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From LBJ to Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr.: Hillary Clinton's Racial Politics

In my last JackBlog post, I argued that the media was fanning the flames of racial controversy in the 2008 Election. I still believe that's true. But in light of the recent furor over Barack Obama's pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright, Jr., I also believe--as do many others the media, even the ones who weren't licking for a fight-- that Hillary Clinton has deliberately exploited racial tension in order to revive her campaign. Clinton's recent hounding of Obama on Wright, and her husband's bizarre comparison of Obama to Jesse Jackson, make her MLK-LBJ analogy, then a major "racial controversy," seem like such a walk in the park. A series of recent articles have explored a startling uniformity in the Democratic primaries, and Clinton's success in manipulating racial conflict to win key states.

Recently, Matt Bai of the New York Times wrote about the counterintuitive success of Barack Obama in states that have either nearly entirely white populations or larger-than-average black populations. Bai writes: "What this suggests, perhaps, is that living in close proximity to other races [...] actually makes Americans less sanguine about racial harmony rather than more so." David Sirota, of In These Times, recently labeled this phenomenon "the race chasm" (looked at conversely, Hillary Clinton's success in states that have black populations of between 6 and 17 percent). Sirota takes this theory one step further, arguing that Clinton has deliberately capitalized upon racial tension (which, in the form of the Wright scandal, has surfaced since Obama's key victories in the largely white states of Iowa, Nebraska, Idaho and Vermont). Sirota cites Clinton's eagerness to discuss the controversy over Obama's pastor, while signaling to superdelegates and actual people that the controversy will plague Obama if he is the nominee (via the ubiquitous "electablility" argument).

Meanwhile, in this Sunday's New York Times, John Harwood bemoans the exploitation of racial tension within the Democratic party, which has long suffered attacks at the voting booth from Republicans who have successfully stirred up racial fears (beginning, as Lyndon B. Johnson predicted, with a Republican-fueled backlash to his groundbreaking civil rights legislation). Harwood writes:

Mr. Obama's dominance among black voters, once believed loyal to the Clintons, heightened the focus on race. Mr. Clinton, whose own campaigns were marked by racial bridge-building, helped that process along by likening Mr. Obama's victory in South Carolina, where African-Americans made up 55 percent of the vote, to Jesse Jackson's past success there.

Both Harwood and Sirota discuss the Democratic Party's history, over the past half-century, of black-white coalition, and the threat posed by recent race-based controversies-- possibly exploited by the Clintons--in reversing this legacy. Sirota writes:

As ugly as it is, the Clinton firewall strategy is stunning in its ruthlessness. It has been half a century since the major triumphs of the civil rights and party reform movements, yet a major Democratic candidate is attempting to secure a presidential nomination by exploiting racial divides and negotiating backroom superdelegate deals.

Harwood, meanwhile, makes the argument that--considering their political interests, and the political history of their party-- Clinton and Obama would have been better suited as political allies, rather than enemies:

As this historic Democratic primary season enters its next grueling phase, the party has become embroiled in a conflict between antagonists who would seem better cast as allies. Senator Barack Obama is a black candidate who has built his career on de-emphasizing race, while Senator Hillary Clinton is a white liberal who has been sensitive to minorities, and the issues facing them, during her long years of political activism.

And yet, in contest after contest, particularly in large states with diverse ethnic populations, support for the two candidates has reflected the sort of splits that normally divide Democrats from Republicans.

Somewhere, L.B.J. is rolling in his grave, and Republicans everywhere are smiling.

MLK III to Edwards: 'Keep Fighting'

Well, CNN's moderators couldn't help themselves. They began tonight's Democratic debate with an actual issue: the economy. In dazzling contrast to MSNBC's scandal-obsessed debate in Las Vegas, Sens. Hillary Clinton, John Edwards and Barack Obama engaged in intelligent, nuanced discourse for extended periods of time. But halfway through, CNN shifted to a looser, more conversational format—and with it, a sharper focus on race in the narrow context of campaign strategy. Echoing weeks of uninspired punditry, CNN moderators asked Edwards how important of a factor race was in the campaign. They asked Obama, essentially, if he was black enough to represent African-American interests-- and whether Bill Clinton was truly the first Black President, as Toni Morrison famously wrote.

Throughout the debate, though, the candidates tackled more substantive questions about racial inequality. Edwards noted that poverty—and, with it, predatory lending—afflicts African-Americans disproportionately throughout the country.

“We can put our heads against the wall, and pretend the past never happened, pretend we didn’t live through decades of slavery, followed by decades of segregation, followed by decades of discrimination—which is still going on today,” he said, in one of his strongest performances, veering far from the “mill worker” stump speech. “That history, and that legacy, has consequences. And the consequence has been that African American families are more vulnerable.”

Obama, in turn, pointed to an apparent racial bias within the criminal justice system. Clinton offered up her support for historically black colleges.

Despite the dumbed-down questions, many of which sought to expose personal feuds within the Clinton and Obama campaigns, the issues kept cropping up: race, poverty, health care, campaign finance reform, Iraq. And as the conversation turned from jabs and rhetoric to policy, it was Edwards' fight to win. He drew the distinction between media-generated "race issues" and the actual problem of race in this country better than Clinton and Obama, who got wrapped up in clearing their own names, and smearing one another's. “This isn’t about us,” Edwards insisted. Nobody let him forget he was the white guy on stage (at one point Obama jokingly referred to the historic nature of the three candidacies: an African-American, a woman "and John"), but Edwards spoke most eloquently, and persuasively, about erasing fundamental inequalities in America.

Sadly, his performance-- and the issues all three candidates touched upon with conviction-- will be just a blip on the media screen, compared to the debate's real story line. Already, CNN has reported its own victory of style over substance: "Discussions about the economy and health care were overshadowed by heated exchanges between rivals Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama during tonight's Democratic debate."

Eager to invoke race in a substantive way on Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, Blitzer ended the debate with a topical question that spared no subtlety: Who would King endorse, and why? Obama said he would endorse nobody, but hold each of the candidates accountable. Clinton's answer was more muddled, but it appeared to indirectly refer to her controversial Lyndon B. Johnson analogy, which acknowledged the roles that both King and Johnson played in passing civil-rights legislation.

Edwards, again, returned to the issue of poverty, which he described as both his, and King's, lifelong struggle. The day before the debate, Martin Luther King III wrote a letter to Edwards that praised him for focusing on the issue, and said his candidacy would have made his father "proud." Perhaps it gave Edwards better footing on the stage tonight: reeling from a four percent showing in the Nevada caucus, he nonetheless appeared reenergized and focused. In a race that many have declared untenable for Edwards, King’s words offer the candidate a glimmer of hope, and monumental purpose.

Here's the letter in full:

It was good meeting with you yesterday and discussing my father’s legacy. On the day when the nation will honor my father, I wanted to follow up with a personal note.

There has been, and will continue to be, a lot of back and forth in the political arena over my father’s legacy. It is a commentary on the breadth and depth of his impact that so many people want to claim his legacy. I am concerned that we do not blur the lines and obscure the truth about what he stood for: speaking up for justice for those who have no voice.

I appreciate that on the major issues of health care, the environment, and the economy, you have framed the issues for what they are - a struggle for justice. And, you have almost single-handedly made poverty an issue in this election.

You know as well as anyone that the 37 million people living in poverty have no voice in our system. They don’t have lobbyists in Washington and they don’t get to go to lunch with members of Congress. Speaking up for them is not politically convenient. But, it is the right thing to do.
I am disturbed by how little attention the topic of economic justice has received during this campaign. I want to challenge all candidates to follow your lead, and speak up loudly and forcefully on the issue of economic justice in America.

From our conversation yesterday, I know this is personal for you. I know you know what it means to come from nothing. I know you know what it means to get the opportunities you need to build a better life. And, I know you know that injustice is alive and well in America, because millions of people will never get the same opportunities you had.

I believe that now, more than ever, we need a leader who wakes up every morning with the knowledge of that injustice in the forefront of their minds, and who knows that when we commit ourselves to a cause as a nation, we can make major strides in our own lifetimes. My father was not driven by an illusory vision of a perfect society. He was driven by the certain knowledge that when people of good faith and strong principles commit to making things better, we can change hearts, we can change minds, and we can change lives.

So, I urge you: keep going. Ignore the pundits, who think this is a horserace, not a fight for justice. My dad was a fighter. As a friend and a believer in my father’s words that injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, I say to you: keep going. Keep fighting. My father would be proud.

Other Cards in the Deck

Much has been made about whether Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama played “the race card” in a series of press-filtered exchanges that included an analogy to Martin Luther King, Jr. and former President Lyndon B. Johnson. During MSNBC’s Las Vegas debate on Tuesday—which, interestingly enough, was supposed to focus on Black and Brown issues—hosts Tim Russert and Brian Williams spent substantial air time pressing Obama and Clinton on a supposed “race war.” John Edwards—whose media attention managed to diminish even further as the press salivated over the no-holds-barred race bout—was finally invited to weigh in:

“What is a white male to do running against these historic candidacies?” one viewer wanted to know.

(Brian Williams later celebrated the historic diversity of the candidates by giving voice to internet-circulated conspiracy theories about Obama.)

The thing is, nothing about Hillary Clinton invoking the partnership of King and Johnson was racist. Racial politics is real (Haley Barbour helped invent its modern usage, in the Southern Strategy), and its ugly, not-too-distant history makes mincemeat out of Clinton’s reasonable Civil Rights analogy. There’s a difference between “fanning the flames” about the indignities of racism—something the media has an obligation to do—and manufacturing scandal out of campaign fodder.

So far, the media has done plenty of the latter, without paying much attention to the former. But the 2008 Campaign has indeed exposed genuine racism, sexism and intolerance. Not surprisingly, most of it has been on the side of the Republicans.

Here are a few of the worst examples:

-In a scramble to appear tougher-than-thou on immigration, Mike Huckabee signed a pledge of “no amnesty” with the anti-immigrant group NumbersUSA, whose ties to eugenics I’ve written about in the past. NumbersUSA now rates Huckabee, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney as having “excellent” stances on immigration—while giving John McCain a rating of “abysmal” for refusing to accept those candidates’ proposal for massive deportation.

-Amidst the typical flurry of anonymous attack ads, one South Carolina political hopeful put his name on an overtly racist commercial aimed at Sen. Lindsay Graham (who is currently campaigning for McCain). The ad, a swipe at Graham’s support for McCain’s immigration bill, features images of border patrol police arresting Latino families, while salsa music plays in the background and Latino actors thank Graham in Spanish. It begins with, “To see this message in English, press 1.” Other than “Lou Dobbs Tonight," it’s probably the most hateful anti-Latino propaganda I’ve seen aired on T.V.

-In an interview with BeliefNet, Huckabee equated homosexuality with bestiality and pedophilia. By the way, this is the former governor of Arkansas—not, you know, a 12-year-old kid who doesn’t know any better:

Is it your goal to bring the Constitution into strict conformity with the Bible? Some people would consider that a kind of dangerous undertaking, particularly given the variety of biblical interpretations.

Well, I don’t think that’s a radical view to say we’re going to affirm marriage. I think the radical view is to say that we’re going to change the definition of marriage so that it can mean two men, two women, a man and three women, a man and a child, a man and animal. Again, once we change the definition, the door is open to change it again. I think the radical position is to make a change in what’s been historic.

-Probably the most horrifying revelation so far in the campaign is that Ron Paul—a hero to anti-war progressives, libertarians and fringe anti-government groups—authored, or at least edited, a newsletter that for decades espoused anti-Semetic, racist, and anti-gay rhetoric. His excuse that he didn’t know about the content of a newsletter that bore his name is pathetic.

From the New Republic investigative piece:

Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul's newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. ("What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!" one newsletter complained in 1990. "We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.") In the early 1990s, newsletters attacked the "X-Rated Martin Luther King" as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours," "seduced underage girls and boys," and "made a pass at" fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as "a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."

Ironically, one of the issues Paul lists on his Web site is racism. He writes there, “By encouraging Americans to adopt a group mentality, the advocates of so-called "diversity" actually perpetuate racism.” This line of thinking, common among white supremacists and others who bemoan the absence of a “White History Month,” seeks to hide the horrors of our past, and the often race-based realities of the present. Paul’s solution—of choosing “liberty” over racial identity—is clearly rooted in hateful thinking. After hundreds of years of slavery, Jim Crow, and systematic oppression, race cannot be ignored. The media’s duty to report this reality, though, is no excuse for its distortion of a “race war” among candidates. In fact, the press’ manipulation of presupposed racial tension, in this instance, is a disservice to the civil-rights leaders who sought to bring attention to the real problem of race in this country.

Having a black candidate in this race has both exposed bigotries and, to a small degree, righted them. The fact that a substantial number of American have voted for a black man, and a woman, to lead this country says that we’ve come a long way. But, we must avoid exploiting Obama’s race, and Clinton's gender, while still holding accountable the candidates who pander to hate and fear. Last I checked, Obama’s message was something more positive than that.

Eureka! More on Immigration Rhetoric in NYT

This week, the New York Times published a story on the potential effects of immigration rhetoric, particularly the vitriolic denunciations of "illegal aliens," on presidential campaigns in 2008:

The Republicans have railed against “amnesty” and “sanctuary cities.” They have promised to build a fence on the Mexican border to keep “illegals” out.

“The ratcheting up of the language to win the Iowa caucuses may seem like the thing to do, but we’ll pay a price,” said John Weaver, a Republican strategist who worked for Mr. McCain’s presidential campaign.

The article also includes a poll that says Republicans in Iowa and New Hampshire tend to view illegal immigration as a more severe problem than do Democrats, while an ABC poll shows 54 percent of Americans say illegal immigrants do more harm than good. However, catering to a fear of illegal immigrants may prove disastrous for Republicans, Michael Luo writes:

Those calling for Republicans to moderate their language point to past losses, like Pat Buchanan’s runs for the presidency in 1992 and 1996, which were heavy on anti-immigrant talk. More recently, they said, J. D. Hayworth, a hard-line incumbent Republican representative in Arizona, lost his race in 2006, as did Randy Graf, a member of the border-enforcing Minuteman group, who also ran in Arizona.

“In the past it’s always been fool’s gold,” said Tamar Jacoby, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, a conservative organization, who worked on behalf of the bipartisan immigration bill in the Senate.

As I've written before, Republicans aren't the only ones in Mississippi with their pans in the river. On a national level, it will be interesting to see how much candidates pander to loudly voiced protests against illegal immigrants, and how successful they are in co-opting a language built around fear.

The (Il)logic of 'Illegal'

After reading my column this week, "La Nueva Estrategia del Sur," check out Lawrence Downes' hilarious and poignant column in The New York Times: "What Part of 'Illegal' Don't You Understand?"

Downes rebuffs the kind of stopgap rhetoric we've heard time and time again on the JFP blog: illegal is illegal, period. End of discussion. He explores why we apply this logic to immigration, and immigration only (with the possible exception of murder and sex crimes). For example, is someone who has earned parking tickets an "illegal driver," even when he's out walking? The analogy to immigration is appropriate because neither crime is violent. However, unlike someone who's parked illegally (or even, say, used drugs illegally), an illegal immigrant's crime is inseparable from his identity--even when he's doing something other than crossing the border or waiting for a visa (e.g. working, raising a family-- you know, things people would otherwise consider 'legal'). As I point out in my column, this sudden obsession with the law often has everything to do with race: "illegal immigrant" has become exchangeable with "Latino worker," and the unprecedented vitriol that's directed toward the former (often from people who suffer no tangible effects from a broken immigration law), cannot be separated from fear and hatred of the latter.

From Downes' column:

America has a big problem with illegal immigration, but a big part of it stems from the word “illegal.” It pollutes the debate. It blocks solutions. Used dispassionately and technically, there is nothing wrong with it. Used as an irreducible modifier for a large and largely decent group of people, it is badly damaging. And as a code word for racial and ethnic hatred, it is detestable.

“Illegal” is accurate insofar as it describes a person’s immigration status. About 60 percent of the people it applies to entered the country unlawfully. The rest are those who entered legally but did not leave when they were supposed to. The statutory penalties associated with their misdeeds are not insignificant, but neither are they criminal. You get caught, you get sent home.

Since the word modifies not the crime but the whole person, it goes too far. It spreads, like a stain that cannot wash out. It leaves its target diminished as a human, a lifetime member of a presumptive criminal class. People are often surprised to learn that illegal immigrants have rights. Really? Constitutional rights? But aren’t they illegal? Of course they have rights: they have the presumption of innocence and the civil liberties that the Constitution wisely bestows on all people, not just citizens.

Dems Also to Blame for Playing Language Game

When I blogged about Mississippi Republicans using coded anti-Latino rhetoric to their advantage, my editor offered up a challenge: are Democrats doing the same thing, just less explicitly?

At first I figured they weren't, mostly because Democratic platforms have focused on punishing employers, not workers, for hiring illegal immigrants--a more legally sound and non-exploitative method of addressing the issue. But recently, I read Democratic candidate for governor John Arthur Eaves' campaign "issue" page on illegal immigration and was shocked by how obviously Eaves had pandered to anti-Latino (not just anti-illegal immigrant) sentiment. He implies-- no, scratch that-- right out says that Mississippi would be in better shape without the labor of Spanish-speaking immigrants who re-built the Coast. How is that possible? Because, Eaves states, Missisippi citizens, not illegal immigrants, would have exposed themselves to toxic levels of waste and done the dirty work of gutting houses, clearing debris, and building casinos-- reducing Mississippi's unemployment rate (the highest in the South, Eaves notes) in the process:

At the Mississippi Press Association’s convention at the Beau Rivage Casino on June 22, 2007, (Gov. Haley) Barbour said, “When I became governor, before Katrina, Mississippi had probably the smallest percentage of illegal or legal immigration by Spanish speakers in the country. We just had very few. Since Katrina there’s been a gigantic influx and… I hate to think where the coast would be if they weren’t here.”

I know where we’d be. We could have record employment instead of the highest unemployment in the South. We could be leading the region in job creation and recovery. We could have built homes for the 70,000 people still living in toxic FEMA trailers.

By specifically quoting Barbour's nod to Latinos, Eaves ensures that his carefully articulated "issue" is one not just of employment and immigration, but of race, too. When he says "We," he means "non-illegal immigrant," but he also means "non-Spanish speaking" and (with the possible exception of Equatorial Guineans) "non-Latino."

Aside from the explicitly racial element of Eaves' argument, it contains several other problems: 1) Unemployment in Mississippi existed long before Latinos arrived. Blaming it on a particular ethnic group, aside from being misleading, prolongs the state's history of racism--something that is a more accurate reason for unemployment in the first place. 2) The Mississippi Coast could not have been rebuilt at the rate it was without illegal immigrant labor. Eaves' perplexing argument that eliminating all illegal immigrants from the re-building process would have served not only to replicate the monumental feat (without the monumental source of labor) but also to accomplish the rebuilding of another 70,000 homes is disingenuous at best. 3) Many illegal immigrants who worked to rebuild the Coast at breakneck speed are, ironically, out of work now that they've completed this task so well. Eaves' proposal to solve the problems of Hurricane recovery and unemployment with one (citizen-only) stone wouldn't change the fact that, once the work is done, so too are the jobs.

Eaves, who is waging an uphill battle to defeat Haley Barbour in Mississippi's gubenatorial race, should not resort to an illegal immigration talking point of half-truths to unseat the governor. By doing so, Eaves taints his otherwise honorable attack on Barbour's unequal treatment of Katrina victims, by pandering to feelings of fear, hatred and racial inequality.

La Fiesta Loca: Straw Men, Piñatas and Race Cards

One of the responses to my last immigration blog was that I had made strawmen out of GOP candidates Phil Bryant and Delbert Hosemann, for interpreting their anti-illegal alien rhetoric as merely anti-immigrant (and, more to the point, anti-Latino). In a recent column for The Clarion-Ledger, however, Bill Minor sees the real straw men of the immigration debate as Latinos, in an extension of the Southern Strategy race politics that exclusively targeted blacks.

“Now in 2007, the black race card for the moment has been replaced with a brown race card, namely undocumented Hispanic immigrants,” Minor writes.

The circumstances have changed, for sure. No one is saying Latino immigrants are enduring what blacks did under Jim Crow (that would be making the JFP the straw man). What we have said, insistently, is that much of the political response to undocumented immigrants in Mississippi—which, as Minor points out, has suddenly become an “issue”—reeks of the same race-baiting tactics, adjusted for the propriety of the times.

As Minor points out, “illegal alien” has powerful, racial connotations—much as “welfare queen” did in the 80s. There were white women on welfare in Brooklyn, just as there are undocumented immigrants from Vietnam in Biloxi. But these terms have been aimed to stir up fear and hatred of other, specific ethnic groups (blacks and Latinos, respectively.)

It is not beating a straw man to recognize the connotations of language, particularly in the context of the first election cycle after the explosive immigration bill debate—which collapsed largely because of the false semantics of “amnesty.” The strategy of xenophobia isn’t exclusive to Republican candidates; Hosemann and Bryant have simply made the most obvious thwacks at Latino straw men as of late. With each unsubstantiated threat of “illegal alien criminals” and—worse—“illegal alien voters,” their blindfolded swings veer toward an imaginary piñata full of votes. (Get it? Straw man—piñata? I suppose I can make that joke because I’m half-Mexican.)

Bad metaphors aside, politics like that simply cannot play.

Language of the Absurd

Despite its ungainly headline, AP ran an excellent story about the absurdity of some Mississippi politicians’ anti-immigrant rhetoric, delivered just in time for the election cycle.

“Mississippi candidates have made illegal immigration a top campaign issue with no shortage of angles this election cycle,” the article, authored by Sheila Byrd, begins.

What the article shows, without outright saying, is that most of these "angles" include the same thing: absurdist, anti-immigrant rhetoric. Since the vast majority of new immigrants in Mississippi are Latino, “immigrant” in this context is a code word for “Hispanic” or “Latino.” As the AP article points out, much of the political "anti-immigration" language is race-based. In other words, it's business as usual—with a new shift in preserving the status quo.

Phil Bryant, the Republican nominee for lieutenant governor, recently commissioned a report attempting to link immigrants with crime, though he concedes no actual link exists. In the report, Bryant writes, “[T]here is limited or no comprehensive data available about criminal aliens." The solution to this non-problem? A “comprehensive safety plan” intended to combat illegal immigrant crime, of whose existence no one can prove. It sounds like the Red Scare to me.

In the AP article, Marty Wiseman, director of the Stennis Institute of Government at Mississippi State University, compared such language more directly to the race-baiting politicking ubiquitous in the 50s and 60s:

"You go back and look at some of the old editions of newspapers in the '50s and '60s and you've got all this language relating to 'our Southern way of life.' Now, we have the new millennium version of that in 'Hispanics coming looking for jobs.’”

Meanwhile, Republican Secretary of State candidate Delbert Hosemann continues to advocate for a voter ID system to combat illegal aliens, the same tactic politicians used against blacks in this state. The AP article makes a hilarious, and surprisingly bold, point:

And Delbert Hosemann, the Republican nominee for secretary of state, said he'll keep illegal immigrants from voting in state elections. It seems to be a hollow campaign promise since there's no proof that an illegal immigrant has cast a ballot in state elections.

The JFP has gone after the Republican Secretary of State candidates (including the defeated Sen. Mike Lott) for hopping on this wedge-issue bandwagon, going so far as to endorse no one for the Republican ticket in our 2007 Primary Guide Issue:

The JFP is disturbed by the anti-immigration rhetoric by Rep. Mike Lott and Delbert Hosemann, who says he wants to keep ‘illegal’ immigrants and deceased voters off the voter rolls. This position needs to focus more on getting new voters to register and turn out, not obsess about overblown problems that are used as political wedge issues.

Race-based politics is a dangerous thing. Let’s hope Mississippi voters can prevent its elected officials from repeating the mistakes of their predecessors—and hold them accountable for spurious sideshows like Voter ID and a “criminal alien” task force. Both of these measures fuel fear and hatred, and waste money combating problems that don’t exist. Now, that’s a 21st Century answer to the Domino Theory if I ever heard one—rivaled, of course, by the War on Iraq.

Race, Ethnicity and Immigration

In one of my favorite quotes from "Mal Tiempo, Buenas Caras,” my piece on Latino immigrants and Hurricane Katrina, Guadalupe Silva, an undocumented laborer from Peru, said, “I know that they are not all so, but I know there are racists—‘rednecks,’ as they say in Mississippi. They are very racist, and don’t want us. But there is no such thing as pure blood. Everything is mixed. More than anything, we came to support the country with our shoulders and work.”

Racism emerged as a common theme in my immigration coverage for the Jackson Free Press. My first real article on immigration, in fact, focused on the anti-immigration movement's association with racist organizations such as NumbersUSA. (See "Dealing Racism in the Immigration Game," July 3, 2007.)

Silva makes a brilliant, and often misunderstood point, though: If race is ambiguous, how can racial hatred logically exist? Shouldn't race not even enter the discussion? Of course, the logic of racism -- that one race is superior to another -- is inherently flawed, despite attempts to legitimize it by organizations like NumbersUSA and their predecessors (namely, the Pioneer Fund, which funds pseudo-scientific studies into the genetic superiority of whites, in addition to funding anti-immigration groups such as the Federation of American Immigration Reform, a partner of NumbersUSA).

As anti-Latino sentiment (often confused as an "anti-illegal immigrant" position) grows, fueled by race-baiting pundits like Lou Dobbs and Bill O'Reilly, it is worth noting that Latinos (categorized as "Hispanics" by the U.S. Census Bureau) present a conundrum for simple-minded bigots: they do not fit under any one racial category. In fact, the terms "Latino" and "Hispanic" (despite the racial connotation of European-descended "Hispanics" or "Spaniards") are ethnic, not racial terms. And necessarily so: Latin America has embraced a long tradition of "racial mixing," unlike the U.S., where in some states the practice was illegal for many years, and only recently society has accepted it -- and only arguably so. There are many reasons for this (the nature of slavery in the U.S. vs. the rest of the Americas, immigration patterns, and acceptable sexual mores), but one of the most interesting outcomes is the difference in racial perception. Here, in the U.S., we largely abide by the "one-drop" rule (in which, if a person has at least "one drop" of black blood, then he is black), while in countries like Cuba and Brazil, virtually everyone has both European and African (in addition to Asian and indigenous) ancestry, so race is defined in shades -- not by the absence or presence of color. (In fact, there are hundreds of "races" on the Brazilian Census, describing different shades of brown.)

Sadly, even in Brazil's "racial democracy," it stands that the darker one's skin, the poorer his lot in life. This reflects society's refusal to look beyond phenotype, or the outwards appearances of race, and historical attempts to shun people of a certain type of appearance.

By categorizing Latinos as a single race (or, more commonly, as having a single country of origin -- e.g. Mexico), we are again genetically categorizing that which we do not understand. In this same manner, all sub-Saharan African-descended slaves in the U.S. became a uniform “Negro” race.

Now, as Latinos have become the largest minority in the U.S., a new, unique form of ethnic bigotry serves to stir up fear and hatred -- a hallmark of a racism we thought we left behind. “Why don’t they learn English?” is a common refrain, one that reflects cultural insensitivity and xenophobia. It also reflects historical short-sightedness: all major groups of American immigrants struggled to learn English through one generation, then made sure that their children could succeed (and, indeed, survive) by learning the King’s English.

“Why don’t we send them all home?” is a complaint, though often couched in legal terms, that reflects broad strokes of racism. Sure, it is one thing to be “anti-illegal immigrant” and another to be anti-Latino. But often the two get confused, especially when we abide by the “one-drop” way of thinking. It is no surprise, then, that organizations like FAIR and NumbersUSA helped orchestrate a resounding rejection of “amnesty” for immigrants, when these same groups have historically supported research into eugenics. Quite simply, they focus on race to divide people.

It’s easy to say “send them home” when we can see, in racial terms, who “they” are. I doubt many readers have the social security numbers to prove otherwise that the “illegal aliens” they see are, in fact, illegal. Take, for example, Jo-D’s comment on the thread for “Amnesty for Gangbangers?,” the sidebar to “Mal Tiempo:”

“I look forward to your next story with real, illegal aliens - the 15 working at any local Mexican restaurant who will be gone and replaced with new faces in 6 months - to compliment this love story you wrote on behalf of poor Ms. Silva.”

It’s comments like these that frighten me—not because some (or all) of those workers may actually be undocumented, but because, to some observers, they are anyways.

Reported H2B Kidnapping in Pascagoula

It seems like each of these immigration posts builds off another. The last time I blogged, I brought attention to inherent flaws in the guest worker program, a modern form of indentured servitude, and what served as a psuedo-alternative to "amnesty" in debate over the since-failed immigration reform bill. An increase in the guest worker program (also known as H2B), which has existed in its current state since 1986, was in fact a major part of the bill. However, despite the bill's failure to pass through Senate, the guest worker program persists as one form of "legal immigration" (though one that provides no eventual path to citizenship). Now, according to allegations reported by the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice, the program's systematic disenfranchisement of worker rights may have resulted in a horrifying case of police brutality in Pascagoula, Miss.

In a press release submitted to the Jackson Free Press and other media, the Center alleges that a Pascagoula police chief helped kidnap 30 Mexican nationals participating in the guest worker program. According to the report, the officer told workers he was their "owner," forced them into vans and took them into custody in three rooms. None of these allegations have been confirmed by the JFP, but rest assured we will pay close attention to them. In the meantime, it is worth noting that the police chief's alleged actions appear to be a natural extention of the legal framework of the guest worker program-- in which workers must work for a single employer, who they depend on for food and shelter. In effect, guest worker employers are guest laborers' owners. Throw a recent spike of anti-immigration sentiment into the mix, and the explosive allegations of kidnapping in Pascagoula are not an inconceivable molotov cocktail of racism and violation of civil rights.

"Workers and advocates challenged federal officials to recognize that the H2B program is creating slave-like conditions for workers across the Gulf Coast," the report reads.

That's what I was trying to say earlier.

Here is the press release in full:

Pascagoula Police Captain Kidnaps Guestworkers

Mexican H2B visa workers charge ranking officer with kidnapping, kidnapping with intent to enslave, false imprisonment, and gross civil rights abuses; File Notice of Intent to announce that they will bring major lawsuit.

More than 30 Mexican nationals who entered the country on H2B visas were kidnapped in Pascagoula, Mississippi by Captain George Tillman of the Pascagoula police department and a US labor recruiter.

Workers and advocates charged Tillman with State and Federal crimes kidnapping, kidnapping with intent to enslave, false imprisonment, human trafficking, and violations of the workers’ civil and constitutional rights. They filed a Notice of Intent declaring that that they will sue Tillman and the Pascagoula Police Department.

Workers released a formal statement today that recounted their journey as guestworkers across the post-Katrina Gulf Coast:

We are welders and pipefitters from Veracruz, Mexico, who entered the United States on H2B visas in July 2007. We are fathers and husbands, with families to feed. Like all workers we came to the United States because of economic desperation. We are here to feed our children, to send money to our families. We came to work for a Texas shipyard called Southwest Shipyards, LP.

Within days of our arrival we realized that recruiters had lied to us about the living and working conditions in the United States. Several of our co-workers sustained life-threatening injuries on the job. One man was electrocuted. When we organized to ask for safer conditions, we were threatened.

Faced with retaliation, we ran away from Southwest. We went to Alabama, where a recuitment agency named Black Hawk promised us jobs. We signed up with Black Hawk, but the agency packed all 30 of us in two trailers in rural Alabama – and abandoned us. We stayed in the trailers for 6 days without food or transportation.

Desperate again, we escaped from the Alabama trailers to Pascagoula, Mississippi. There we were kidnapped by Captain George Tillman of the Pascagoula Police Department.

On the night of August 2, 2007, Captain George Tillman of the Pascagoula Police Department arrived at our doorstep in uniform, with his badge and gun. He was accompanied by another officer and the recruiter from Black Hawk. Tillman told us that the recruiter from Black Hawk was our “owner,” and that we had to go with him. He said that if we didn’t, we would face prison and deportation.

We resisted. But we were forced to pack our bags and get into vans. We were transported to a new location. Tillman and the others packed all 30 of us into three rooms. He warned us that the area would be monitored by the police.

The next morning the recruiter returned to take mugshots of us and videotape us. With the help of several organizations, we escaped, hid in a Walmart, and eventually fled to New Orleans, where we have been living in hiding without work or money.

Workers and advocates challenged federal officials to recognize that the H2B program is creating slave-like conditions for workers across the Gulf Coast. Thousands of guestworkers have arrived to work for US companies after Hurricanes Katrina and Rita, said Daniel Castellanos, organizer with the Alliance of Guest Workers for Dignity, a Gulf Coast-wide organization of guestworkers. “I am a guestworker and I know the realities of the H2B visa,” said Castellanos. “We are brought here on false promises. Our members report being sold, being kidnapped, being told they are owned. Meanwhile survivors of Katrina and Rita are still shut out of work two years later. The federal government is allowing this. They’ve traded the old slaves for new slaves.”

Nsombi Lambright, director of the American Civil Liberties Union – Mississippi called on Mississippi lawmakers to ensure that legislation outlawing kidnapping and human trafficking are enforced. “We can’t leave it upto conscience to ensure that people of color and poor people are protected from the hundred of Tillmans out there. We have laws. They need to be enforced.”

Workers and advocates called on US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales to investigate the abuses of civil and constitutional rights guestworkers face in the Gulf Coast. Advocates pointed out that law enforcement seldom protects and often intentionally violates the civil rights of H2B visa workers. “Corporations, law enforcement agencies, and recuiters work hand-in-glove to coerce and control workers. Police often enforce company policy, not US law,” said Bill Chandler, director of the Mississippi Immigrant Rights Alliance.

Saket Soni of the New Orleans Workers’ Center for Racial Justice called Tillman’s actions “immoral, unjust, illegal – but not uncommon. Tillman’s abuses tell us we need policy changes in Washington DC. But meanwhile, Tillman’s going to have to pay up in Pascagoula. ”