Immigration is a polarizing topic across America but particularly in parts of the Black community where the complex issue is creating "great tension" due to competition over limited resources, one expert says.
"Immigration, writ large, has a material impact on Black culture," "For The Culture" author Marcus Collins told Fox News Digital.
"As new immigrants come in, they ultimately can create a collective of the marginalized, right? Which fosters collaboration among cultural producers," Collins continued. "I think when you start to think about illegal immigration, it creates a new frame by which we think about this influx, because it's no longer just more underestimated people coming into the market."
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Collins penned the 2023 book "For the Culture: The Power Behind What We Buy, What We Do, and Who We Want to Be," which examines why cultural engagement is the most powerful vehicle for influencing behavior. He believes illegal immigration brings the question of whether illegal immigrants have the right to what people who are already here have, which he said "complicates the situation."
"The context could be, ‘Are they, asylum seekers? Are they fleeing an environment that puts their life in jeopardy? Are they fleeing because of persecution? And therefore, considering the ethos of the country, we would say that they have a right to be here -- just like any of us do," Collins said.
"The complications then for the Black community becomes, ‘Is there a tension around resources?’ If there are only so many dollars, so many on-ramps, so many points of access for these people, then it puts a strain on the resources available, right?" he asked.
Collins ran digital strategy for music star Beyoncé and oversaw iTunes + Nike sports music initiatives at Apple before becoming a bestselling author. He said that once the mentality of scarcity sets in, it creates conflict and tensions between immigrants whether they are legal or not.
"I think at its best, you know, as more immigrants enter the country, be it legal or illegal, it creates a new calibration of how we think about the hegemony. Because when the minority becomes the majority, we now then have to rework, refashion, and reinterrogate what is acceptable, what is normal, and as a result, it creates a new tension," Collins said.
"So, by and large, any new things become disruptive and create tension… When the mindset is a mindset of abundance, I think the opportunities are plentiful. I think they actually become quite progressive and quite productive for the country. But we look at it from a mindset of scarcity. That's when the tensions arise, and we start to get conflict between the two."
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Many of the illegal immigrants wind up in sanctuary cities, which are typically urban areas with large Black populations.
"We know what it's like to be marginalized. We know what it's like to be underappreciated, to be underestimated. We know oppression in this country 1,000%. And when we see others who are experiencing that oppression, there's a level of empathy that goes, ‘Man, I feel you, I feel it. We've been there,’" Collins said.
"On the other end… when there's a scarcity mindset, it's like, ‘I feel you, but, hey man, you got to wait in line,’" he continued. "And the truth of the matter is that that feeling and that mindset, it's not monolithic within the collective of people who happen to have melanin skin, or come African descent and therefore, or African Americans here in this country, that it's not a consistent thing."
As a result, Collins feels hard to say the Black community feels a particular way as a whole.
"There's so many different nuances in the way it's being seen. But if we bucket them in two ways -- abundance and scarcity -- I think you get a better understanding of where people sit on the issue," Collins said.
During an interview with Fox News Digital, famed "Breakfast Club" host Charlamagne The God said he constantly hears from listeners complaining about the influx of migrants rocking their communities, something he didn't hear much about until this past year.
"Like, I honestly have never spoken to as many people who are concerned about the migrant issue as I have over the past year," Charlamagne said. "I've never seen working-class people who I interact with every day until this past year really, really, really expressed their frustration for the migrants."
Collins understands their frustration and feels illegal immigration can be an "annoyance" when viewing the situation through the scarcity lens that there are only so many resources to go around.
"We already feel like we're being underserved, now the resources are going to other people who didn't sort of wait their time in line," he said. "And then from that perspective, you start to get great tension."
Collins said the overturn of affirmative action is another example of such thinking.
"You know, the argument there was that, ‘Hey, these people are getting to cut the line and we don't,’" Collins said.
Fox News’ Bradford Betz and Joseph A. Wulfsohn contributed to this report.
