IMMIGRATION PROTEST BACKLASH?

A couple of days ago my friend and former student Cameron, who lives in Houston's Heights neighborhood, sent me an email commenting on my recent immigration posts:

but this past week, i've become increasingly aware of an electricity in the air...a sense or an energy of unrest that seems to be taking hold of everyone who reads the paper. i dont know how this may or may not be translating to louisianna or other parts of the country with smaller hispanic populations, but there seems to be a sense of urgency that everyone around here is feeling. i live and work in an area populated by a large community of Hispanic immigrants, and i'm gathering this large unspoken feeling that something big is about to happen.

I had been wondering about what it is, exactly, that he's sensing, and then I saw this in the Houston Chronicle:

Survey: Rift over immigration widens

High school students who took to the streets of Houston last week in an unprecedented protest against efforts to clamp down on illegal immigration may have scored a victory of sorts in giving voice to a community that until now has been largely silent.

But in the process, they also may have accelerated the growing unease felt by the American public at the presence of as many as 12 million immigrants in the country illegally, said Rice University sociologist Stephen Klineberg.

Klineberg's annual Houston Area Survey, conducted a month ago, before the protests, found that local residents viewed immigrants in general less favorably than they had in past years. Likewise, more than 40 percent said illegal immigration is a serious problem and nearly a third called it a somewhat serious problem.

The sight of students waving the Mexican flag instead of the American banner will possibly harden that attitude and "increase the anxieties" of the community, Klineberg said.

The survey, a record of local attitudes over the past quarter-century, had for several years charted increasingly positive feelings toward immigrants.

Click here for the rest.

I'm not sure if Cameron is talking about whites, Hispanics, both, or just a general vibe in the air, but this survey may be hitting on what he's feeling. Perhaps all the xenophobic, anti-terrorism rhetoric these past few years has stoked pre-existing anxieties among white Americans. I don't know. But if this survey is correct, it seems probable, at least, that the recent hardcore anti-immigrant sentiment among Republicans nationwide, and the creation of the racist anti-immigrant group of shotgun carrying psychos called the "Minutemen," all this stuff, seems to be contributing to both Hispanic anger and white anxiety in Houston and elsewhere. In other words, we may be looking at a powder keg ready to explode. Obviously, that's not a good thing, especially because I think most Americans are in the same boat with illegal workers: we all need to earn a living, and the "Global Economy" appears to be offering fewer opportunities to do so. That is, the last thing we need right now is for people to choose bogus sides based on race and ethnicity in what is essentially class warfare waged by the wealthy against everybody else.

Damn it. Now I'm nervous, too.

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