Justice vs. ‘Just Us’: Should Black People Care About ICE?

by Liz Courquet-Lesaulnier, Word in Black

As ICE raids sweep L.A., some African Americans say protesting is not our fight — raising questions about racial solidarity. Are they right?

It’s June in El Pueblo de Nuestra Señora la Reina de los Ángeles del Río Porciúncula — the original, full name of Los Angeles, founded in 1781 by 44 settlers from Spanish Mexico, more than half of whom were of African descent. And a weekend in L.A., a.k.a. the Land of Pretty People, usually means young folks head out to see and be seen.

But last Friday evening, as the sun slipped behind the palm trees, I suggested my 21-year-old son and his girlfriend make a different kind of weekend plan.

“I highly recommend that you all stay inside tonight,” I texted. “And, in fact, as much as possible this weekend.”

My concern wasn’t abstract. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers had conducted raids earlier that day, in the Fashion District, just east of downtown, not far from our home. The raid swept up more than 100 people, including labor leader David Huerta. 

On social media — far from the spectacle of protesters marching onto the 101 Freeway with Mexican flags, far from the sound of the flash-bang grenades — plenty of African Americans were advising one another to stay home, too. But there was a different kind of logic behind the message: Not our monkey, not our circus.

After decades of carrying the weight of America’s racial sins — after the so-called “92%” showed up for Kamala Harris at the polls in November — Black America decided that ICE agents tearing Brown families apart was a racial crisis that wasn’t our problem. 

[…]

For some, that distance from the protests was a reaction to long-simmering tensions between the Black and Latino communities in general, and Latino anti-Blackness specifically.

[…]

Afro Latina civil rights lawyer Tanya Katerí Hernández, a Fordham Law professor, explored this dynamic in her 2022 book “Racial Innocence: Unmasking Latino Anti-Black Bias.” She argues that Latinos are often seen as racially diverse and welcoming, but they hide anti-Black attitudes. 

Latinos, she wrote in the book, are “entangled with denigrating Blackness as a device for performing Whiteness.” 

But Hernández also warned African Americans against withdrawing from the fight. 

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