It is generally accepted that the most shameful and immoral chapter of America’s history is the treatment of blacks during the period when the institution of slavery was practiced in the South. This institution created a legacy of equally shameful attitudes that led Americans to discriminate against blacks in housing, education, and employment. In fact, many argue that the slavery-based attitudes taught to Americans, that blacks are somehow not as qualified as whites to perform good work and should be educated and housed separately, persists to this day.

Unfortunately, this is true. Chicago has long been noted by black political leaders as most segregated big city of the nation.  And records of housing patterns by race recorded by the 2000 Census show that at that time ninety percent of the blacks in the city of Chicago would have to move in order for that city to be truly integrated. This proves that attitudes toward people based on the color of their skin are very damaging and very persistent.

Yet, as shameful and immoral as this legacy of discrimination is, there are very troubling signs that this same immoral attitude is being spawned today and used to oppress America’s newest large ethnic group, Hispanics. And remarkably, these attitudes are leading to housing segregation, poor educational opportunities, and low expectations for Hispanics in all parts of the nation.

As black political leaders have always maintained, attitudes of prejudice are not tangible. They are invisible and are carried within the minds of those who make decisions as to where a certain ethnic group should be housed and whether or not they are qualified to do certain jobs. 

When politicians who promote illegal immigration -- and eighty one percent of illegal immigrants are Hispanics according to the Dept. of Homeland Security -- say things such as that Hispanics are here to do jobs no one else will do, or that America needs them to pick lettuce and tomatoes, one has flashbacks to the language used to oppress those from Africa who, Southerners alleged, were well suited to the heat of the South since they came from a hot continent, and that therefore they should be doing simple, low-paid manual work no one else would do.

That this language is not only being heard today but is actively used by those who promote illegal immigration is difficult to believe.  Particularly when the U.S. has elected a black president one would expect sensitivity to ethnic minorities to be achieving new levels of acceptance.  But the evidence is that Hispanics are being funneled into highly segregated communities, just as African-Americans once were, and that they are being forced into underperforming urban school districts, and are duplicating the experience of blacks in being subjected to subtle attitudes of oppression and discrimination. 

That all of these immoral and racially insensitive actions are being promoted by the Democratic Party, the party that professes to be the party most sensitive to the needs of poor minorities, is very troubling. 

That this paper should be one of the first to point this out is also very shocking and proves that mainstream American media have not made any effort to convey the immorality of depicting a whole new ethnic group through the language and stereotypes of racial oppression. In fact, this immoral attitude toward Hispanic workers has been so effectively promoted and hidden that now, for the first time, living Americans can fully understand how Americans slowly developed and maintained a racist attitude toward blacks, an attitude that, as history has shown, once created, would persist for centuries. 

It was only through the herculean efforts of civil rights leaders such as Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. that America began to see the immorality of holding racist attitudes toward the intelligence of others of color. One can only ask why a Hispanic civil rights leader has not arisen, in addition to the very troubling question of why an ethnic group can once again be subjected to housing segregation and stereotyped as capable of only simple manual jobs. I have suggested that the time is ripe for an Hispanic civil rights leader since Hispanics, after thirty years of oppression in big Democratic cities such as Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago, are now suffering the same socioeconomic ills as have blacks in those cities.

But there are signs that these socioeconomic indicators will be far worse for Hispanics than for African-Americans. For example, the Pew Hispanic Center study Between Two Worlds found that Hispanic high school age students now drop out at a rate nearly double that of African-Americans. And, this is a national figure that applies to all Hispanics in the U.S. not just those subjected to the oppressive rule of the Democratic Party in the big Democratic Machines that rule Chicago and Los Angeles.

Since the nation has had a sixty-year history of civil rights awareness, the fact that housing segregation is being practiced more deliberately against Hispanics than it was for African-Americans is particularly troubling. For blacks the segregated neighborhoods grew slowly. Today, Democrats have corralled Hispanics into highly segregated “supermajority Hispanic” neighborhoods through a shameless use of the Voting Rights Act.  For example, in 1985 a federal judge ruled that a Hispanic Alderman in Chicago could gerrymander his ward boundaries to make it supermajority Hispanic. Today 14 of Chicago’s 50 Wards are Hispanic supermajority wards. There is only one Republican Ward in the city.

Another tragic legacy of racial discrimination against blacks has been the destruction of the black family. Yet today, only thirty years after Hispanics began moving north into the U.S. in large numbers, the single motherhood rate of Hispanic teenage girls is already above that of blacks who have a centuries-old legacy of discrimination behind them. 

Americans need to think about the way they think about Hispanics. Does America really want  racist attitudes to be directed toward another group of color? To this day the Democratic Party continues to personally attack and discredit black political leaders who are conservative, proving that they will be very aggressive in their effort to silent those who threaten their domination and control of the black vote. Immigration Reform is another manifestation of this goal.

What makes the study of history so fascinating is that it is always a challenge to reconstruct the mindset of those who lived in the past. To try to see the world as they saw it, to feel as they did, to use the words they used in daily life. Seeing how easy it is for Americans now to adapt the contemporary view that Hispanics are limited in their role in American society helps us understand how those in the past saw blacks as limited.

There are two things to learn from this comparison of how these two races have been characterized. One is that one can see how easy it was for Americans to use this language to characterize African-Americans two hundred years ago. Secondly, the notion that the Democratic Party is behind this, and actively pursues the settlement of Hispanics into highly segregated communities so they can capture their votes, is unavoidable.