Black People : Day laborers' struggle:African-Americans eclipsed by Latinos

panafrica

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Aug 24, 2002
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The Diaspora
He has tried standing alongside Latino day laborers on Brooklyn's Fort Hamilton Parkway and Roosevelt Ave. in Queens. But Tony Taylor says he only seems to get steady work on one streetcorner in this city: Bedford and Atlantic Aves., where 30 to 50 African-American day laborers like him have congregated for at least three decades.

"African-Americans have been doing this for a long, long time - but you just can't tell now, with all the Mexicans," said Taylor, 45.

On a recent Tuesday morning, Taylor shouted: "Work, work, work!" to cruising contractors in vans and trucks. "My father used to do this back down South in North Carolina," he said.

From the big city to the rural South, labor experts say African-American men were once ubiquitous in this centuries-old informal traffic, replacing the Irish and Italians. But that isn't the case anymore.

These days, they are relics, eclipsed by Latino immigrants who now are the universal face of day labor in New York City and surrounding suburbs.

"Back in the day, blacks used to stand over by Fort Hamilton and they used to go to Williamsburg," said a 42-year-old day laborer who wished to be identified only as E. "But when I went over there, I saw a lot of Mexicans and a lot of Russians, and I know that wasn't the spot for me, so I came back over here."

In New York City, there is a diverse workforce of more than 8,000 day laborers who crowd the city's sidewalks, hoping for a chance at a buck - black day labor parlance for $100.

But Latino immigrants - largely Mexicans, Ecuadorans, and Guatemalans - have driven down the rate to $80 or less a day, said Edwin Melendez, a professor at Milano the New School for Management and Urban Policy, who co-authored the first national study on day laborers in January.

So now the immigrants are considered more desirable to employers because they can be hired for less, and usually don't challenge employers because of language barriers, day labor experts say.

In addition, they often don't know their rights, the experts say.

"By and large, employers prefer Latino men," said Carolyn Turnovsky, a sociologist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who spent two years researching the day labor dynamic on one corner in Sunset Park.

The corner was dominated by about 30 Latino immigrant men but, at times, a smattering of African-Americans tried their luck, she said.

"Employers perceive that all the black men do not know how to do hard work, and perceive that the Latino men as 'hardworking'", Turnovsky said. "Even the Latino men did not understand why. ... The black men didn't do well on this corner."

Now the city is exploring ways to subsidize day laborer centers, creating a clearinghouse for employers to get paired with workers.

The Bedford Ave. men don't welcome that idea. Many of them are homeless and housed at the Atlantic Ave. armory shelter, and some have criminal records. Others just can't seem to hold down a regular day job.

City Councilwoman Letitia James (D-Brooklyn), who represents the area, said that these men defy the stereotypical image of day laborers as being solely undocumented immigrants.

"There is this notion that immigrants do the work that Americans will not do," James said. "And I seriously question that."

http://www.nydailynews.com/boroughs/story/448931p-377941c.html
 

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