University Gazette, May 22, 2002

FYI RESEARCH: Thesis examines
role of Latinos in the state

When it came time to choose a topic for her senior honors thesis in Latin American Studies, Karla Rosenberg was ahead of the game -- she'd had her topic in mind since high school. Actually, further back than that.

Growing up in central Durham, Rosenberg believed the world was black and white. Because of her school experiences as a white girl attending predominately black public schools, she also thought she was a minority.

Riding the bus home in middle school, she always remembered the Macon Street stop because more students got off there than any other. "I watched every day as my black classmates poured off the bus and onto their lawns after school," she said. Five years later, though, she was shocked when she drove down the same street and saw that all of the black households had been replaced by Latinos.

Mexican tiendas started popping up. Ranchero music played on the street. And in the restaurant where she worked part time in high school, she noticed that a lot of the people working in the kitchen were Latino.

"All of these changes sparked my curiosity enough that when my mother invited me to begin teaching English classes with her at a local Hispanic community center, I eagerly accepted," Rosenberg said.

And the Latinos were just as eager to learn English. "All of the classes were packed," she said. Each class focused on a different issue such as health care or worker's compensation. For one of the classes, a policeman came and talked about crime in the area.

"This is when I realized that crime in the poorer areas was mostly black and Latino. Latinos carried all of their money around with them because they didn't trust the banks, and this made them easy targets for violence," Rosenberg said. "It really hit home when a Latino dishwasher I worked with in the restaurant got shot walking home one night."

Rosenberg began to wonder how much connection there might be between black-Latino hostility and blacks' perception that Latinos were coming in and taking over their jobs and housing.

Rosenberg kept this thought in the back of her mind as she finished high school and began college. Her senior thesis was the perfect opportunity to explore the impact of Latino immigration on the native black community.

"Latino immigration in this area is a recent phenomenon, so there's not a lot of research data out there," Rosenberg said. Census figures show that between 1990 and 2000, the Latino population in North Carolina quadrupled from fewer than 100,000 to around 400,000.

Rosenberg wanted to go straight to the source for her information. She interviewed about 15 employers, workers, residents and landlords -- both blacks and Latinos. She asked them questions about their community and about work -- what it was like, whether they enjoyed it, if they thought the wages were fair, how they interacted with people on the job.

"Everyone was very open," Rosenberg said. "It wasn't so scary. I guess I'm pretty nonthreatening." It probably also helps that Rosenberg speaks fluent Spanish, something she picked up working at the Latino Community Center and gets to practice regularly with her boyfriend, who is from Mexico.

Rosenberg found that a lot of the Latinos she talked to started out in the United States living in New York or Los Angeles, but because the job markets in those areas were already pretty saturated, they migrated to areas such as North Carolina -- which now has many gateway communities itself -- where they had more job and educational opportunities. She said most Latinos find jobs easily because they are typically willing to work for lower wages and are perceived by employers as having a strong work ethic. They also use their friends in the community. "There's a lot of networking among Latinos," Rosenberg said. "And employers are going to be more likely to hire a friend of somebody already working for them rather than somebody they don't know off the street. The same thing works for housing. Latinos will move into a house in the neighborhood, and then when the next house opens up, they jump right on it and get it for their friend."

Most of the black people Rosenberg talked with said they did not necessarily feel like Latinos were taking over their jobs. One man who was living in a homeless shelter surprised Rosenberg by saying, "There are jobs here for everybody who wants them. There's no problem finding a job."

Rosenberg explained that most blacks are more educated and have better jobs than immigrants. Those without education, though, often felt themselves at a disadvantage in competition with Latino workers because they do not have the skills necessary to advance in a high-tech society.

"Another thing to think about," Rosenberg said, "is the economic downturn we're facing. What's going to happen when economic opportunity dries up, when the high-tech jobs are gone and African Americans and whites are going to have to seek lower jobs? They're not going to have anywhere to go because the Latinos are already there."

Rosenberg points to research done in September and October after Sept. 11 that shows a disproportionate amount of job loss among blacks as opposed to whites. "Blacks are losing their jobs faster," she said.

While Rosenberg, or anyone else for that matter, doesn't have any immediate solutions, she believes that immigration can be healthy for a community. "I think fear is keeping a lot of people from embracing a community that adds richness of life and work. Latinos actually provide a lot of work," she said. "If you look around at all of the buildings being built, the Latino food and restaurants -- it's incredible. I definitely think they're benefiting our country economically as well as culturally."

Provided by Research and Graduate Studies
Editor: Neil Caudle
Writer: Cate House
University Gazette

The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill