Blacks & Hispanics, Coalition or Competition?

1.- Introduction

When the two largest minorities in the United States, Blacks and Hispanics, enter into contact, what kind of behavior is expected between them? The first reaction to this question may be that they could try to help each other, as they, somehow, share disadvantages in comparison with the major white population. They should fell sympathetic to the other minority’s problems, as somehow, these may resemble their owns. Actually they share common difficulties and goals regarding to gaining the same status as white citizens in all major areas. However the general attitude concerning the other minority is not as cooperative as desired.
In this paper we are going to analyze the relationship between these two ethnic groups in the North American society context. The first part of the paper will be devoted to discover the origins of this competitive attitude and try to figure out the reasons why one of the groups is more reticent to establish a collaborative attitude towards the other.
In the second part of the paper we will expose some major areas which are the main points of conflict between both groups, in which the benefit for one of them may be detrimental to the other. Among the most relevant areas we will mention are employment, housing, social benefits and the political arena.
In the last part of the document, we will present facts and figures to show how this rivalry escalates into violence among these minority groups, being this problem one of the most important issues the national government needs to fight.

2.- Historical Roots of the Rivalry

In order to be able to get a whole picture of the situation between Blacks and Hispanics, it is necessary to look back to certain aspects of the origins of both ethnic groups to understand where does the rivalry come from and how deeply rooted is. The origin of both African-American and Hispanics groups are considered to have similar background from Africa, the West Indies, and the Caribbean. However the reasons why they ended up in The United States vary. The major difference being that the Blacks were among the non-white population that involuntary immigrated into North America, whereas the recent Hispanic immigrants moves to North America as the result of a spontaneous and voluntary act. Moreover, the kind of subjugation and racism the Blacks had to suffer at the hands of White Europeans Americans was never practiced before. It is also remarkable to say that the advantages and disadvantages involuntary African immigrants and recent voluntary Hispanic immigrants brought with them when they disembarked are different. We are going to describe them in the next paragraphs.
Popular literature suggests that the Latin American immigrants “success and apparent functional assimilation might be attributed to their strong family ties and values”.[1]Hispanics have a very solid family organization in which the male role is of predominant importance. However, the whites have always seen the African-American families as fragmented and the position of their men, in comparison to their women, has been considered weak.
There is a considerable difference between these two groups and that is not only their willingness to go to the States as immigrants, but the fact that Hispanics, when going voluntary to North America brought something else than their belongings. Their traditions, languages and culture were moved with them, something which favor their adaptability to their new environment. In the case of the initial African immigrants, they were not allowed to take with them their traditions, languages nor inherited affiliations. As Parrillo says, “other ethnic groups recreated in miniature the society they left behind, but Africans were not allowed to”.[2] This is not to say that the type of discrimination and hostility from the Whites did not affect the Hispanics, but the degree of restraint that the African-American community endured is different in many ways in comparison to those of the recent Hispanic immigrants.
Another factor that influences negative attitudes towards the other sector is economics. The popular American press and White politicians do recognize the economic improvements the Hispanic group is achieving. They often say that, in comparison to the African-American community, they have talent for business. But there are reasons for that to be so. The first one is that the Hispanic population did not arrive impoverished when crossing the border. They did not arrive as poor neocolonial immigrants but as “invited and assisted political pawns of the ideological war between capitalism and communism”.[3] Since the year 1975 the waves of Hispanic population included people from different professional backgrounds such as military officers, doctors, scientists, and businessmen. They already possessed “marketable skills”, and some of them also brought prosperity and investment opportunities.
There were some other things that contributed to the economic growth of the Hispanic community within the States. Among these we find the sense of “intragroup survival practices” which main traditions were hiring people from the same group or the creation of family-owned enterprises. An aspect of these practices was that the Hispanic population normally located their business in typical African-American neighborhoods, thus, making competence to already established businesses, being even able to get higher profits than those from the black community.
A third aspect that may be mentioned is the educational achievement. Education was the only medium by which the African-American community improved from slavery to the present status held in the American society. In the 1970’s the college enrolment was as high as the one of the Whites, however, this rates diminished with Ronald Reagan and his anti-affirmative action. In fact the future implications for education of African-Americans are not that optimistic. And one of the reasons for that is that education is linked, somehow, with family income. All those income related to areas such as engineering, science and technology are going to be higher than other fields which include the majority of professions taken mostly by the Black population and getting lower incomes than the former.
As the Hispanic population is increasing at a very high speed, the Black population should worry no more for competing against the Whites in education; instead they should focus all their concerns towards getting a parallel achievement in educational matters with other ethnic groups.

3. Areas of Competition

During the 1960’s, Blacks and Hispanics shared some common concerns, such as poverty, what lead them to form alliances to fight for their common goal. However, this coalition began to disappear when policies to promote equal rights and equity begun to clash. When both minority groups started to have different goals, to feel distrust towards the other group, or the size of one of the groups began to diverge from the other, so that no further coalitions were necessary, the gap between both ethnic groups was such that there emerged hostility between them and no more cooperation was going to be expected. Moreover, both groups’ attitudes towards each other were going to get high hate rates not seen before.
The Black-Hispanic conflict is considered of importance for all citizens due to the impact recent immigration has on the American society. The main reason for the clash of these groups is because of their fight for scarce resources. There are four major areas in which both minority groups seem to clash. They, increasingly, compete for job’s scarcity, adequate housing, social amenities and political implications. We are going to deal with each area to have a general overview of the roots of the problem, whose main base is economic.

3.1- Labor Market Discrimination

“In this era of mass immigration, no group has benefited less or been harmed more than the African-American population”.[4] In the 1980’s, due to the internationalization of the world economy, technological innovation and global movement of workers, less-skilled workers were the main affected by the sliding demand of their services. This fact was more detrimental in the largest metropolitan areas in the United States. The worse result of all this was the rise of the unemployment rate among people already living in the United States, specially, among the Black community. Thus, during that decade, wage inequality increased for those people without university education, for the young people and for the Blacks. The shifts in manufacturing were responsible, in part, for this decline in the salary, because the jobs it offered were carried out mainly by high school graduates. So, immigration started to cause important costs to the United States, especially to those less-skilled workers.
The reasons for the negative assumption of the Latin community by the Blacks is due to the so called “higher is better”[5]. This is because, as the U.S. economy was in decline, it was considered that if the immigrant population earned higher wages, this could be beneficial for the American society in general. This was so because with higher salaries they could pay higher taxes to the state; at the same time this implied less expenditure in social and unemployment benefits; a third good point was that, as they got the skills outside the States, this meant no preparation costs for them. However, this was only applied for the so called “good immigrants”[6]. In respect to the low-skilled immigrants things were different.
“Less-skilled immigrant workers are more costly, they undercut the position of domestic labor-although for consumers and businesses they are also a source of cheap labor and less costly goods- suggesting a redistributive image that is positive for some and negative for others.”[7] However, the general effect is less optimistic, as the negative political and social consequences of redistributive effect was high. This context of declining economy of the 1980’s could only lead to a widespread feeling of distrust and suspicion towards the immigrants recently arrived. This “browning of America”[8] enhanced the differentials between the minorities already living there and the newcomers.
There are a few instances to show how the Hispanic immigrants affected the Black community regarding employment, thus, affecting their economic status. One of those are the hiring practices carried out by employers, by which they showed their preference for hiring immigrants as they were “cheaper and less troublesome workers”.[9] Immigrants were also preferable in comparison with blacks and, even whites, to work in hotels and restaurants because the latter were considered to be idle. There is a clear advantage for Hispanics in the working place in comparison to the Blacks, leading to an intense competition between both ethnic groups.
As regards to more recent dates, the status of the black community regarding employment is quite the same as a decade or two ago. Statistics show that the young Black population is having problems in the labor market. Unemployment among young Blacks nationwide is 40 percent. “For blacks, the growing presence of immigrant workers adds to the formidable obstacles they face in finding a job”.[10] Among Blacks, 78 percent say jobs are difficult to find in their community compared to only 55 percent of Hispanics.
As a result of all this facts, Blacks had a general feeling of antagonism, even though, Black elites had supported originally all immigrant efforts. They had a general feeling of intolerance towards all newcomers, basically, because the new Latino “undercut Black workers by taking jobs at subminimum wage”[11]. That is why Blacks, generally, favor immigration restrictions even more than the white population, and they do that, not because they reject the immigrant’s culture but because they feel afraid of losing their jobs. The Latino community answered to this statement saying that the Black community did not share the benefits obtained of the civil rights struggle with other minorities.

3.2- Adequate Housing

After talking about the most obvious point of conflict between both communities, employment, we are going to talk about other issues of competitiveness. One of them is the question of housing. During the 1960’s and 1970’s Blacks remained less likely than whites to own homes and to live in older and crowded inadequate housing.[12]Results support a stratification perspective of inequality for both Blacks and Hispanics. Blacks and Hispanics continue to lag significantly behind whites in housing wealth. Access to adequate housing is a strong indicator of inequality between whites and minority groups. The government, through the Federal Housing Acts, has tried to go against this trend of discrimination in home rental and ownership; however, there still exists a big gap to save.
According to human ecology thinkers, the social and economic factors of a minority group are determining to establish the place where they are going to live. In the case of Blacks and Hispanics both factors make a difference. Even though both minority groups share discrimination and inequality based on social and economic factors, regarding to suburban housing both groups differ. The main reason for this is that the majority white population still has preferences towards one of these ethnic groups, and consequently having a negative effect on the spatial assimilation of the rejected one.
According to ecological theory, occupational status is the main factor to determine if a group is going to live in the metropolitan area or in the suburbs. Following this theory, the professional sector- the highest-status group- is going to be the type of people most frequently found to be living in the suburbs. “The higher the occupational level, the greater the distance a group will live from the central business district”.[13]So, according to this assumption, the group with higher percentage of professionals is going to be the group more likely to live in the suburbs. However “access to suburban housing is clearly a function of color”.[14] This is like this because 75 percent of the Afro-American professionals still live in the metropolitan area. Moreover, the group more likely to live in suburbs, after the white majority, is the Hispanic population and not the Black one. The white population is more willing to share their suburb area with Hispanics than with Blacks. So, the correlation of professional status with suburbanization must be left aside. Race still represents the main obstacle for the Black population to get access to housing in the suburbs.
This color determinant of suburban access may have detrimental consequences for the African-American population as their opportunities for economic and social progress are reduced. The main relevant one being the lack of job opportunities as, since 1948, “suburban areas have received over 80% of the new employment in manufacturing, retail and wholesale trade, and selected services”.[15] It is expected that this pattern of better jobs distribution towards the suburbs will continue, what will increase the already high rates of Black unemployment.

3.3- Government Services

There is another area which is reinforcing the conflict between Blacks and Hispanics in most cities of the United States. This other relevant point of conflict is the municipal welfare state, which, instead of favoring towards the coalition of both ethnic groups is getting just the opposite. There are two main reasons for this respect. The first one, due to the status of the urban governments based on “spoils system that offers jobs, contracts, favors and other perks to the well connected”[16], fans the rivalry of both groups. Urban Hispanics and Blacks have organized separately to the fight for those precious opportunities the government offers.
Secondly, “Hispanics increased as the country's largest minority group, at 14.4% of the population, compared with 12.8% for Blacks”.[17] Due to this increasing Hispanic population, the African-American group starts to be troubled as the welfare state transfers or benefits are finite, because of the actual budget cuts. That is the reason that, as the other group grows in number, their possibilities to get the same benefits diminishes.

3.4- Political Implications

According to the survey Paula D. McClain about the political competition between Blacks and Hispanics there are some interesting findings. First of all we need to emphasize the aspect that the surveys were made mainly in cities which a high percentage of Black population in comparison to the Hispanic one. So, this may be taken into account.
The first statement he makes is that every time Blacks or Hispanics have any kind of political success is at the expenses of the white population. “Political competition between blacks and Hispanics is evident only when controls for white political outcomes are introduced”. [18]That is, as the political success of both communities increase, the competitiveness also increases, mainly because this success is due to the lack of white population in those cities with minority majority representation. The survey also states that, as the black community increases, the Hispanics seem to fare less well politically, due to the less political representation they may have.
This less political representation in comparison to the other group may have negative consequences for the disadvantaged group. The main implication being less opportunities to find a job in the public sector, for example. Also socioeconomic factors influence in the political arena. “If Hispanics (or blacks) do not receive a fair share of economic resources, they may not have the wherewithal to increase their political representation”.[19]
In the findings there may be assumptions to justify the possible alliances between both groups in the political issue. This necessity for coalitions may appear in cities where the Black and Hispanic are minority groups in comparison to a white majority population. In these cases, both communities would be likely to form coalitions to increase the minority share of political representations. However, in cities where the black population is bigger than the Hispanic, coalitions are not likely to occur.

4.- Racial Hate Crime

Contrary to general opinion, hate crimes committed in the United States, especially in Los Angeles, “are not primarily white-on-black.”[20]According to the 2005 Hate Crimes Report, race-related hate crimes jumped 46%.[21] In schools, 82 percent of the hate crimes were racially motivated. Blacks and Hispanics are fighting each other in schools and prisons as they compete for low-skilled jobs and “preferred minority status”.[22] It is relevant to mention that there is one hate sector that is growing in comparison to the other. Crimes committed against the Blacks increased by 47 percent. Also noticeable that of the hate crimes committed by gangs, 80 percent were committed by Hispanics against blacks. It is also noticeable how the Hispanic-on-black violence increased in schools.
In the report is mentioned another factor for the racial crime, apart from the fight for resources, and it is that of “anti-immigrant sentiment”. “The increase of anti-Latino crimes for the second year in a row may be related to heated public debate over immigration from Latin America”.[23] That is, certain groups opposing illegal immigration such as Minutemen and S.O.S (Save Our State), organized protests, went to the Mexico-US border to hold rallies to demonstrate their dislike towards this growing Latino population. These actions could have moved the Hispanic population to react and defend themselves, by means of gang violence.

5.- Conclusions

Even though both communities, the Black and the Hispanic, have shared goals in the American society of non discrimination and the opportunity to enjoy the same rights, benefits and chances to progress socioeconomically, both destinies seem negatively intertwined. As social Darwinism promulgates, “competition between individuals drives social evolution in human societies through survival of the fittest”[24], the relationship between both ethnic communities seem to be like a survival in the area of employment, housing, social benefits and politics. Only the group that attains better results in these arenas, socioeconomically speaking, would be the fittest. Is there any chance to alter the negative course of the present and future of both communities? We do not know the answer for sure but, both groups should look at each other and jointly fight for their disadvantages as minorities were heard and politically changed.

[1] Anderson, Talmadge. Comparative Experience Factors Among Black, Asian, and Hispanic Americans: Coalitions or Conflicts? Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1. (Sep., 1992), pp. 31.

[2] Anderson, Talmadge. Pp. 32.

[3] Anderson, Talmadge. Comparative Experience Factors Among Black, Asian, and Hispanic Americans: Coalitions or Conflicts? Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 23, No. 1. (Sep., 1992), pp. 33.

[4] http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/finance/clash061306 30/04/2007
[5] Thornton, Michael C. & Yuko Mizuno. Economic Well-Being and Black Adult Feelings toward Immigrants and Whites1984, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Sep., 1999), pp. 18.

[6] Thornton, Michael C. & Yuko Mizuno. Pp 18.
[7] Thornton, Michael C. & Yuko Mizuno. Pp 18.
[8] Thornton, Michael C. & Yuko Mizuno. Pp 19.
[9] Thornton, Michael C. & Yuko Mizuno. Economic Well-Being and Black Adult Feelings toward Immigrants and Whites1984, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Sep., 1999), pp. 20.

[10] http://www.blackamericaweb.com/site.aspx/finance/clash061306 30/04/2007
[11] Thornton, Michael C. & Yuko Mizuno. Economic Well-Being and Black Adult Feelings toward Immigrants and Whites1984, Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 30, No. 1. (Sep., 1999), pp. 21.
[12]http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7067869&dopt=Abstract 30/04/2007
[13] Darden, Joe T.. Differential Access to Housing in the Suburbs. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, The Emerging African-American Environment. (Sep.,1990), pp. 16.

[14] Pp.18.
[15] Darden, Joe T.. Differential Access to Housing in the Suburbs. Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 21, No. 1, The Emerging African-American Environment. (Sep.,1990), pp.21.

[16] http://www.city-journal.org/html/11_3_sndgs02.html 30/04/2007
[17] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4793955.stm 12/05/2007.
[18] McClain, Paula D. & Albert K. Karnig. Black and Hispanic Socioeconomic and Political Competition. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 84, No. 2. (Jun., 1990), pp. 542.

[19] McClain, Paula D. & Albert K. Karnig. Black and Hispanic Socioeconomic and Political Competition. The American Political Science Review, Vol. 84, No. 2. (Jun., 1990), pp. 543.

[20] http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/12/18/black-and-hispanic-hate-in-la-county/ 01/05/2007
[21] http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/12/18/black-and-hispanic-hate-in-la-county/
[22] http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/12/18/black-and-hispanic-hate-in-la-county/
[23] http://lashawnbarber.com/archives/2006/12/18/black-and-hispanic-hate-in-la-county/

[24] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Darwinism