So, here's a question. For the last few months, we've been hearing about the dangers of illegal immigration. We've had the Minutemen show up at the border, making very public denouncements of the
insecurity of our borders. This is all about security, after all, right? It's about stopping the terrorists. Michelle Malkin and others want us to know that we need to build fences and ditches and walls and motion detecting cameras to keep the
terrorists from sneaking across the Mexican desert.
But of course, it's not just about terrorists, it's about theytukourjobs. People are just fine with legal immigrants, we're told, but the illegal immigrants allegedly depress wages. Now, let's not even debate that premise, for the moment -- instead, let me ask the big ol' honkin' question that everyone should be asking here, in our very important attempts to protect our borders.
What, exactly, does a measure making English the official language of the United States have to do with any of it? The terrorists, the jobs, any of it?
Mmm-hmm. I thought so.
Note to the press, and to anyone with an IQ above muddy pond water:
- It's not about terrorists or security, it's just about illegal immigration.
- In fact, it's not really about illegal immigration, it's just about immigration.
- In fact, it's not really about immigration, it's exclusively about Latino immigration.
- It's about race.
What, does the Republican Party have to draw you a map? Well, news flash -- they just did. Again.
Over the years, even the ever-so-slightly polished racism of the Southern Strategy becomes less and less acceptable in common discourse, as racism becomes less and less acceptable itself. The acceptable forms of bigotry shift, and become ever more subtle: the battles continue to shift to smaller and smaller circles. But that doesn't mean bigotry is going away, precisely: it still has millions of supporters, in this country. The targets change, according to which bigotries are more or less publically acceptable, but the critical notion of the
other, the tribal notions of the
us and the threatening
them, remain powerful social forces. What you can say in 1940 is
very different from what is socially allowed in 2006, however, and the public justifications for bigotry have subsequently become more, shall we say, circuitous.
We can worry about "terrorists", but somehow only manage to worry about them on our southern border, and you'll have a few million people eager to play along to the notion. We can worry about illegal immigrants, but just happen to target the debate exclusively around Mexican immigrants, and even opine about the dilution of white blood or white culture -- and you can appear in the national discourse spouting such thoughts while the polite folks around you are supposed to not grasp in the slightest the fact that you seem to be focusing on the same notions of ethnic purity that have fouled humanity for centuries.
Let me just point one other thing out here, because it really should be painfully obvious by now. You may note that the debate on immigration really began to heat up as the Iraq War began to stagnate. You might further note, if you have been paying attention, that the push to do something on immigration really began to heat up around the same time the justification of the war turned from WMD finding or "killing them there so they don't kill us here" into the more touchy-feely presidential rhetoric of "spreading freedom".
That new justifi-- er, approach -- wasn't something that sat well with the base; they can mime along with the words, if they have to, but you'll note the enthusiasm for "spreading freedom" is increasingly tempered with lamentations about how we're not fighting them enough, how we don't have the resolve to kill more of them and show them who's boss, and even how our failures in the war are because of "white man's guilt" to treat the poor brown people better than they deserve. You'll also note that support for the war, and the president, really began to erode even among the base at around that time.
So why immigration, and why now? Because the Southern Strategy honed, race-conscious elements of the base want it -- no, the base needs it -- as an issue, and the Republican Party is intent on giving it to them. This is the replacement issue for the Iraq War, the new fear-branded product for the campaign season, now that the Iraq War has become a long slog for dubious reward. Here is an other to be afraid of. Here is an other coming not to blow up your buildings, but to dilute your culture, to steal your job, to perhaps intermarry with your children. They don't even speak the same language.
Racism may come in slicker packaging these days, but when you have an ostensibly meaningless resolution, hurriedly passed, doing what the founders of our country thought would be a wrong and divisive idea, asking why is the only particularly valid question you can ask.
Well, Lou Dobbs, and the rest of the vanguards of the latest publicized Fear Season, the season of dramatic music and montages, what of it? What does English as official language have to do with border security, the issue you told us this entire debate revolved around? How did we get from there to here?
Or, perhaps, is this where the underlying debate has been focused the entire time?