Idiot of note:
The Rev. Jesse Peterson, a member of Choose Black America,
Black coalition forms against immigration By DANIEL GILBERT
Wednesday, May 24, 2006
WASHINGTON - For a newly formed coalition of black Americans, the issue of illegal immigration is personal.
The leaders of "Choose Black America," a group of community, religious and academic leaders across the country, view illegal immigration as particularly detrimental to black Americans.
"We're here to call the alarm, the alarm for justice," said Frank Morris, a former associate dean at the University of Maryland, and one of the group's founding members, at a press conference Tuesday. Morris blames illegal immigration for high levels of unemployment among blacks.
The other founding member, Claud Anderson, spoke of a "hidden unemployment rate" of 35 percent among black Americans.
"Illegal immigration has wiped out all the gains of the black people from the civil rights movement," said Anderson, president of the Harvest Institute, a research and policy organization devoted to studying the African-American community.
The genesis of the group - while too late to weigh in on the immigration debate in the Senate - is a reaction to the rallies and marches staged in Washington, D.C., and nationwide, demanding rights for undocumented immigrants.
The Rev. Jesse Peterson, a member of Choose Black America, bristled when Sen. Edward Kennedy, D-Mass., drew a parallel between the current movement for immigrant rights and the civil rights movement of the 1960s. He called the comparison "evil."
