As Donald Trump sparks chaos by illegally deploying troops to Los Angeles, as immigration raids intensify, and as protesters are flooding the streets to demand dignity for migrants, far too many Black people are sitting again on social media platforms singing a drained, acquainted track. It’s being sung off-key with a false sense of security and a harmful misunderstanding of how white supremacist violence works. The refrain of retreat sounds one thing like this:
“Black people want to remain dwelling.”
“Let them deal with it. That is their battle.”
“Most Latinos voted for this mess.”
“ICE don’t goal us. We’ve acquired citizenship.”
“I ain’t marching for no one who gained’t march for me.”
“Latinos don’t like us anyway.”
However what’s actually being mentioned beneath all that deflection is that this: “If they arrive for Latinos, I’ll be quiet, so long as they go away me and mine alone.” However when you examine historical past, I imply actually examine historical past, then it is best to already know that they by no means go away us alone. Not for lengthy.
I get it. Black people are drained. We’ve carried the load of each main freedom motion on this nation. We’ve bled. We’ve died. And we’ve been betrayed. We’ve proven up, time and again, solely to be met with anti-blackness in return. However this ain’t about who likes us. It’s about who’s subsequent!
What ICE is doing to migrants isn’t simply an immigration concern. It’s white supremacist violence at its core. It’s separating households. It’s state violence. It’s stalking and snatching individuals from houses and workplaces and making them disappear. It’s caging youngsters. And for Black people in America, this could all really feel deeply acquainted. The white supremacist machine of state violence doesn’t make distinctions based mostly on citizenship standing.
What ICE is doing to Latinx, West Indian, and African migrants is a part of the identical equipment that has policed and abused Black American our bodies for hundreds of years. We all know what it means to have our households torn about by the state. We all know what it means to be advised that we don’t belong within the land we constructed. We all know precisely what it’s wish to be criminalized merely for current, to be dehumanized by on a regular basis language, media propaganda, insurance policies, and bureaucrats in uniform.
Black people know what it means to stay below surveillance, to be chased, cuffed, caged, and disappeared. We’re the descendants of people that needed to run. From plantations. From the Fugitive Slave Act and slave catchers. From the KKK and lynch mobs. Even when you had been born proper right here in America, with ancestors going all the way in which again to slave ships, that border violence nonetheless echoes by way of Black lives.
The ol’ “I acquired my papers, I’m protected” is a delusion. That little blue passport gained’t cease you from getting profiled, harassed, arrested, or shot by a cop who sees your Black pores and skin earlier than your citizenship standing or hears your command of English. Simply ask the numerous Black immigrants already deported, or the U.S.-born Black people ICE illegally detained anyway.
Do you suppose that racist ICE brokers caught up in immigration hysteria and round-up quotas will cease to examine start certificates?
Simply ask Peter Sean Brown, who was detained within the Florida Keys when an ICE agent mistakenly detained him as an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica. He spent weeks in custody and ultimately sued. Or, ask Davino Watson, a local New Yorker who was imprisoned as a “deportable alien” for greater than three years regardless of claiming citizenship after which denied compensation by the courtroom system.
ICE detentions are triggered by racial profiling, flawed algorithms, and sloppy knowledge. Pores and skin complexion, language, and citizenship gained’t defend us. Take into consideration all of the Black people strolling round with out actual IDs to show they’re residents. Over 1 / 4 of Black grownup residents wouldn’t have a driver’s license with their present title and/or deal with and 18% don’t have a license in any respect, in line with the Middle for Democracy and Civic Engagement. If ICE can mistakenly detain Black and Brown Individuals born within the U.S., even when they’ve documentation, then nobody is immune.
Some Black people are additionally citing the 2024 election exit polls to justify staying dwelling and staying silent, just like the ICE protests don’t concern us. “Latinos voted for Trump.” However exit polls don’t inform the entire story. They solely pattern registered voters who truly voted, they usually by no means account for the hundreds of thousands of undocumented immigrants who can’t vote. In addition they oversample precincts that don’t match the demographic actuality, skewing outcomes towards the dominant group in these districts.
Most Latinos, like Black Individuals, didn’t vote for Trump. In response to nationwide polls, 56% of Latinos who voted solid their poll for Kamala Harris, whereas 42% went for Trump. Sure, Trump made good points amongst Latino males, however good points don’t equate to dominance. The Latino vote cut up alongside acquainted gender and generational strains, identical to our communities. We will’t flip a sampling of voter turnout into “most Latinos voted for Trump,” and we are able to’t let unhealthy math be an excuse to justify apathy.
And there’s this one: “I ain’t marching for no one that gained’t march for me.” Or its equally drained fraternal twin: “Latinos don’t like us anyway.” That is scarcity-minded, traditionally illiterate nonsense that treats solidarity as some type of tit-for-tat transaction. If that’s how our ancestors thought, then there wouldn’t have been an Underground Railroad, no Civil Rights Act, A Voting Rights Act, or a Montgomery Bus Boycott. Solidarity is a technique, not some reputation contest.
If you happen to’re out right here claiming Latinos don’t march for us, then clearly you haven’t picked up a historical past guide.
Y’all should not learn about Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta who led the United Farm Employees who stood with Martin Luther King Jr. Y’all should not know concerning the Puerto Rican Younger Lords working hand-in-hand with the Black Panther Occasion to run free clinics, breakfast applications, and tenant organizing drives in Chicago and New York Metropolis. Or, concerning the Mexican college students who took their cue from SNCC and Malcolm X in the course of the 1968 East LA walkouts and launched the Chicano civil rights campaign.
Lately, Afro-Latinos have been on the forefront of Black Lives Matter chapters, organizing vigils, elevating bail funding, and pushing for police accountability throughout the nation. In Chicago’s Little Village, Latino organizers launched the “Brown Squad for Black Lives” and established a Black and Brown Unity meals pantry. Martin Luther King III has been working alongside Mi Familia Vota, a nationwide Black-Brown coalition whose mission is to fight hate crimes, anti-immigrant insurance policies, and assaults on voting rights—collectively—not as separate communities.
Simply because these sustained interracial commitments and coalitions aren’t fashionable headlines or going viral on social media doesn’t imply solidarity isn’t unfolding in faculties, neighborhood facilities, neighborhoods, and politics.
It’s one factor to let white people battle one another, whether or not it’s MAGA vs. neoliberal, liberals vs. conservatives, or Karens vs. Capitol Hill. White people battling one another is the empire combating over who will get to steer the ship whereas it’s already sinking. You need to sit again and watch that unfold whereas sipping tea or consuming popcorn? Wonderful. Letting white people eat one another doesn’t carry the identical ethical weight as turning your again on one other marginalized neighborhood dealing with the identical white supremacist violence as us.
Let’s additionally keep in mind that anti-Blackness is international. It lives in each neighborhood, together with our personal. Black Individuals may be simply as anti-immigrant, simply as colorist, simply as xenophobic, simply as colonized in our pondering. So, when you’re sitting out due to what some Latinos, West Indians, or Africans mentioned about us, you then’re not defending your self. You’re simply ready on your flip.
So, what will we do?
We arrange. We present up at ICE protests so the system doesn’t get to isolate individuals in silence. We donate to immigrant bail funds and deportation protection groups just like the Haitian Bridge Alliance, Black Alliance for Simply Immigration, and UndocuBlack. Use your platforms to amplify the tales, organizing, resistance, and victories of undocumented people. Construct native coalitions to arrange teach-ins, mutual support drives and neighborhood security networks that bridge Black and Brown neighborhoods. We additionally must unlearn the anti-immigrant, anti-Black, and anti-Indigenous narratives this nation feeds us as a result of solidarity begins within the thoughts.
Black people can not afford to faux that citizenship or birthright assures our safety. A system constructed on racial profiling, quotas, and militarized ways by no means stops at “not us.” It doesn’t ship ICE to the border and go away us in peace. These immigration raids strengthen a tradition of normalized, dehumanizing state violence in opposition to anybody who appears to be like “different.” Immigration will grow to be the excuse to increase the surveillance state and militarized policing in Black communities.
That is completely our battle!
Dr. Stacey Patton is an award-winning journalist and writer of “Spare The Youngsters: Why Whupping Youngsters Gained’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Youngsters In Jim Crow America.” Learn her Substack right here.
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