Blacks vs. Hispanics

The Christian Science Monitor reported the growth of Black and Hispanic friction in Los Angelos. A field dominated by blacks for the past decades has now been usurped by the rising Hispanic immigrant populations. "If you drive across this city, you will see 99 percent of all construction is being done by Hispanics.... You will see no African-American males on these sites, and that is a big change," says Mr. Vaughn. Across America there is debate among inner city blacks about whether immigrating hisanics, illegal or not are saturating the job market in stores, restaurants, hotels, manufacturing plants, and elsewhere where blacks once dominated. The main cause of the clash is the tendency of both blacks and hispanics to gravitate in towards the inner city and the same low skill job markets. Vernon Briggs, a Cornell University professor who reseraching immigration policy commented that in the era of mass imigration no group has benefitied less or suffered more than african americans. Some want to completely get rid of the immigrants, some want to work with them and others want to try and figure out how to regulate it but what is certain is that hispanics and black are duking it out for jobs, housing, education, and healthcare.

The first American Nativist party was founded in mid 19th century. This party was a reaction to the serge of Irish Catholic immigrants. The people had an intense fear that immigrants would storm the country upsetting the social order and stealing the jobs of born Americans. In 1850, Charles B. Allen founded a secret nativist society called the Order of the Star Spangled Banner who came to be known as the Know Nothings. They were labeled this because if asked about the secret order they would reply " i know nothing." The nativists went public in 1954 forming the American Party. Their anti-Irish party called for a longer waiting time between immigrant and naturalization. The American Party was denounced by mainstrem politics as " biggoted nativists."