Blacks Resentment Tinged with Envy

By Richard Stengel

Along Harlem's 125th Street, the main artery of what was once the heart and soul of black America, a group of embittered black protesters demonstrates against the string of tidy Korean shops that now almost dominate the thoroughfare. In Miami, native blacks are beginning to feel like spurned foreigners as ambitious Cubans give the city a Latin rhythm and take over what were once bastions of black business. On the grim concrete playgrounds of Powelton Village in West Philadelphia, black children call their Asian classmates "chinks" and "gooks." The Asians, quick learners all, call the blacks "spooks" and "niggers."

Ever since the first slave ships unloaded their human cargo 360 years ago, black Americans have witnessed a succession of determined immigrants -- Germans, Irish, Jews, Italians -- weather discrimination to achieve a measure of acceptance and economic success that far surpassed their own. Once again the pattern is repeating itself. With a mixture of animosity and admiration, and no small dose of resentment, blacks are watching the new immigrants from Asia and Latin America flourish where blacks have not. Already the median household income of Koreans, Vietnamese, Haitians, Cubans and Mexicans has climbed past that of blacks.

Blacks tend to regard the immigrants as uninvited guests at a meager meal. Many believe the newcomers' gains come at the expense of blacks and that a "racist" system benefits the immigrants. Adding to the bitterness is the black perception that America's newest citizens are embracing one of its oldest traits, racial prejudice. Comedian Richard Pryor does a routine depicting a group of Indochinese boat people taking part in their first citizenship class. Lesson No. 1: the correct pronunciation of the word nigger.

Underlying the tension is a difficult and sensitive question: Why have blacks failed to advance and achieve the way old and new ethnic groups have? As Social Scientist Michael Harrington writes, "Why don't 'they' act like 'we' did? This has long been the cry of well-meaning white Americans who simply can't understand why blacks don't repeat the classic immigrant experience."

The answer, in part at least, is that the black experience in America has been unique. No other people came to America in chains. Unlike other groups that experienced spasms of prejudice that lasted a few decades, blacks have faced generations of racism. Indeed, they are among the oldest and newest Americans: old because they have lived in the U.S. since the time the nation was just an idea; new because it has been only in the past 20 years that they have become truly enfranchised citizens. Says Economist Thomas Sowell: "The race as a whole has moved from utter destitution -- in money, knowledge and rights -- to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great struggles of life. None have had to come from so far back to join their fellow Americans."

In reality, American blacks were immigrants, internal immigrants. Sowell notes in his book Ethnic America that from 1940 to 1970 4 million blacks -- nearly one-fourth of all the 19th century European immigrants to the U.S. combined -- migrated from the rural South, the poorest area of the country, to the urban North. Many of today's urban blacks are only the second generation in the city, and their parents arrived at a time when the smokestack economy was spluttering.

Millions of black Americans have in fact clambered up the ladder to create a stable and growing black middle class. But there are two black Americas. The other is an entrenched underclass stuck at the very bottom of society. It is these blacks, an alarming percentage of them from fragmented families and households headed by women, who appear less capable of economic survival than the tenacious new immigrants.

In Harlem, the moms and pops who presided over family stores were once Jewish or Italian. When they departed, local blacks were unable to capitalize on the opportunities, leaving many of the stores abandoned and boarded up. During the past five years, entrepreneurial Koreans have taken over about a third of the stores on 125th Street. Last October a ruckus began after a black man was evicted from Ike's grocery, owned by the Shin brothers. A handful of black activists began a boycott of Korean merchants that went on sporadically for a few months. Says Lloyd Williams, a neighborhood black leader: "The effort became to get all the Koreans out of the neighborhood."

Among many blacks in Miami, there is similar resentment of the way Cuban immigrants have moved into small businesses. In 1960 blacks owned 25% of the gas stations in Dade County. By 1979 they had only 9%, while the percentage of Hispanic-owned stations grew from 12% to 48%. The average income of a Hispanic business in Dade County is now $84,000, almost twice that of a black business.

Standing around Africa Square Park in Miami's shabby, pastel-colored Liberty City, a knot of young blacks laments the Cuban invasion. "They're messing us up," says one. "They're taking bread out of our mouths." Another complains that the Cubans and Haitians are willing, even eager, to work for the legal minimum wage, or less. Many of the young blacks say they would rather not work than hire themselves out for what they consider insultingly low pay. Says Dorothy Fields, founder of Miami's Black Archive, a historical research agency: "It appears that we have a group who feels the world owes them a living because of what their parents and grandparents went through."

In Houston, Indochinese immigrants have become an economic presence, sometimes virtually the only sign of vitality in otherwise depressed areas. Many own or manage 24-hour convenience stores in predominantly black neighborhoods. Says a black Texas Southern University maintenance man who stopped in for a snack at a Vietnamese-run store: "For the first time you can buy fresh meat right in the neighborhood. It's the idea that a foreigner can come in here and move up so quickly that disgusts people." City Councilman Anthony Hall sees the immigrants as models, not enemies. Says he: "They have pooled their resources and created some lucrative opportunities for themselves."

For the Hmong, rural Laotian tribesmen who migrated to Powelton Village in West Philadelphia in 1981, the City of Brotherly Love proved anything but. They came with little knowledge of American life, only to be confronted by crime, unemployment and blacks who called them gooks. The Hmong, though, had been taught one thing about America: do not trust black people. When the teacher of an elementary school English class attempted to explain the meaning of the word hate, the class of young Laotians responded that they knew what they hated: blacks. The mutual ignorance spurred violence. Some of the Hmong were threatened in the streets. In a fight between a group of Hmong and several blacks, one Hmong had both his legs broken and his skull fractured. Less schooled in urban survival than the Koreans and Vietnamese, the Hmong began to move away. Says Chuck Moua: "We are trying to be nice and friendly, but we have got into trouble."

Like most who came before them, the new immigrants are animated by the belief that America is the land of opportunity, and for many of them it is. Yet for much of the black underclass, America still seems to be the land of opportunity denied. In each case, the perception has often been fulfilled.

With reporting by Jack E. White/New York