When Republicans in Congress killed the DREAM ACT, they proved that anti-immigrant hysteria has less to do with law and order than it does with old fashioned racism, of the kind that the right wing has used so successfully to divide and conquer the working class in this country for years.
In an editorial in yesterday’s Fort Worth Star Telegram, the most reprehensible of Texas’ two GOP senators, John Cornyn is denounced for voting against the DREAM ACT, a measure that is more popular in Texas than in many other red states.
http://www.star-telegram.com/...
The legislation would have provided hard-working immigrant children who pursue higher education or volunteer for military service with an avenue to win legal status by proving their character.
In the U.S. today, there are students who have lived practically their entire lives in this country; they've gone to high school here, they've worked hard to succeed and have talent that our economy and armed forces need.
Whatever one thinks about the immigration issue, these children typically were brought to the U.S. by their parents when they were too young to understand the manner of their arrival, let alone have any control over the decision. A majority of these kids know no other country as their home and speak no language but our own.
These kids are as American as any other children raised here. Since they were brought here as minors, they have broken no laws. They are productive members of society, by definition, since the bill talks about kids who have gone to college or joined the military. The country needs college graduates, and it sure as hell needs soldiers. If we kick them out of the country, we are cutting off our nose to spite our face---unless we believe that something about their Latino heritage makes them intrinsically bad. Which brings me to my point. Anyone who objects to their presence in the United States can have only one reason for doing so---for the most part they are of mixed Native American and European descent. There is a word for that kind of objection. It is not pretty.
It is racism.
Now, where have we seen the right wing attempt to make their base fear people who are not of pure European extraction before? In the South, where, for years, Fear the Black Man was used to make poor and working class whites vote against their economic self interests.
In The Mind of the South W. J. Cash describes how racism could be used by the ruling class to discourage the white working class from turning to political Populism to relieve his economic condition.
But that, as the event was speedily to convince him, at any rate, was fatally to breach the great bulwark of White Supremacy, white unanimity; to strike down the political mastery so long struggled for, so painfully won; to join with the Yankees and with his own hands destroy the whole canon of his first values and his accumulated loyalties; to bring fully upon himself the thing he feared most.
Reconstruction is long past, but the lure of White Solidarity and White Supremacy is still used to dupe a certain segment of our society in voting against its economic self interest. Poor and working class whites are told in knowing whispers "You may draw an hourly wage in a job you hate. Your wife may laugh at you and your kids may disrespect you. But, you are part of the White Elite. Align yourself with the rich White man, and you will share in his power and glory. He really cares about you and values you, because you are like him. Just be sure to keep the club White."
Imagine the poor dupes alarm when he reads statistics about how whites will become the minority in the U.S. in another 40 years and about how Latinos are the fastest growing group. Feel his resentment when he watches Mexican-American communities spring up in which people who do not talk or sound like him get jobs, buy houses, have happy, health kids who go to school and then to college. People in that community do not dream of the day they finally get a workman’s comp back injury that puts them on permanent job related disability for the rest of their life. These are immigrants, and therefore, they are a group that has selected out the most resourceful, industrious people from their home country. These are life’s winners. They are happy to be here. Their happiness is like a slap to the face of the bitter, resentful poor or working class white who believes that he has been short changed.
His resentment is fed by his political party---which happens to be the Republican Party right now. Web sites pop up which make it look like foreigners are responsible for all the criminal activity in the US.
http://www.immigrationshumancost.org...
You can read the same kind of stuff about Blacks and crime. Last century, if you were on the west coast, it would have been written about Asians. Never mind that most crimes in the U.S. are committed by whites. This isn’t about statistics or facts. This is about inciting racism. Remember how Blacks and Asians and Native Americans were supposed to sex obsessed? Read this web page.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org...
[T]here is a "machismo culture," instilled through what is learned in the home, school and church, that has allowed many men to "believe they are superior and dominant, and that a woman is an object."
(And this is different from the religious right fundies how?) The article goes on to accuse Latino immigrants of bringing illegitimate birth, rape, violence towards women including serial murder of women to the U.S.---as if we did not have these problems all along.
Check out how the mainstream media promotes the idea that all Latino immigrants are criminals.
http://mediamatters.org/...
In the MSNBC discussion, Andrea Mitchell suggests that there is racism involved, but Chris Matthews keeps harping back to the notion that because the immigrants are here "illegally" that makes them "criminals." This is a dualistic tautology which racists can seize upon to declare that people from south of the border must come from a "criminal culture" because so many of them enter the U.S. illegally.
Now, consider what this means for the immigrants who are here legally. They are also from a "criminal culture." Even though they have broken no laws, Chris Matthews and his right wing guests and the Republican Party are telling the country "You can not trust Latinos, because they are all criminals, and they all want to rape your wives and daughters and cut them into little pieces afterwards." When those Americans who are vulnerable to this kind of message hear this, they suddenly decide that it is perfectly acceptable to illegally infringe upon the voting rights of Latinos (because they are all criminals) . In their hysteria, they demand that no more people from South of the border be allowed in, even to pick crops rotting on the trees, and they even demand that people here legally be sent back home if they jaywalk or litter "just in case." And, most important of all as far as the right wing is concerned, they will be damned if they vote for national health care or better education funding or fixes for Social Security, because some of that money might go to those "criminal Mexicans" never mind that the Latinos have been paying taxes and Social Security.
There is a certain irony in Matthews declaring that undocumented aliens are criminals because they are here illegally. U.S. industry---like Matthews’ own boss, GE—-encourages them to come to the U.S. illegally, so that they will accept lower wages, poor working conditions and so that they will be less likely to join unions or call OSHA. The U.S. government, which lives to serve big business, makes it easy for them to slip inside our borders and get jobs but makes it hard to do it the official way as if saying "Let’s not mess with the formalities. Let’s just pretend that no one is looking and everyone will be happy." Doesn’t that make the U.S. government and all of U.S. business criminals? Does not that mean that the United States also exists in a "culture of criminality"?
What does this all mean politically? Last year, I did a cartoon about the political insanity of the GOP’s latest political game. I called it "The Moronic Option"
http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.co...
In attacking Latino immigrants, the Republican Party has angered the business and farming sector, it has lost the Latino vote forever, all to court the white power vote. So much for a long term winning political strategy.
In the short term, the GOP may gain some success in the states which have not traditionally had a lot of experience with Hispanic culture----those of the deep South and mid west. There, it can confuse people into thinking that brown Latinos are the same as brown Muslim Terra-ists. This ploy will not work in the Southwestern states. The administration will probably try to use immigration as an excuse to abridge voting rights for lawful citizens in the 2008 election. For instance, in Fort Worth someone sent out fliers in two Hispanic neighborhoods telling people to vote on the wrong day.
http://www.star-telegram.com/...
You won’t see this tactic used much against whites—it would make the national news and cause general outrage---but it is considered safe against a group which has been marginalized as "nonwhite" (even though Latinos are Caucasian) since the press does not treat violations of the civil rights of nonwhites as real crimes. There is always the tacit understanding that the minorities did something to warrant their treatment. Like look at a white woman. Or speak in a foreign language. Expect voter caging operations to target people with Hispanic sounding surnames this year, since they can count upon the mainstream media to call it justified. Maybe they will try to Divide and Conquer the Democratic Party, splitting Immigrants from Labor---even though Mexican immigrants will probably be the salvation of the American labor movement-- or Latinos from Blacks---even though Latinos vote like Blacks on most issues. Mostly, they will try to convince their core white racist base that people from south of the Rio Grande are scary and subhuman.
That is why it is so important that Democrats, liberals and champions of civil rights change the debate from "law and order" to the issue of racism. Most Americans are for law and order. Most find racism repugnant. Strip away the illusion of concern for public safety with which racists have always disguised their hateful spewing--Fear the Black Man was supposed to be about protecting the chastity of white women, so was Fear the Asian and Fear the Native American---and you are left with the stark reality that we would not be having this discussion about Russian immigrants. The reason the RNC is able to get the right wing base riled up over immigration (and get that hatred spilled over onto Latinos who are here legally) is because of the issue of race.
Confront the racism that lies behind this ugly movement. Make the rest of America see it for what it is, and many of the people who are tempted to vote based upon fear of Latino immigration will drop it like a hot potato. Soccer moms do not like the idea of voting side by side with the KKK or the NeoNazis. One place to start is to bring the DREAM ACT back to the floor of Congress over and over again like SCHIP. Publicize it. Make Americans aware of what it does. Make it clear that those who oppose it are doing so for racist reasons and that those are American kids who are being consigned to the trash heap, all because they have indigenous ancestry and parents who spoke another language.
How many of us had parents or grandparents who spoke another language? How many of us have Native American ancestors?