The Study of Racialism

The ad quotes Fair saying black Americans have lost ”hundreds of thousands of jobs to foreign workers willing to work for next to nothing,” and blames undocumented immigrants for “40 percent of the decline in employment among black American men.”

It's always someone else's fault.

An immigration raid aids blacks for a time

Wednesday, January 17, 2007
By Evan Perez and Corey Dade, The Wall Street Journal

STILLMORE, Ga. -- After a wave of raids by federal immigration agents on Labor Day weekend, a local chicken-processing company called Crider Inc. lost 75 percent of its mostly Hispanic 900-member work force. The crackdown threatened to cripple the economic anchor of this fading rural town.

But for local African-Americans, the dramatic appearance of federal agents presented an unexpected opportunity. Crider suddenly raised pay at the plant. An advertisement in the weekly Forest-Blade newspaper blared "Increased Wages" at Crider, starting at $7 to $9 an hour -- more than a dollar above what the company had paid many immigrant workers. The company began offering free transportation from nearby towns and free rooms in a company-owned dormitory near to the plant. For the first time in years, local officials say, Crider aggressively sought workers from the area's state-funded employment office -- a key avenue for low-skilled workers to find jobs. Of 400 candidates sent to Crider -- most of them black -- the plant hired about 200.

A customer at a convenience store in Douglas, Ga., told April Paulk, a part-time clerk, that a recruiter was in town looking for workers. Ms. Paulk passed the word to her husband, 32-year-old Germaine Royals, who had just been laid off from the latest in a series of temporary jobs. Both are African-American.

Less than a month after the raids on illegal immigrants, Mr. Royals and three other workers met at a gas station parking lot and piled into a van sent by Peacock Poultry Inc., one of several contractors hired to fill the ranks of Crider's production lines. Two hours later they pulled into an austere complex of brown dormitories owned by Crider that three weeks earlier had teemed with Hispanics. Mr. Royals stashed two small bags of belongings and a boom box in a dingy room and took his place the next morning on a production line at the chicken plant.

For the first time since significant numbers of Latinos began arriving in Stillmore in the late 1990s, the plant's processing lines were made up predominantly of African-Americans.

The sudden reversal of economic fortunes in Stillmore underscores some of the most complex aspects of the pitched debate over immigration: Do illegal immigrants take jobs from low-skilled American workers? The answer in Stillmore initially appeared to be yes.

But in the months since Crider began hiring hundreds of African-Americans, the answer has become more complex. The plant has struggled with high turnover among black workers, lower productivity and pay disputes between the new employees and labor contractors. The allure of compliant Latino workers willing to accept grueling conditions despite rock-bottom pay has proved a difficult habit for Crider to shake, particularly because the local, native-born workers who replaced them are more likely to complain about working conditions and aggressively assert what they believe to be legal pay and workplace rights.

Americans avoid such labor because "they can't live on those wages, and refuse to," says Debra Sabia, a professor at nearby Georgia Southern University who founded a social-service organization for the area's Latino immigrants. "If you gave a survey to Americans and asked them where they'd want to work, a slaughterhouse would not be on the list. These are not jobs we aspire for our children to take."

The impact of immigration on low-wage workers is likely to come under increasing scrutiny as the new Congress prepares to tackle immigration reform. Last month, federal officials raided facilities owned by meat processor Swift & Co. in six states, which resulted in the arrests of about 1,200 people on alleged identity theft and immigration violations.

Georgia, and particularly the Atlanta region in the north of the state, is home to a large concentration of wealthy and middle-class African-Americans. But in struggling rural towns, the scarcity of work is particularly felt by low-skilled African-Americans who by virtue of poor education, lack of transportation or choice have been unable to follow jobs as they moved away.

Stillmore began the 20th century as a timber and cotton town, sitting at the intersection of three rail lines connecting the busy port town of Savannah to the center of Georgia's cotton kingdom. For decades, anyone willing to grasp a hoe could find at least minimal work every spring and fall, when cotton was planted and harvested. But by the 1950s, cotton was fading, the rail lines were abandoned and a chicken-processing plant -- later acquired by Crider in 1977 -- had become the hub of the local economy.

Until the late 1990s, the plant employed a majority black production line, with whites and some blacks as supervisors, according to current and former employees. By 2000, Latino migrant workers who had long come and gone with the cotton and onion seasons were putting down roots, part of a national trend. The NAFTA free trade agreement hurt many Mexican farmers, prompting a surge of illegal immigration. At the same time U.S. immigration crackdowns made crossing the border more treacherous, prompting workers to settle in the U.S. The South became home to more than a third of the nation's Hispanics. Georgia's share tripled during the 1990s to 435,227, according to U.S. Census estimates. In 2005, the number of Hispanics topped 625,000 in Georgia, making up 7 percent of the population.

The influx of Hispanics meant Crider could maintain its Stillmore roots while drawing on a pool of low-skilled foreign workers to do jobs that held little appeal for native-born Americans. A 2005 Government Accountability Office report on working conditions in the meat and poultry industry found injury rates among the highest of any U.S. industry and cited slippery floors and cold temperatures among the harsh conditions workers endure. Federal workplace-safety inspectors cited Crider in 1997 for a forklift accident in which a worker was run over and killed. Other plants in Georgia have even higher incidences of violations, according to federal records.

With the arrival of so many immigrants willing to toil for rock-bottom wages on brutal round-the-clock shifts, the number of black workers at Crider declined steadily to 14 percent in early 2006 from as high as 70 percent a decade ago, the company says. Wages stagnated at about $6 an hour, just above the U.S. minimum wage of $5.15 an hour, current and former workers say. Crider says it also paid incentives and bonuses not accounted for in hourly wages. As African-Americans left, seeking better pay or to escape the difficult and often bloody work, most were replaced by Latinos, employees say.

Crider officials say the transformation to majority Hispanic work force happened gradually over most of a decade, without any encouragement by the company. David Purtle, Crider's president, says any impression that the company didn't want to hire African-Americans then was "concocted in people's minds who don't know what's going on. The first people you see in our employment office are African-Americans. ... We've never skewed our hiring toward any ethnic group."

But he says Crider faces the same problems that employers in many small towns grapple with. "We have to find a source of employees, and Stillmore will not provide that source. It's not big enough," he says. "We want people who want to work and are willing to work every day."

The presence of so many illegal workers became routine at Crider too. Jose Sauceda first came to the U.S. as an illegal immigrant in 1979 but qualified for legal status under a Reagan administration amnesty program and became a U.S. citizen in 2002. He arrived at Crider in 2004. His wife, Socorro, whom Mr. Sauceda had paid smugglers to sneak across the border, followed him to the poultry plant. As she filled out a job application at the plant, she tried to use for a Social Security number a taxpayer identification number starting with the number "9." According to Ms. Sauceda, a Crider clerk stopped her and said valid Social Security numbers never begin with a nine. "She was very helpful," Ms. Sauceda says. "She kept saying, 'Perhaps you meant to put down a four, or a six?' And I was nervous, so I just chose a six. And that worked." Her application was accepted. Ms. Sauceda went to work on the production line.

Crider officials said recently they doubted Ms. Sauceda's account of her hiring, and that the company wasn't "aiding and abetting" illegal Hispanic workers. Mr. Purtle, the company president, said in an interview that Crider never knowingly violated U.S. immigration laws and wasn't aware that so many of its Latino workers were illegally in the U.S. "Our personnel people have always complied with the hiring laws," Mr. Purtle said.

The company was "taken aback" when federal agents showed up in May asserting that about 700 of its workers were suspected of having false work documents, Mr. Purtle says. Two Crider employees were among four men arrested for allegedly running a document mill, churning out fake green cards and other fake documents. Immigration officials initially worked with Crider over several months to gradually weed out those workers who couldn't prove legal worker status. Then, federal officials became much more aggressive, launching the raid over Labor Day weekend. Agents hauled away about 120 mostly Mexican immigrants, according to immigration officials.

The rest fled Stillmore or went into hiding nearby. Some women and children hid for days in the scrubland and pine woods outside of town without food or shelter while they waited for immigration agents to leave. In the week after the raids, dozens of Latinos crowded a vacant lot beside a bodega, across from Stillmore's city hall, to get on buses operated by a Mexican bus line leaving for other cities in the U.S. or back to Mexico.

For African-Americans, the departure of the Hispanics was a boon. Lisa Shinhoster, 45, and Chris Butler, 22, heard about Crider when an acquaintance of a Crider recruiter walked into an after-hours bar where they were playing cards and announced to the patrons: "Anybody want a job?" The two were soon working at the plant gutting chickens.

For Mr. Royals, the new opportunities at Crider amounted to a windfall after months of erratic work through a temporary labor agency. A high-school dropout who earned his General Equivalency Diploma two years ago, Mr. Royals previously worked nights at a succession of factory jobs. He had just been laid off for the second time in a month when Ms. Paulk came home with word of the Crider recruiter.

Mr. Royals went to Crider with a plan to work as many hours as possible -- he sometimes worked 17 hours a day -- and earn enough to save for a new home and pay off bills. His wife recently took a full-time job as a private nurse for an elderly woman and attends classes at a technical college to earn a license as a practical nurse.

Mr. Royals rose daily before dawn, often eating a breakfast of grits, eggs and sausage served shortly after 5 a.m. at the Crider cafeteria. Mr. Royals was assigned to the plant's packing department, where his squat burly frame and muscular arms made him a natural fit, lifting crates of processed chicken. He says he enjoyed the physical nature of the work and the quick pace made the hours go by quickly.

But for some of the African-American workers who surged into the plant, the unexpected chance to work at Crider didn't turn out well. They described long, arduous schedules, alleged health and safety hazards, and unrelenting supervisors. A Crider spokeswoman says the allegations are the sentiment of "people who are not intent on working."

On Oct. 10, Barbara Smiley, a gregarious and tall 42-year-old from Mount Vernon, about two hours away, was reaching for a chicken that had fallen off a conveyor belt when she smacked her head into a solid steel pole. She went to the nurse's station for an ice pack and then the bathroom to wash down a pain reliever. She says her supervisor reprimanded her for leaving her post, igniting an argument. Ms. Smiley was fired.

"They cussed at me," Ms. Smiley said after the incident , a lump visible in center of her forehead in the shape of a half-dollar coin. "I'm 42 years old. If you cuss at me, I'm going to cuss you back."

The company spokeswoman said Ms. Smiley suffered a mild injury and quit but couldn't confirm other details of the incident.

Legal Hispanic workers who remained at Crider after the raid complain that the new black production line workers are getting higher pay but don't work as hard as their Latino cohorts did. When the plant operated with majority Latino laborers, says Mr. Sauceda, his six-person assembly line produced 80 pallets of poultry daily, with each pallet holding 48 32-pound boxes of chicken. Now, with 15 workers on the line, most of them black, only 45 pallets a day are completed, he says. "The blacks sit in the cafeteria and don't come to the line until the chickens are brought in, but the Hispanics, we spend the time cleaning and doing things that need to be done," says Mr. Sauceda, who has subsequently left the company. Mr. Royals counters that blacks work just as hard as Latinos. He says he sees groups of Hispanics taking extra rests on overnight shifts. "I'm thinking to myself, man, I don't get that many breaks," he says.

Several African-American workers found themselves in pay disputes. Since the illegal immigrants were run out of the plant, Crider no longer directly employs many entry-level workers. Instead, Mr. Royals and many others are classified as independent contractors, working under an agreement between Crider and Allen Peacock, an African-American owner of a recruiting business. Crider paid Mr. Peacock a set rate for the hours his employees work, and he paid the workers. Using Mr. Peacock allowed Crider to quickly hire workers, since the contractor has provided laborers to the poultry industry for years

Every Friday, Mr. Peacock pulled into the parking lot of the dormitory complex and handed out checks, most of which he cashed on the spot -- leaving his employees with no documentation of how much they received in wages or paid in taxes, according to several workers.

After a few weeks on the job, Mr. Royals and other black workers claimed Mr. Peacock was short changing them on hours worked. They said taxes were being deducted even though workers never filled out federal and state tax forms. At one point, Ms. Paulk, Mr. Royals's wife, telephoned Mr. Peacock and demanded an explanation about the paychecks.

Mr. Peacock denied mishandling their wages. "Everybody has to pay taxes," he said in an interview. Mr. Peacock said his workers were all being fully paid and that their taxes were properly collected.

Despite his frustrations, Mr. Royals vowed to keep working. But one morning, Mr. Peacock arrived at the Crider dormitory complex and several workers gathered to register their complaints about wages. In front of the other employees, Mr. Royals says, Mr. Peacock fired him.

Mr. Royals says Mr. Peacock seemed upset that Ms. Paulk had called him on his cellphone on her husband's behalf. "He said I couldn't put my wife in her place," Mr. Royals says. Mr. Peacock didn't respond to subsequent calls seeking comment.

Mr. Royals moved to Augusta, Ga. where he began doing landscaping work.

Since the raids, African-Americans have made up about 65 percent of Crider's work force, while whites are 30 percent and Hispanics 5 percent, according to the company. Turnover has been high. The population of workers hired since last September's immigration raids has turned over three times, according to Crider.

Still struggling to fill its ranks, Crider began busing in felons on probation from a state prison and residents of a homeless mission from nearby Macon. Crider also hired another labor contractor who specializes in Hispanic workers. In recent weeks, dozens of mostly Hispanic workers have appeared at the plant, largely on the overnight sanitation shift. A Hispanic worker at the plant said he recognized some of the new workers as among those who had been dismissed prior to the federal raids for having false immigration documents. A few weeks later, immigration agents returned to Stillmore, and were seen questioning Hispanics at a grocery store.

Crider says it has ended its relationship with the temporary labor provider that rehired some former illegal Crider workers. It says it has also ended its relationship with Mr. Peacock, saying it was a financial decision based on the additional fees they had to pay to the staffing company.

But Crider is still about 300 people short of its work force before the immigration raids. It is now bringing Laotian Hmong immigrant workers and their families from Minnesota and Wisconsin, with hopes that they'll stay on the job and build new roots in Stillmore.

Low-paid illegal work force has little impact on prices

By Drew DeSilver
Seattle Times business reporter

More than 7 million illegal immigrants work in the United States. They build houses, pick crops, slaughter cattle, stitch clothes, mow lawns, clean hotel rooms, cook restaurant meals and wash the dishes that come back.

You might assume that the plentiful supply of low-wage illegal workers would translate into significantly lower prices for the goods and services they produce. In fact, their impact on consumer prices — call it the "illegal-worker discount" — is surprisingly small.

The bag of Washington state apples you bought last weekend? Probably a few cents cheaper than it otherwise would have been, economists estimate. That steak dinner at a downtown restaurant? Maybe a buck off. Your new house in Subdivision Estates? Hard to say, but perhaps a few thousand dollars less expensive.

The underlying reason, economists say, is that for most goods the labor — whether legal or illegal, native- or foreign-born — represents only a sliver of the retail price.

Consider those apples — Washington's signature contribution to the American food basket.

At a local QFC, Red Delicious apples go for about 99 cents a pound. Of that, only about 7 cents represents the cost of labor, said Tom Schotzko, a recently retired extension economist at Washington State University. The rest represents the grower's other expenses, warehousing and shipping fees, and the retailer's markup.

And that's for one of the most labor-intensive crops in the state: It takes 150 to 190 hours of labor to grow and harvest an acre of apples, Schotzko said, compared to four hours for an acre of potatoes and 1 ½ hours for an acre of wheat.

The labor-intensive nature of many crops is a key reason agriculture continues to rely on illegal workers. A report by Jeffrey Passel, a demographer at the Pew Hispanic Center who has long studied immigration trends, estimates that 247,000 illegal immigrants were employed as "miscellaneous agricultural workers" last year — only 3.4 percent of the nation's 7.2 million illegal workers, according to Pew statistics, but 29 percent of all workers in that job category.

Eliminating illegal farmworkers, by shrinking the pool of available labor, likely would raise wages for those who remain. Philip Martin, a professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis, noted that two years after the old bracero program ended in 1964, the United Farm Workers union won a 40 percent increase for grape harvesters.

A decade ago, two Iowa State University agricultural economists estimated that removing all illegal farmworkers would raise wages for seasonal farmworkers by 30 percent in the first couple of years, and 15 percent in the medium term.

But supermarket prices of summer-fall fruits and vegetables, they concluded, would rise by just 6 percent in the short run — dropping to 3 percent over time, as imports took up some of the slack and some farmers mechanized their operations or shifted out of labor-intensive crops. (Winter-spring produce would be even less affected, they found, because so much already is imported.)

If illegal workers disappeared from the apple harvest and wages for the remaining legal workers rose by 40 percent in response — and that entire wage increase were passed on to the consumer — that still would add less than 3 cents to the retail price of a pound of apples.

Cluster in construction

Illegal immigrants, like legal ones, tend to concentrate in particular locales and industries, increasing their impact on wages and prices there.

Pew's Passell estimates that more than two-thirds of all illegal immigrants live in just eight states: California leads with nearly a quarter of all illegal immigrants, followed by Texas, Florida, New York, Arizona, Illinois, New Jersey and North Carolina.

Similarly, legal and illegal immigrants tend to cluster in specific industries, among them construction.

Based on census data, Passell estimates that in construction specialties, illegal immigrants range from 20 percent of carpet, floor and tile installers to 28 percent of drywallers to 36 percent of insulation workers. Overall, about 14 percent of all workers in the construction industry are in the United States illegally, he says.

How does all that illegal labor affect the price you pay for a new house?

The National Association of Home Builders pegs labor's share of the cost of a new home at 20 to 25 percent. For a typical U.S. single-family home that sold for $298,412 in 2002, then, about $68,000 went for construction labor. If Passell's estimates are correct, around 14 percent of those workers would be illegal.

But illegal workers generally are less skilled than legal ones, points out Barry Chiswick, an economist at the University of Illinois, Chicago, who has studied illegal immigration for decades. You're more likely to find illegal drywallers or painters, say, than illegal electricians or plumbers.

Since higher-skilled workers earn more than less-skilled ones, Chiswick said, the "illegal share" of construction labor costs — and, by extension, the wages illegal workers receive — will be smaller than their numbers would suggest. But even if illegal workers make only half as much as legal workers, that would work out to about $5,000, or about 1.6 percent of that "typical" home's sale price.

If the supply of illegal workers were cut off, wages for those low-skilled jobs presumably would have to rise enough to attract legal workers into them. If, hypothetically, wage levels rose by a third, that would either add around $1,600 to the cost of the typical house or shave half a percentage point off the builder's 12 percent average profit margin.

"If I'm buying just one home, there's not that big an impact," Chiswick said. "But if I'm building a lot of homes and I can save a few thousand on each one.... "

Even in service-intensive businesses with high incidences of illegal labor, such as hotels and restaurants, customers get only a small benefit.

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study estimated that every 10-percent increase in the proportion of low-skilled immigrants in the labor force lowers the price of immigrant-intensive services — gardening, housekeeping, baby-sitting and dry cleaning — by 1.3 percent, and of other services by 0.2 percent.

Take hotels. Industrywide, more than 44 percent of hotels' expenses are for salaries and benefits (including employee meals), so labor is a major factor.

"We've got a lot of jobs that are tough to fill," said Dan Mount, who teaches hotel management at Penn State. "To find someone who's going to clean 16 guestrooms a day for $6 or $7 an hour — people aren't lining up for those jobs."

Illegal workers help close the gap. According to Pew's Passell, 22 percent of maids and housekeepers (including domestic help) are in the United States illegally.

Similarly, in restaurants an estimated 20 percent of cooks and 23 percent of dishwashers are illegal immigrants.

Jim Harbour, a former restaurant manager who now teaches at Washington State University's School of Hospitality Business Management, estimated that, without illegal immigrants, wages for dishwashers and other "back of the house" staff would have to rise anywhere from 10 to 20 percent to attract the necessary workers.

With labor costs averaging around 30 percent of operating costs, passing on that kind of increase might raise the cost of a meal anywhere from 3 to 6 percent.

Under a similar scenario, Mount said, hotel-room rates would rise, but the increase likely would be measured in dollars rather than tens of dollars.

How much could be passed on to the consumer is another question. On the one hand, Harbour said he's raised menu prices by 10 percent across the board with few customer complaints; and hotels in the Seattle area are fuller now than they were a year ago despite higher room rates.

On the other hand, hotel and restaurant operators' ability to pass on higher wage costs isn't unlimited, said Terry Umbreit, director of the WSU hospitality school. At a certain point, he said, people won't pay any more for a room or a meal; budget hotels and casual-dining restaurants, which compete most on price, likely would reach that point soonest.

Benefits top layers

Of course, the "illegal-immigrant discount" affects different layers of society differently.

The more often you eat out, stay in hotels or get your yard trimmed, the more you benefit from the illegal-immigrant discount.

And by increasing the supply of low-skilled labor relative to high-skilled labor, illegal immigration effectively boosts the purchasing power of the better-educated, more-skilled — and richer — portion of society.

The MIT study, by researcher Patricia Cortes, estimated that the low-skilled immigration wave of the 1990s — much of it outside the bounds of immigration law — raised the "real wages" of college graduates by 0.71 percent, and of high-school graduates and people with some college by 0.59 percent.

High-school dropouts? No discount for them: Cortes estimated that their real wages were cut by 2.66 percent. But since most adult Americans have at least a high-school diploma, Cortes concluded that most people benefited from low-skilled immigration — at least a little.

Drew DeSilver: 206-464-3145 or ddesilver@seattletimes.com

The more the merrier. We need more immigration,
not less. Competition is alway good. If Jews have
a right to go back to Isreal, then Latinos certainly
have a right to spread all over the Americas. This
is Indian land, and the land of those who are
partly Indian mixed. This land is more that just
White and Black, much more. Latinos and other
immigrants are good for our land and its future.
That is why our government keeps turning a blind
eye. After the riots of the late 1960's, a decision
was made that a way must be found to assimilate
our African American population. It is much more
than jobs, that this is all about. The very survival
of our nation is at stake. We must become one
nation or perish. And who will mix with the African
American on a large unprecidented scale if not
immigrants? What other parents will put up with it?
Trust our national leaders. They are on top of things.
And Black American males will surely learn to compete
for jobs. Competition brings out the best in all human
beings. If nothing else, it teaches respect and humility.



Leo Y. "Ireland" Abdulmalik

I don't give a damn about who lived here when and why.

if that is the case then anyone would have the right to go whereever they want in the world and we should have no national borders at all. I suspect if America had no national borders at all this is not a place you would want to live in for very long.


This is an issue of pure common sense.

A country should do what is best for its citizens who live there not what is best for the immigrant.

4 Los Angeles Latino Gang Members Convicted of Anti-Black Conspiracy
The jury finds that the defendants terrorized African Americans to try to drive them from the Highland Park neighborhood.
By Joe Mozingo
Times Staff Writer

August 2, 2006

Four members of a Latino gang in Highland Park were found guilty Tuesday of unleashing a barrage of assaults and killings to push African Americans out of the predominantly Latino community in northeast Los Angeles.

The verdicts in a downtown federal courtroom marked the first time a street gang had been convicted of breaking federal hate crime laws, traditionally employed against white supremacist groups like skinheads and the Ku Klux Klan.

"I'm glad the truth is out," said Luisa Prudhomme, whose 21-year-old son, Anthony, was killed when Avenues members allegedly kicked open his door and shot him in the head as he lay on a futon.

"This wasn't just regular gang activity as usual," she said. "This was hate crime. They promoted hatred and racism and ignorance."

The four defendants — Gilbert "Lucky" Saldana, 27; Alejandro "Bird" Martinez, 28; Fernando "Sneaky" Cazares, 25; and Porfirio "Dreamer" Avila, 31 — face life in prison without the possibility of parole for their roles in the conspiracy. Sentencing for the first three was set for Oct. 23; for Avila, the date is Nov. 20.

Defense attorneys did not return calls for comment Tuesday, but one of them said in a previous conversation that there were numerous grounds for appeal.

From the start, the defense argued that prosecutors Alex Bustamante and Bobbi Bernstein had stretched civil rights statutes and Reconstruction-era anti-slavery laws way beyond their intended purposes to bring the case under federal jurisdiction. The judge denied their motions to dismiss the indictment on this basis, but the arguments will surely come up again in appeals court.

The Avenues date back to the 1950s and get their name from the numbered avenues that traverse the hills and ravines of Highland Park. The defendants on trial were part of the Tiny Locos, younger members of a clique called Avenues 43.

The compendium of crimes laid out against the gang members blended the most chilling aspects of old-time Deep South bigotry with a modern interracial rancor that has developed — to some extent — in struggling pockets of urban Los Angeles.

But unlike other racial gang strife in the city, the Avenues' violence was deliberately aimed at African Americans with no gang affiliations, including women and children. The gang scrawled threats and racial epithets in graffiti on walls.

Among crimes committed by the defendants from 1995 to 2001, according to testimony, were shooting a 15-year-old boy riding a bike; hitting a jogger in the head with a pistol; drawing outlines of human bodies in chalk on a family's driveway, along with a racial slur; and knocking a woman off her bike, threatening her husband with a box cutter, and saying, "You niggers have been here long enough."

One night in April 1999, the defendants were riding in a van and came upon a black man, Kenneth Wilson, parking his Cadillac. When Martinez asked if anyone wanted to kill a black man, three of them jumped out, ran up to Wilson's windows and opened fire, witnesses said. A shot to the head killed him before the car had even rolled to a stop.

Saldana bragged later that he just wanted to test out his new 9-millimeter Ruger.

Another black man, Christopher Bowser, was harassed and beaten up by the defendants for years. In December 2000, he filed a police report saying Martinez had assaulted and robbed him at a bus stop near his house. A week later, Bowser was shot to death at the same bus stop on Figueroa Street.

Five days later, Avila told a fellow gang member, in a taped phone call from jail, that he and Martinez had been beating up mayates for weeks, using a Spanish-language epithet for blacks. After mentioning Bowser, he added, "That fool is gone." Avila was convicted in state court of the murder.

Throughout the nearly monthlong trial, defense attorneys tried to discredit the prosecutors' key witnesses — two imprisoned members of the Avenues who testified against their brethren — as well as two police officers who took the case to the FBI and U.S. attorney. The lawyers introduced black witnesses who said they had never had any problems in Highland Park.

And in a bid to show there was no gang policy of racism, they brought in two black women — the girlfriend of defendant Saldana when he lived in Arizona and the wife of an Avenues member who had nothing to do with the conspiracy and only vaguely knew the defendants.

As evidenced by the verdict, the jury did not buy the defense's line.

The defendants sat casually throughout the testimony, wearing shirts, ties, sweaters and reading glasses, hair neatly combed.

But prosecutors tarnished their junior executive image by displaying photos showing their hidden tattoos on a screen directly above their heads. Jurors studied the large chest tattoos of the gang's logo — a bullet-pierced skull wearing a fedora and a fur collar. More damaging: the slogan "43 Kills for Thrills" etched on Martinez's shaved head.

In her closing argument, Bernstein, a deputy chief in the civil rights division of the Justice Department, painted a picture of inhuman brutality, sometimes killing on a whim.

"These defendants and their co-conspirators riddled [Kenneth Wilson's] car with bullets and shot him through the carotid artery, and they sped away and left him to bleed to death in front of his nephew because he was black and he dared to park his car on their street," she said.

"These defendants and their co-conspirators tortured Christopher Bowser. They beat him and harassed him and chased him, and they warned him and threatened him and shot him in the face," Bernstein said.

"They left that man to die in the street like a dog because he was black and dared to live on Avenue 44.

"That's what this case is about."

The defense claimed that police had concocted the conspiracy by linking a bunch of random attacks — thus inflating common gang violence into a conspiracy against civil rights.

"This indictment was meant to grab headlines," said Manuel Araujo, representing Saldana, in his closing arguments. "It was based on a fiction."

The jury deliberated for two days.

Joe R. Hicks, vice president of the Los Angeles civil rights group Community Advocates, said the Highland Park racial violence was unique in the city. He said there have been deadly turf wars between black and Latino gangs in Venice and in the Harbor Gateway neighborhood, but never such violence targeting innocent people solely because of their race.

However, what happened in Highland Park stems from a broader racial tension in the city, he said. In some parts of Los Angeles, blacks feel Latinos are taking over their neighborhoods, displacing them to "the bottom of the market." Latinos, particularly immigrants, sometimes harbor anti-black prejudice that they or their parents carried over the border, he said. And these notions harden in high school, where racial fights are not uncommon, and become truly ominous in prison.

The old dynamic of a powerful white majority oppressing a black minority is way too simple, and increasingly obscure, these days, he said.

"You step back and ask: Can black folks be bigots? Can Latinos be bigots? It's clear that these gang members had an animus against blacks, Hicks said. "With the diversity of today's world, we have to look at racism in a more encompassing way."

The case started with LAPD officers who hit some obstacles in state court. They took their evidence to FBI agent Jerry Fradella and Assistant U.S. Atty. Thomas P. O'Brien, who brought in Bernstein to help them make the civil rights case.

In court papers, prosecutors said they had a witness who would testify that the Mexican Mafia, which controls many local Latino gangs, ordered the Avenues to carry out the attacks on African Americans. But the defense was ready to rip into that witness' credibility; ultimately, the government never brought him to the stand.

The question now is whether federal law enforcement has gained a powerful tool against gangs, particularly ones doing the bidding of race-based prison gangs.

O'Brien, who is now chief of the criminal division in Los Angeles, compared the civil rights laws with laws on narcotics, guns and racketeering that also help them prosecute gang members in the federal realm.

He said his office is looking at other cases "where gang members are assailing individuals due to their race."

For more than a decade, many say, the neighborhood Latino gang — called 204th Street — had been attacking blacks. African Americans had taken to warily surveying their streets for Latinos, and few dared go north of 206th Street, which the gang had set as a boundary for blacks.

In 1997, 11-year-old Marquis Wilbert, an African American youth with no gang affiliation, was shot and killed by a 204th Street gang member on a bicycle.

In September 2001, Robert Hightower, a 19-year-old Pasadena high school senior, was shot to death after hugging his sister, whom he had been visiting. A 204th Street gang member shot him, according to court testimony, because he was upset that a black boxer had beaten a Latino in a prizefight.

In 2003, Eric Butler, 39, was shot to death as he drove from the neighborhood's lone business, the Del Amo Market, which the gang considered to be in its territory. He'd gone there to intervene after gang members began harassing his 14-year-old stepdaughter. She was shot in the back and lives today with a bullet lodged near her spine.

From 1994 to 2005 in Harbor Gateway, there were nearly five times as many homicides, assaults and other violent crimes by Latinos against blacks as by blacks against Latinos, according to Los Angeles Police Department statistics.

My ideas are not based on racism, being scared of foreign masculinity, and as far as your nasty stereotypes of black American men "looking like they will beat someone down" I will ignore that.

So you blame the 90% of illegal immigrants who are honest workers striving to make ends meet because of the .1 percent in gangs? Parasites? Parasites are the ones who take advantage of other countries such that their poor are forced to migrate. Lets not talk about all the times Blacks have assaulted Latinos here in Atlanta. Seriously, go fuck yourself.

Education of Mexican Americans by Generation (1989-90)
First Second Third Fourth All Americans *
No high school degree (%) 69.9 51.5 33.0 41.0 23.5
High school degree (%) 24.7 39.2 58.5 49.4 30.4
Post high school degree (%) 5.4 9.3 8.5 9.6 45.1
* Except Mexican Americans, 1990

Now, Mr. Dragon Horse (big smile). Shame, shame, shame.

All the vicious things you say about Muslims, all the jokes
you've made about the sexual abilities of Asian Americans.
And the laughing faces you put on there about them and
how you can satisfy their women so much better. The
constant harrassment of Muslims which nobody corrects.
And then I say that African American males are known to
carry themselves in a threatening manner, looking tough;
and you say I'm making a nasty stereotype. How dare you.


I never said "I satisfy any women" better or worse on this site. I do not harrass Muslims, I posted truths, if you disagree with that or feel they are untrue, please state what you are speaking about and stop making broad general statements. Look touch may be threatening to a beta male, I'm not afraid of any man when I walk the street, that sounds like a personal problem. I'm not a psychiatrist so I can't help you.

Shame, shame (hahaha). Accusing me of racism, me of all
people. One of the strongest defenders Black America has
ever had. Shame. Here's what you said.


We don't need your backhanded defense, thanks.



No Sir, you're not afraid of foreigh masculinity. You laugh at it
and disrespect it, thinking their women are fair game. Just as you
probably feel about us Multiracials, with your sexual jokes and
your frequent references to Black male sexuality. Impress the
ladies, huh? And if any of us Multiracials say anything, we have
a problem, huh? It's an old game, and almost all of us non-Black
males have to go through it in high school at the hands of Black
American males. Is that another "nasty" stereotype (hahaha)?

Women do not belong to anyone. Any woman is fair game if she wants to play the game.

As far as multiracials I have never made any negative comments about pepople due to that, you are projecting, once again.

I did not go to your high school, as I said if you have issues with black people, that is not my problem, if you have issues with your sexuality, or your masculinity not my problem. Get professional help.

The way I've tried to take up for you and cover for your
constant insults. No Sir, don't ignore what I've said. You
laughed at non-black men and said some stereotypes are
true. You put penis jokes on this site and get away with it.
I once put a picture of a lady in a bikini on this site, and
the lady moderator immeadiately sent me a message
asking me to remove it. You as a Black American male,
can get away with murder. You think you can say anything
about females of other ethnic groups and we're supposed
to all sit around and smile at you obnoxiousness. How dare
you insinuate that I'm a racist. You like women. How would
you like to be a eunich? Almost the entire nation is afraid
of Black American males. Is that a baseless stereotype?


I don't need and have never asked for you to "take up" for me, I can speak for myself. I didn't put a "penis" joke on this site, I sited the World Health Organization statistics on the subject of racial differences in penis size (averages). That is no joke, that is real. Sorry if that offends you, blame Allah not me. What does women have to do with any of this. If I say I like women what is the issue, I don't remember degrading or openly insulting women on this site. Being a heterosexual is not a crime as far as I know. Once again your issues with male sexuality and masculinity are not my issues.

If it's not, why are you trying to insinuate that I'm a racist?
I'm trying to show you the good in what is happening and
you come back insinuting that I'm a racist against the Black
brother. Do you give affirmative action for Black skinned
females? Do you allow them to be less then the perfect
female? Why not? Why can't they get a break? Haven't they
undergone slavery and its aftermat? Shouldn't their faults
be overlooked? But you hold them up to standards of perfection?


What does black women have to do with this topic? I'm not going to address this nonsense, it has nothing to do with anything. I do not discriminate against black women, not even close, you don't know me enough to say anything like that. Please quote me.

But let me suggest that African American males aren't perfect
either, and what do you insinuate? You insinuate that I'm anti
Black. I like you, but you efforts to stifle those who disagree
with you, I do not like. And as much as you hate Muslims and
Islam, why aren't you over in Iraq fighting? We have an all
volenteer army. If haters like you don't join and fight, who
will. You think Muslims don't read this site?

I never said African Americans are perfect. I don't stiffle anyone, since I have no power to. I don't own or moderate this site. I don't hate Muslims. I'm definately not going to go tthe Muslim Paradise of Iraq and fight either. My attitude toward Muslims is, that the majority of Muslims in the world practice a religion/culture that is incompatible with Western Liberal Demoracy and if Islam is superio and we are infidels, if the wearing the hijab is a good thing, if marrying your cousin is a good thing, if Muslim people are morally superior, then stay in a majority Muslim country and do not come here. My policy is to each his own. The problem I have is when Muslims come to other nations in large numbers they can't be satisified with pluralism, they want everyone to submit to Islam (respect Islam) or/and convert. That is a direct threat to my way of life, and as long as I see that I will object and speak against it. If Muslims shut the hell up like Buddhists, and Hindus and integrated and stopped trying to force their ways on their host nations, I could care less about them.

My wife is buddhist, their are millions of Buddhist in America. I have never met an American who has a problem with Buddhist per se. You know why? I will let you ponder that.

Why do you want
to make Muslim people all over the world think that America's
multiracial people hate them and their religion? Why do you
want to make people all over the world who read this think
that America's multiracial people think Asian men are sexually
lacking and that it's open season on their women. Why do you
want people to hate Multiracial men. Is that any way to treat
people who have taken you in and accepted you with open
arms. Why do you want to make us look like weak punks in
front of our women, while you keep reminding our women of
you tremendous sexual abilities. Why don't you complain
about that stereotype? How dare you accuse me of racism.

I don't care what Muslims read. If I have said something false or inaccurate they are free to defend themselves, their religion, engage me, etc.

What nonsense are you talking about, I support the multiracial movement as my children will be biracial. I never said Asian men are weak and puny. Sorry if on average your have smaller penis, that is not my problem, having a small penis is not the end of the world, in fact I would say having money and status is far more attractive to most women (world wide) than a large penis, but you are the one obsessed with that, I'm not.

You don't like Muslims probably because they won't let you
run through their women like they're nothing; and Latinos
because they'll maybe cut you a new rear opening over their
women. But you say Arab christians are okay, you like those
women. You like East Asians and say they're okay; don't cause
trouble. They're all nice guys that'll let you do as you please
with their women. I don't mind you thinking like this. That is
your right as a free American citizen. But you come here leading
folks to believe that you're a Multiracial and that we think and
behave like that. And then you say I'm making a "nasty" stereotype
because I say that many if not most African Americans carry
themselves in a tough scary looking manner. You know it's true.

It seems you have real issues with your masculinity and with sexuality, that is not my problem. Maybe if you were more of a man you would not get so upset and insecure when people say something true.

It also seems you are afraid of black men, which leads me to believe you are not very manly in real life. That is not my problem, see a shrink and lift some weights.

What do Blacks call most White guys? You know what many probably
call them and so do I. Why? Because they don't carry themselves in
a tough manner. So I say things that can help our African American
male citizens succeed in this country. Things to help them excel, and
what do you do, Sir? You accused me of making a "nasty" racist
remark. I think you're a good decent man. I expect better out of
you. Maybe it was just a misunderstanding. We can both do better.
Dragon Horse, I know we can. We're both decent men of honor.


[b]I don't know what blacks call most white guys. I call them "white". We don't need your help, and you have said nothing helpful.

If the shoe fits...

Do not speak slanderous to me and then turn around and try to kiss my ass. That is not honorable.

You're too big a man to pull the racist card. If almost everyone in the
world believes something, why not work on it, and prove it wrong? All
suggestions are not criticism or hatred. Some of us care about you.
When I think of all the sacrifices I've made throughout my life on
the behalf of Black American males, the jobs I've walked off of, the
money I've lost, the family and friends I've lost due to my defense of
African Americans; and you say that of me. Shame. But Mr. Dragon
Horse, I know your heart, and I know you meant no harm. You merely
reacted in a culturally appropriate way. I said something you didn't like,
and you hinted that it was racist. That's unusual for you. It's forgiven.


[b]I'm not going to give you credit or cudos for doing what is right. That should be a given if you are a human being were respecting that does not mean you have a "free pass" to making stupid statements and be insulting.

You're still number one with me. Let's shake on it and move forward.
Maybe we're both just having a bad day (hahaha). You're a human
being. Let me talk to you like any other human being. Don't expect
me to think I have to handle you with kid gloves because you belong
to some protect minority. I see you as an equal. You're a good man.

I look into a man's heart. And I've looked into yours. And it's decent.

[b]You have got to be joking. Do not address me again, something is up with you, and I'm not interested in dealing with it.


Leo Y. "Ireland" Abdulmalik

So you blame the 90% of illegal immigrants who are honest workers striving to make ends meet because of the .1 percent in gangs? Parasites? Parasites are the ones who take advantage of other countries such that their poor are forced to migrate. Lets not talk about all the times Blacks have assaulted Latinos here in Atlanta. [Inflamatory language edited out. -- FWS.]

My ideas are not based on racism, being scared of foreign masculinity, and as far as your nasty stereotypes of black American men "looking like they will beat someone down" I will ignore that.

All the vicious things you say about Muslims, all the jokes you've made about the sexual abilities of Asian Americans. And the laughing faces you put on there about them and how you can satisfy their women so much better. The constant harrassment of Muslims which nobody corrects. And then I say that African American males are known to carry themselves in a threatening manner, looking tough; and you say I'm making a nasty stereotype. How dare you. Shame, shame (hahaha). Accusing me of racism, me of all people.

We don't need your backhanded defense, thanks.

It seems you have real issues with your masculinity and with sexuality, that is not my problem. Maybe if you were more of a man you would not get so upset and insecure when people say something true. It also seems you are afraid of black men, which leads me to believe you are not very manly in real life.

...And [people --FWS] like you ...

and no illegals do not save Americans money, that is a myth put out by liberal "no borders" freaks:

The more the merrier. We need more immigration,
not less.

Competition is alway good. If Jews have
a right to go back to Isreal, then Latinos certainly
have a right to spread all over the Americas. This
is Indian land, and the land of those who are
partly Indian mixed.

This land is more that just
White and Black, much more. Latinos and other
immigrants are good for our land and its future.
That is why our government keeps turning a blind
eye.

After the riots of the late 1960's, a decision
was made that a way must be found to assimilate
our African American population. It is much more
than jobs, that this is all about. The very survival
of our nation is at stake. We must become one
nation or perish. And who will mix with the African
American on a large unprecidented scale if not
immigrants?

African American males can compete with the best. And nobody lays off a truly valuable worker. No salary is too high to keep a valuable
worker. Look how much Black American athletes are paid. Why? Because
they produce. They don't need special programs. They produce. And no
price is too high to obtain and keep their services.

African American males can compete with the best.

Although my response in this thread really doesn’t concern illegal immigration per se, the quote below by Leosprycat , for some reason, stuck out like a sore thumb to me and I just had to reply( the thread had been previously locked.) Sorry about the drift here.


Leosprycat wrote:



OK. Fair enough. I have no problems with this one.



Whoa there! Only a very miniscule of people, of any race, can ever become a professional athlete..so I consider them in a class by themselves to begin with. As far as a salary not being “too high” to keep a valuable worker, perhaps that may be so with the professional athlete , I don’t really know. But for the rest of us (of any race), that sentiment only exists within a Norman Rockwell paradise.

I guess the reason why this struck a chord with me is due to my very profession. As a medicinal chemist (master degree) I've worked for small biotech as well as big pharma for close to 20 years. Lately, this industry has seen quite a bit of change, (can you say "layoff" boys and girls?). I have witnessed this with very my own eyes. Just in January, a major site in Ann Arbor, MI has been slated to shut down completely within the next couple of years, which currently have many talented,productive scientists. Although my site was not shut down, there has been and still is, much reorganization occurring nevertheless. 20% of the Medicinal Chemistry department has been cut, and sadly I’ve been affected as well (my last day probably in August). Other very talented scientists in other departments are also being downsized.

Unfortunately some individuals with many years of experience and a higher degree(namely PhD) might find it difficult to obtain work elsewhere because some other companies would rather pay less for someone with less experience to do the same job rather than pay the higher salary commanded by the worker with many years of experience and/or PhD degree.

In a nutshell, the workers within the various disciplines within my profession, IMHO, are just as valuable or even more so than a high-profile athlete with an obscenely high salary ; as it is folks like us who eventually put out the therapeutic medicines and technologies to treat many different ailments for the general population…perhaps even that ailment that might be keeping the obscenely-paid athlete on the bench!

Again, my apologies for the drift folks…but just had to get this one out. Allright back to the topic at hand, carry on.

(...)



The U.S. is a nation of immigrants…..There’s no evidence that the children of immigrants are more willing to mix with African Americans than native-born white Americans (who are the descendants of immigrants themselves). Many Chicanos, for example, come from families that have resided in this country for more than three generations. The same can be said for Japanese Americans and some Chinese Americans. They are no more willing to mix with African Americans than white people. Indeed, given some of the recent events in Southern California, many Hispanics, i.e. Mexicans, Mexican Americans and Central Americans, have shown themselves to be capable of as much anti-black racism and violence as many whites.

There is simply no evidence that immigrants from anywhere or their American-born children, with the exception of African and non-Spanish-speaking Caribbean immigrants, are willing to mix with African Americans. Being illegally here, which is against the law, doesn’t make an “immigrant” more racially enlightened toward African Americans either.