What was lost in the crowd

THE “Day Without Immigrants” protest drew hundreds of thousands of people to downtown Los Angeles on Monday, myself among them. But I was struck as much by what wasn’t there as by what was.

Although the marchers showed plenty of indignation, the march itself was virtually anger-free. Though they carried the flag, they carried no animus toward what it represented (in fact, their attitude was quite the opposite). Another absence I noticed was black people, like me. Threading my way through the crowds, I felt both inspired and unnecessary.

The lack of anger may have had a lot to do with the presence of so many children. Adults were there not only to confront the establishment but to be role models for their kids. The peaceable tenor was unsurprising. The immigration reform movement may be agitating for change, namely in U.S. immigration law. But it is unlike the civil rights demonstrations of old, or the antiwar demonstrators of today, in that its main success so far has been simply showing the world what’s been true all along.

That truth is that illegal immigrants are irrefutably an integral part of the national economy. They stop working for a day and all sorts of quality-of-life services that the middle class of all colors has learned to take for granted come apart -- child care, housecleaning, home repair, hotel maid service, gardening, janitorial and construction work, valet parking.

And then there were the flags. Although plenty of marchers waved the red, white and green, along with the colors of other Latin American countries, the preponderance of U.S. flags was striking. Far from subverting the Stars and Stripes or fashioning it into a symbol of resistance, as in the 1960s, Latino demonstrators treated the flag with matter-of-fact reverence. They simply held the flag aloft or alongside the flags of their nations. Those who wrapped themselves in Old Glory did so sincerely; they were literally wrapping themselves in the fabric of an American dream that they felt they had a hand in making. To desecrate the flag would have been to desecrate the can-do ideals of American opportunity many Latinos hold dear, low wages and poor working conditions notwithstanding.

Most Americans, even the most xenophobic and isolationist among us, can’t fault that idealism -- and don’t want to. What’s more American, or mythologized as more American, than hard work? By that measure, Latinos have more than earned their membership in the club.

But there’s the rub: “earning” the right to be a U.S. citizen and, more profoundly, an American. Paying your dues, logging your hours. It’s a curious, wholly capitalistic approach to citizenship, and it’s gaining currency among Latinos and their supporters. Some of the signs I saw Monday made the argument in shorthand. “Immigrants Built This Country -- That’s It,” read one. “Pilgrims Were Immigrants!” declared another.

Ah yes, the Pilgrims, the folks who gave the United States its fabled Puritan work ethic. A work ethic so revered, so uniquely American, that immigrants need only subscribe to it to become an American. The only problem with this notion, of course, is that it didn’t apply to Native Americans and blacks. Indians were unwilling and dying off, so African blacks were imported for slave labor that built the American economy in its crucial first 200 years or so. Can’t get much more industrious than that.

Although slavery has long since ended, racism remains -- and black employment has never been as noble or as resonant a cause as that of the immigrant worker. It is an orphaned cause still looking for something or someone to take it up. Blacks who’ve more than earned their “Americanness” are still trying to make that point today.

I realized Monday that there is no place to make it in this movement. A few frustrated blacks have tried, taking up the flag to assert the validity of their Americanness over that of their Latino neighbors -- a move that could not help but look reactionary rather than visionary. It doesn’t much matter, because blacks are not needed. Latino immigrants are diverse, numerous and politically astute. Blacks are even losing their historic and symbolic role as a mirror of the nation’s conscience; another group now holds a mirror that is less damning and easier for the nation to gaze into.

By the end of the morning protest, I was deeply impressed. I also felt deeply invisible. I drove home along a South L.A. main street that, with Latino businesses shuttered and blacks milling about in a kind of vacuum, was quieter and emptier than I’d ever seen it.