Along Harlem's 125th Street, the main artery of what was once the heart and soul of black America, a group of embittered black protesters demonstrates against the string of tidy Korean shops that now almost dominate the thoroughfare. In Miami, native blacks are beginning to feel like spurned foreigners as ambitious Cubans give the city a Latin rhythm and take over what were once bastions of black business. On the grim concrete playgrounds of Powelton Village in West Philadelphia, black children call their Asian classmates "chinks" and "gooks." The Asians, quick learners all, call the blacks "spooks" and "niggers."
Ever since the first slave ships unloaded their human cargo 360 years ago, black Americans have witnessed a succession of determined immigrants -- Germans, Irish, Jews, Italians -- weather discrimination to achieve a measure of acceptance and economic success that far surpassed their own. Once again the pattern is repeating itself. With a mixture of animosity and admiration, and no small dose of resentment, blacks are watching the new immigrants from Asia and Latin America flourish where blacks have not. Already the median household income of Koreans, Vietnamese, Haitians, Cubans and Mexicans has climbed past that of blacks.
Blacks tend to regard the immigrants as uninvited guests at a meager meal. Many believe the newcomers' gains come at the expense of blacks and that a "racist" system benefits the immigrants. Adding to the bitterness is the black perception that America's newest citizens are embracing one of its oldest traits, racial prejudice. Comedian Richard Pryor does a routine depicting a group of Indochinese boat people taking part in their first citizenship class. Lesson No. 1: the correct pronunciation of the word nigger.
Underlying the tension is a difficult and sensitive question: Why have blacks failed to advance and achieve the way old and new ethnic groups have? As Social Scientist Michael Harrington writes, "Why don't 'they' act like 'we' did? This has long been the cry of well-meaning white Americans who simply can't understand why blacks don't repeat the classic immigrant experience."
The answer, in part at least, is that the black experience in America has been unique. No other people came to America in chains. Unlike other groups that experienced spasms of prejudice that lasted a few decades, blacks have faced generations of racism. Indeed, they are among the oldest and newest Americans: old because they have lived in the U.S. since the time the nation was just an idea; new because it has been only in the past 20 years that they have become truly enfranchised citizens. Says Economist Thomas Sowell: "The race as a whole has moved from utter destitution -- in money, knowledge and rights -- to a place alongside other groups emerging in the great struggles of life. None have had to come from so far back to join their fellow Americans."
In reality, American blacks were immigrants, internal immigrants. Sowell notes in his book Ethnic America that from 1940 to 1970 4 million blacks -- nearly one-fourth of all the 19th century European immigrants to the U.S. combined -- migrated from the rural South, the poorest area of the country, to the urban North. Many of today's urban blacks are only the second generation in the city, and their parents arrived at a time when the smokestack economy was spluttering.