Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a black writer who I mentioned in the blog in late January, has his January Huffington Post blog item up as a column in the Chicago Tribune.

[Blacks sour on illegal immigrants By Earl Ofari Hutchinson, a columnist for blacknews.com, an author and political analyst , February 6, 2006]

Hutchinson's distaste for what he calls the "borderline racist rants" seems to overcome any feeling that a Mexican invasion might actually be bad for blacks, but here are a couple of points he brings up:

• Pete Wilson got 20 percent of the black vote, double what a Republican usually gets.

• 50 percent of blacks voted for Prop 187. That's 50 percent. That's incredible, for a measure that's identified with the Republican party. If GOP strategists want the black vote, this is how they can get it.

• His dislike of "nativism" is so strong that he attacks Marcus Garvey, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois: there's something you don't see very often."At times, these leaders, otherwise progressive and staunch fighters for civil rights, sounded every bit as hard-line as the most rabid, nativist, America-first, anti-immigration foes in demanding that the federal government clamp down on legal and illegal immigration."

• He seems to give support for a claim made by President Fox that illegals are "doing jobs that not even blacks want to do there in the United States ." I remember thinking at the time that there might be something to that; a classic Kinsley gaffe.

Despite a recent flurry of lawsuits and settlements by blacks against and with major employers for alleged racial favoritism toward Hispanic workers, employers vehemently deny that they shun blacks. The employers maintain that blacks simply don't apply for these jobs.

These aren't just flimsy covers for discrimination. Many blacks will no longer work the low-skilled, menial factory, restaurant and custodial jobs that in decades past they filled. The pay is too low, the work too hard and the indignities too great. On the other hand, those blacks who seek these jobs are often given a quick brushoff by employers. The subtle message is that blacks won't be hired, even if they do apply. An entire category of jobs at the bottom rung of American industry has been clearly marked "Latino only."

Near the end of the column, he breaks out with this:

Civil rights leaders and the Congressional Black Caucus have repeatedly condemned the thinly disguised race-tinged appeals of the Minuteman Project, Save Our State and the legions of other fringe anti-immigration groups that have cropped up in nearly every part of the country in recent years. Some of them openly pitch their anti-immigrant line to blacks.

What is that supposed to mean? Blacks are Americans, Mr. Hutchinson, with the same civil rights and voting powers that white Americans have. Let's look at the other side of the coin; the pro-immigration, anti-border enforcement types, openly pitch their "pro-illegal-immigrant" line to Mexicans.

Which is why we call them the Treason Lobby.