Is Today Still So Black and White?

I wrote this letter from the perspective of an American in the 1990s during the time period Morrison wrote her article.  She writes the letter after reading both Morrison and Jacobson’s articles and pushes Toni Morrison’s argument that only blacks are aliens in the nation today.

Dear Toni Morrison,

Even though you and Michael Jacobson discuss two very different time periods in the history of American immigration, your claim that blacks are the “real aliens” in the United States corroborates his essay’s argument, specifically the section “E Pluribus Duo: American Politics in Black and White.” In your 1993 article, “On the Backs of Blacks,” you argue that blacks still remain absent from the typical American dream story of immigrants today.  As immigrants come to America from all across the world and compete with blacks for working class jobs, you claim that they have to complete an “efficient rite of passage into American culture: negative appraisals of the native-born black population.”  In order for immigrants to move up the American social ladder, they are pressured to further push down blacks to the bottom of the hierarchy. 

            In Chapter Three “Becoming Caucasian,” Jacobson discusses the immigration of southern and southeastern Europeans in the twentieth century and how their migration shaped the definition of white from 1924 to 1964.  During that time period, a slow process of assimilation occurred, whitening immigrants groups that were previously distinguished by solely their ethnicity and had not yet solidified into a white race.  He specifically describes the hardening of the line between black and white.  He calls blacks an “anomaly,” as there became “an absence of race on the white side and a presence of race on the black.”  As blacks witnessed Europeans immigrate into America and gain the privileges of native whites, they became increasingly frustrated by their lack of social mobility.  He also continues on to discuss how Jews became less distinguished as a different race but increasingly as white, while blacks remained black.

            While he discusses a time period preceding the 1990s, you arrive at a similar conclusion that blacks have been consistently excluded from experiences the opportunities many immigrants had.  With your article focusing on the present day, you, however, have a more complicated picture.  You may need to be more specific and direct with terminology.  You interchangeably use blacks for African-Americans when your subject would have been clearer if you consistently used African American.  I am interested to know how you think black Africans and West Indians fit into the narrative—are they also trampled over by immigrants of other backgrounds.  Also, what about the huge population of Latino immigrants living in the United States? While the narrative may have been black and white during the time period I lived, I am not so sure if it remains that way today.