Black Prof: Before They Get Here, Immigrants Have Already Internalized America’s Racist ‘Poison’

Alissa Tabirian
CNS News
July 30, 2013

Popular Mexican cartoon character Memin.
Popular Mexican cartoon character Memin.

A Georgetown University professor says that when non-white immigrants come to the U.S., they already have negative “notions of blackness” due to the racist “poison that’s been spewed from America” and the “seductive character of whiteness.”

“When certain immigrants come here they have notions of blackness, regardless of where they’re from, so that they’re very negative, because they’ve imbibed and internalized unconsciously the poison that’s been spewed from America,” Michael Eric Dyson, professor of sociology at Georgetown University, said on MSNBC’s Melissa Harris Perry show Sunday.

“And then, you know, there’s a huge difference between being a white Cuban from say, Miami, and a black Dominican from New York. So we know that internecine squabbles among Latino communities, all of which experience hierarchies of color as well. If Elian Gonzalez had been from Santiago de Cuba [the second largest city in Cuba] as opposed to Havana, he would have been sent back with a Snickers bar saying, ‘have a good time.’”

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