Conflicted over Arizona’s immigrant law

Robert Dunn won’t be going to Phoenix for his bridge club’s regional tournament this month, even though he’s been looking forward to the trip for months.

Dunn is a bridge lover, but he’s also a black son of the segregated South. Refusing to visit Arizona is his way of standing against injustice and alongside Latinos targeted by that state’s immigration crackdown.

“The Hispanics are not our enemies,” said Dunn, an 80-year-old retired teacher. “We know what discrimination feels like.”

But Dunn was on the losing side last weekend in the Los Angeles Bridge Unit—a coalition of black bridge clubs formed when national groups barred blacks from competing. The group voted not to boycott.

Dunn understands it’s not just about passion for the game.

The bridge club members—most in their 60s, 70s and 80s—have been around long enough, indeed, to know what discrimination feels like. But they also know what it feels like being stuck on the nation’s bottom rung.

Their deliberations over whether to go to Arizona reflect concerns that a “new” minority is drawing on the success of their civil rights battles to undermine options for their offspring.

“They want black people to stand up and say ‘Let these people stay,’ ” 72-year-old Ann Hadley said of efforts to push the boycott. “But it’s not right. We don’t approve of it. We feel that we’re being pushed aside.”

Hadley and Dunn represent polar opposites in a debate hardly limited to the bridge club. Americans are torn over what should be done about illegal immigration. And many African Americans grappling with the Arizona law find themselves in a soul-searching state.

Is this about civil rights or lawbreakers? Our history or their future? Just whose interests should we protect?

Dunn is a self-defined ultra-liberal—so disappointed by our first black president that he’s taken down Barack Obama’s picture from his wall. He preaches solidarity with Latinos and says, “Our enemy is those teabaggers.”

Hadley’s loyalties lie with the black middle class—folks who battled racial obstacles to rise and now see these new immigrants as line-cutters.

Immigration has changed the face of Hadley’s city, she says—claiming her neighborhood, overcrowding her grandchildren’s schools, threatening her children’s careers “because every job you see now says ‘Spanish required’ or ‘bilingual preferred.’ ”

“I want them to know that we’re responsible for the civil rights movement that you and everyone else has tremendously benefitted from,” she told me. “I don’t want to be quiet anymore.”

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Under Arizona’s new law, police officers must require proof of immigration status from anyone they stop or arrest when “reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien.” The law’s been blasted by civic groups and civil rights leaders.

Al Sharpton has promised “mass civil disobedience” when the law takes effect this summer. Jesse Jackson called it “an attack on the character of America.”

But indignation from above is matched by anger on the ground, aimed at this country’s porous borders. And it’s not just among blacks or the racist fringe.

Recent polls suggest that two-thirds of Americans back Arizona’s law, even though they believe it might lead to discrimination. The federal failure to tackle the problem and the nation’s economic woes have made immigrants an easy target.

“I hear it from a lot of people,” said Dunn. “ ‘They come in the neighborhood and take the jobs.’ The waiters, the janitors, the hotel jobs…those all used to be done by blacks. Now they’re all Hispanic.”

He doesn’t blame the immigrants, he says: “I can relate.” He came to L.A. in 1955 from Memphis “because I wanted to better my education.

That’s the story of a lot of people. They just want to make a better life.”

But almost every bridge player I talked to seemed to have a complaint:

The girl at El Pollo Loco got my order wrong because she couldn’t hardly speak English. The hotel where we held my son’s wedding reception had no blacks on staff, only Mexicans. My daughter may lose her teaching job because of low test scores among the Spanish-speaking kids.

It’s the perception of disrespect that rankles, said Hadley, a retired teacher and social worker, who lived for years in South America as a volunteer building schools in Venezuela’s slums. .

She learned to speak Spanish, she said, “because I wouldn’t dare expect them to speak English, in their country, for me.”

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The bridge tournament organizers said they considered cancelling the competition, but it would have cost too much and disappointed too many.

“Most are our members are retired, on fixed incomes and don’t travel much,” said director Thelma Lee. “They looked forward to this for over a year, put their money aside, made their reservations.”

Several club members, like Dunn, are refusing to go, despite the Bridge Unit’s vote.

Others are putting misgivings aside out of a feeling of responsibility to the Arizona club, which stands to lose a bundle on vacant rooms.

At last weekend’s bridge club meeting, “the discussion kept going back and forth,” Hadley said. “It’s like we’re conflicted and don’t know what to do.”

She called and asked that I write about it, “talk to people and get some consensus.” But I got closer to confusion:

Do we stand on principle or for personal interest? Is this about lawbreakers or discrimination? Are these our brothers and sisters or our competition? Can we play bridge in Phoenix without betraying them?

sandy.banks@latimes.com