super!…

exellent…

Ugh, I liked!…

You need more rest i think…

disagree…

disagree…

Dear NPR,

On Monday, July 14, you aired a story by David Greene about race relations between Latinos and Blacks in New Orleans. I am a sociologist and former resident of New Orleans who is studying the arrival of Latinos in New Orleans since the hurricane. I have been interviewed many times on this topic and each time I have said in complete honesty that tensions between Latinos and Blacks are minimal. Typically the reporter either didn’t run the story or they ran a story which reported that there were few tensions, but the headline suggested that there were, much as your story did.

There are two circumstances in which Black-Brown tensions flare: at the day labor sites when employers typically select Latino workers over Black workers and when Latino workers are robbed by criminals, who are often but not always Black, because undocumented Latino workers often carry cash and are afraid to go to the police for fear of deportation – or robbery. Just yesterday the Times Picayune covered a story in which a white Slidell police officer was fired for having stolen money from Latino drivers he pulled over using the same logic that they would have cash and not call the police.

A more accurate way of telling the story is that in New Orleans’s recovering economy tensions emerge between those with the fewest resources who are struggling to make a living and rebuild their lives. New Orleans needs construction workers and undocumented workers are preferred by employers for the same reasons that criminals go after them: they won’t go to the authorities when their rights are violated. Native-born and documented construction workers will. So the lazy Black workers who your Latino interviewees, Martha Mirlanda and Albert Stein, talked about who always want breaks, higher pay, and are not loyal, are the same ones who know their rights and refuse to be exploited. This story is not about race, it is about employers and others using race to create the most exploitable labor force they can find. David Green says this in the commentary at the end of the story, but it is an “opinion” that follows the “facts” of the story.

In May of this year the Louisiana legislature heard testimony against proposed anti-immigrant legislation. The most vocal opponent was the chair of the Black Caucus, Juan La Fonta. Don’t be fooled by his name. He’s a multi-generation African American. It’s worth following up your last story with a feature on the Black-Brown alliances that are being forged in New Orleans. Also, please see Lucas Diaz’s commentary on your story: http://latinolanow.org/data/2008/07/npr-story-misses-an-opportunity/

Please keep New Orleans in the news, but tell the positive stories as well as the sensationalist ones.

Best wishes,

Beth Fussell
Assistant Professor of Sociology
Washington State University
Pullman, Washington