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 American 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 a editorial in today’s Fort Worth Star Telegram, John Cornyn, the most reprehensible of Texas’ two GOP senators is denounced for voting against the DREAM ACT, a measure that is popular in Texas, where most people are not xenophobic when it comes to Latinos.
http://www.star-telegram.com/245/story/290660.html 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. 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 European and Native American descent. There is a word for that kind of objection. It is not pretty. Call it 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.
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 into 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 Club. 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. They do not have kids who are addicted to meth. These are immigrants, and therefore, they are a group that has selected out the most resourceful, industrious, optimistic 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/text/crimevictims.htmlA few decades ago, you could have read the same kind of stuff about Blacks and crime, or, 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 were supposed to sex obsessed? Read this web page.
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/homeland.php?id=503739 (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/items/200512200003 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. Never mind that U.S. industry---like Matthews’ own boss, GE-—encourages them to come to the U.S. and that the U.S. government 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.” Illegal immigrants make cheaper workers, are less likely to join unions and are easier for employers to control, therefore business likes the current arrangement Doesn’t that make the U.S. government and all of U.S. business criminals? Does not that mean that the United States is the one that exists in a “culture of criminality”?
Last year, I did a cartoon about the insanity of the GOP’s latest political race game. I called it “The Moronic Option”
http://www.grandtheftelectionohio.com/Flash/moron/moron.htmlThe Republican Party is angering the business sector, it has lost the Latino vote forever, all to court the white power vote. And the soft core white power vote (suburban soccer moms and the like) in the states along the U.S. Mexican border considers many Latinos white. 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. The administration will probably try to use immigration as an excuse to abridge voting rights for lawful citizens in the 2008 election. Maybe they will try to Divide and Conquer the Democratic Party, splitting Immigrants from Labor or Latinos from Blacks. Mostly, they will try to convince their core white racist base that people from south of the Rio Grande are
scary and subhuman.
Anyway, the next time some idiot starts spitting in your face about “illegal aliens” ask him or her what he thinks about the DREAM ACT. If he condemns it, you have a racist on your hands, and it is your job as an American to confront him on why he does not believe that all of us are created equal.
Printer-friendly format
Email this thread to a friend
Bookmark this thread
(1000+ posts)
Send PM |
Profile |
Ignore
