well as one of the most predictable) effects of preferences: their unerring ability to turn group against group in a mad scramble for the scraps of favoritism.
Nathan Glazer, back in 1975, before he succumbed in despair to the conclusion that minorities were incapable of achieving success without preferences, warned, presciently, in his book AFFIRMATIVE DISCRIMINATION that preferences could be predeicted to produce
a real Balkanization, in which group after group struggles for the benefits of special treatment.... The demand for special treatment will lead to animus against other groups that already have it, by those who think they should have it and don't.... and, equally predictably one can add today, resentment on the part of groups who do have it against new groups clamoring for it.
Say What?
I read about racial tensions in a TX town a few years ago. They were fighting for power/contracts.
The numbers aren't w/the blacks. Their time was over in the 80s.
Posted by: Sandy P. | January 19, 2004 12:16 AM
Tensions and conflict between ethnic minorities aren't new. When I was growing up in San Antonio, TX, the biggest fights were (and still are) between the black and the hispanic gangs, who would fight over territory in downtown. Their hatred and loathing for each other caused the black/white situation to pale in comparison.
Detroit is seeing a lot of this, too. A lot of people don't realize there's a growing contingent of hispanics in Detroit (Mexican, Caribbean Islanders, and Cubans are the largest), and their relationships with the largely black core of Detroit have been and still are full of hate, loathing, and violence.
The only thing I've observed that can overcome this mutual hatred is a common cause to turn on whites. And then only for the interim.
Posted by: Claire | January 19, 2004 12:27 PM
"Preferential treatment" doesn't necessarily mean any kind of formal affirmative action. Folk wisdom and studies have shown that many employers prefer to employ immigrants over native-born blacks, believing immigrants to be harder working and less troublesome than blacks. So basically, blacks may percieve that everyone gets preferential treatment over them. In some contexts (especially low-level working class jobs) they're probably right, but in others of course blacks are preferred over everyone else with equivalent qualifications. Nonetheless, it's not terribly surprising that everyone gets offended at being the object of racial discrimination -- whether that discrimination supports or undermines outcome inequality and is formal or informal.
Posted by: G H Rossman | January 19, 2004 2:37 PM
In Detroit, I think that even more tension exist between blacks and arabs.
Posted by: aaron | January 21, 2004 12:54 PM
Here is the difference: My father-in-law owned a storefront in Westside Chicago. He wanted to rent it out for some additional income. Black folk that wanted to rented it didn't have the money, wanted more time, missed deadlines. Arabs came in with the money ready to go. When this was described to a Black community group, a significant number of people said that my Father-in-law should have waited for a Black man or woman to get their sh*t together. I think, in this kernel of information, is a significant reason why the lower income African American "Community" is continually on their way down.
Posted by: Richard Cook | January 22, 2004 11:24 AM