Whenever I feel deprived of inflammatory e-mail, there are subjects I can explore that are certain to bring out the antipathy in people. One such issue is illegal immigration.
Recently, I wrote about the need for immigration reform that was fair and reflected the best of American values. I also wrote about a movement among African-American pastors locally as well as nationally who were embracing immigration reform as an important social justice cause.
Predictably, I received e-mail and voice mail with myriad reasons why immigration reform was a bad idea, especially for African-Americans to support.
One reader opined:
"Immigrants move into our communities, they ride on the coattails of the civil rights that blacks fought for, but really do not like us. And they should learn English (which is a whole other story). I am against these pastors and immigration reform. I am black and I vote."
Another reader wrote:
"Can someone please explain to me why black people should advocate for amnesty or a path to citizenship when the unemployment rate for us is already astronomical? I just don't get it. Are any of these pastors on the ground to witness the conflict between blacks and Latinos who move into our communities?"
These e-mails were consistent in tone with the majority of correspondence I received.
It is the overly simplistic "they are taking our jobs" versus "they do the jobs nobody else will do." Either side of this unsophisticated divide is apt to land one in a pit of hatred and insularity.
A study released last year titled "A Conversation About the Economic Effects of Immigrants on African Americans," conducted by Gerald D. Jaynes, professor of economics and African American studies at Yale University, debunks the emotional sound-bite stereotypes that so many hold to be true.
Jaynes asserts, "For about two decades, the best academic research has consistently concluded that, accounting for their overall benefits and costs, immigrants have had net positive effects on the American economy."
While Jaynes' observations challenge many existing stereotypes, the real culprit that pits low-income groups against each other is an insidious type of class warfare that is as old as the republic.
Not long before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King Jr., in a sermon titled "The Drum Major Instinct," talked about how this phenomenon played out during the Civil Rights Movement.
Recalling when he was in a Birmingham, Ala., jail, King said each day the white jailers would show him how he was so wrong for demonstrating and how segregation was right.
According to King, about the third day the subject changed to where the jailers lived and their incomes.
King said, "And when those brothers told me what they were earning, I said, "Now, you know what? You ought to be marching with us. You're just as poor as Negroes.
"You are put in the position of supporting your oppressor because, through prejudice and blindness, you fail to see that the same forces that oppress Negroes in American society oppress poor white people," he said.
An argument could be made that without the impoverished white male, who's economic conditions were not much better than that of the slave, the South may not have had enough to field a Confederate Army.
Are we not witnessing a version of that behavior today as it relates to immigration reform?
The angry comments I recently received from African-Americans narrow the immigration debate and fail to factor its complexity. Moreover, the nexus of this debate is not among highly skilled labor, but more likely to take place among the unskilled labor force.
The issue is more about who is easiest to exploit economically than what group is taking another's job.
In our public discourse, a huge net has been cast over those who are loosely defined as middle class, leaving out those on the margins. It is those on the economic margins fueling much of the public rancor in the current immigration debate, blind to the fact that those they oppose are in a similar economic condition. Though unflattering, it is cyclical and profoundly American in its implementation.
When will low-income individuals, regardless of hue, come to the obvious realization they have more economic self-interest that unites them than the percentage of melanin in their skin that divides them?
Byron Williams is an Oakland pastor and syndicated columnist. He is the author of "Strip Mall Patriotism: Moral Reflections of the Iraq War." E-mail him at byron@byronspeaks.com or visit his Web site: byronspeaks.com.