Willis references a post by Kevin Drum at Washington Monthly, which quotes a letter from anti-illegal-immigration Congressman Tom Tancredo to his supporters in which Rep. Tancredo asks for help in what Tancredo calls the "struggle to preserve our national identity against the tide of illegal immigrants flooding the United States." In response to Tancredo’s letter, Willis snidely writes:
Hey, Tom Tancredo . . . Just say "white power" and get it off your chest.
So, there’s Willis' self-satisfied decree, in its vapid entirety. According to Willis (and many of Drum's commentators, if not Drum himself), anyone who believes that it’s important for a nation to be comprised of citizens who have at least some joint national allegiance and a minimal common foundation -- never mind a common language in which they can communicate with one another -- is a White Supremacist bigot.
Leave aside the political stupidity of labeling as bigots and racists a huge portion of the electorate which is becoming increasingly concerned about illegal immigration and which agrees with Tancredo’s sentiments. More important than the political self-destruction, Willis’ cheap name-calling -- a crude tactic wielded by many like him -- is substantively vacuous.
There are, needless to say, some people who oppose illegal immigration due to racist or xenophobic sentiments, but you can find some people who advocate almost any perfectly innocuous position who do so with malignant motives. There are, for instance, people who oppose tax cuts because they are socialists, and there are people who criticize Israel and sympathize with Palestinians because they are anti-Semitic, and there are people who favor abortion because they are racists and thereby favor anything which would result in fewer minority babies being born.
But, as is true with each of these issues, the fact that some people ascribe to a certain belief with venal intent does not, in any way, impugn the idea itself, nor does it justify ascribing the bad motive which some adherents have to anyone who ascribes to that belief. Thus, it is no more warranted to label as "racists" those who oppose illegal immigration on the ground that the nation needs a common "national identity" than it is to label as "Communists" those who oppose tax cuts, or label as "anti-Semitic" those who oppose Israeli occupation of the West Bank, or label as "racist" those who favor abortions.
Snidely spitting out the "racist" insult as part of the illegal immigration debate is nothing more than a cheap and lazy way to irrationally smear people who espouse a certain view for the purpose of shutting down debate. And in this case, the smear Willis attempts -- that to believe in the importance of "national identity" is to make you a "white power" racist -- does not withstand even the most minimal scrutiny.
To begin with, people of countless different races, religions and national origins are as purely and consummately American as it gets. That’s because "national identity," by definition, is a function of one’s beliefs, goals and attitudes, not one’s skin color or ethnicity. There is simply nothing about being, say, black, or of El Salvadoran descent, that constitutes, in any way, even a theoretical impediment to being an "American" in terms of one’s national identity. To assert that those who speak of the need for a common "national identity" are somehow necessarily speaking in racist code is an absurd non-sequitur.
More importantly, it is simply indisputable that a nation cannot survive if its population lacks any common foundation, is characterized by scattered allegiances, has nothing culturally in common, and is separated by an inability to communicate with one another. What you end up with are balkanized, fragmented enclaves of people who happen to occupy the same geographical space, but you do not end up, in any sense, with a nation that can endure or prosper.
Intellectually lazy and smug people love to casually throw insults like "racist" around because it saves them the trouble of addressing the substance of an idea with which they disagree, and because it makes them feel so very superior and enlightened. For an example of a wild orgy of such cheap, self-praising smugness, check out the dismissive name-calling directed at Tancredo in the comments section of the Drum post which prompted Willis’ outburst.
The notion that a nation requires a cohesive "national identity" is hardly the malignant invention of the Ku Klux Klan or White Supremacist groups. It is a central prong for how our country was formed and how it has survived.
The central challenge for the founding of the Republic was how to transfer, or at least partially annex, the allegiance of the colonialists away from their individual states and towards some common federalized union. The nation could not have survived without there being a shared national identity that bound its citizens in purpose and culture.
The critical importance of maintaining a common "national identity" -- the recognition of which Willis and so many others snidely dismiss as bigotry -- was emphasized by George Washington in a 1794 letter to John Adams:
"The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the Language, habits and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures and laws: in a word, soon become one people."
Thomas Jefferson frequently lauded the virtues of immigration. In an 1801 letter to Hugh White, he wrote:
"Born in other countries, yet believing you could be happy in this, our laws acknowledge, as they should do, your right to join us in society, conforming, as I doubt not you will do, to our established rules. That these rules shall be as equal as prudential considerations will admit, will certainly be the aim of our legislatures, general and particular."
But despite his positive view towards immigration, Jefferson stressed that immigration would be a virtue for the nation only if it were managed in a way consistent with assimilating the immigrants in order to preserve a cohesive national identity. In his Notes on Virginia in 1782, Jefferson said:
"[Is] rapid population [growth] by as great importations of foreigners as possible... founded in good policy?... They will bring with them the principles of the governments they leave, imbibed in their early youth; or, if able to throw them off, it will be in exchange for an unbounded licentiousness, passing, as is usual, from one extreme to another. It would be a miracle were they to stop precisely at the point of temperate liberty. These principles, with their language, they will transmit to their children. In proportion to their number, they will share with us the legislation. They will infuse into it their spirit, warp and bias its direction, and render it a heterogeneous, incoherent, distracted mass... If they come of themselves, they are entitled to all the rights of citizenship: but I doubt the expediency of inviting them by extraordinary encouragements."
Current illegal immigration – whereby unmanageably endless hordes of people pour over the border in numbers far too large to assimilate, and who consequently have no need, motivation or ability to assimilate – renders impossible the preservation of any national identity. That is so for reasons having nothing whatever to do with the skin color or origin of the immigrants and everything to do with the fact that what we end up with are segregated groups of people with allegiences to their enclaves, an inability to communicate, cultural perspectives incompatible with prevailing American culture, and absolutely nothing to bind them in any way to what we know as the United States.
There are ways to have the debate about what to do about this growing problem, and there are even reasonable grounds for disagreeing with the view that illegal immigration is a serious problem – either generally or in terms of its impact on a common "national identity."
But if the approach of pro-illegal-immigration advocates is going to be to follow the example of people like Willis and Drum's commentators and simply scream "racist" at anyone who expresses concerns about the impact of the vast numbers of illegal immigrants pouring into the United States, then their loss in this debate will be as inevitable as it will be well-deserved.
Willis is one of the most vapid liberal bloggers out there and not worth your time and talents. Then again, lots of people do what he does, so have at him.
ReplyDeleteGreat post, one of the best I've read on this topic. You did the heavy lifting to show how critical national identity is.
Glenn, you don't think that a huge part of why people want to keep "them" out of the country is because "they" are Mexicans? Who the fuck do you think you're kidding? All this talk about "national identity" IS code, and it's disgusting code at that.
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Way to miss the point, Alicia.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if there are enough Alicias in the United States to doom our chances to be a going concern as a nation. I fear that there are.
ReplyDeleteOh, please, at least be honest. If there were Brits or Germans coming in, nobody would mind. It's the browness and the Spanish that you can't stand, that harms our (ahem) "national identity."
ReplyDeleteHow ironic that you're pretending to want reasoned debate while you hide your real motives.
Hugh Hewitt is a little more subtle than Willis; Hugh calls people like Tancredo "nativists."
ReplyDeleteTwo questions for Willis, Alicia, and others of their ilk:
ReplyDelete1) Are they in favor of limiting immigration, or do they favor unfettered immigration?
I suspect that they would deny supporting the latter. In which event, does that not make them "racists" as well? If not, then at what point do restrictions on illegal immigration slide from morally acceptable to racist? Is everybody who believes in restricting immigration a racist? Are there difering degrees of racisim, based on how many immigrants per year you would allow in?
2) Most people who believe as Willis does also oppose "outsourcing" of American jobs. Isn't permitting illegal immigrants to enter the U.S. from poorer nations, to work at lower wages than Americans are willing to accept, effectively the same thing? Or is the latter more acceptable to Willis et al. because it is primarily low-income jobs whose wages are undercut by illegal immigration, while outsourcing affects middle-class jobs more?
Alicia wrote: "Oh, please, at least be honest. If there were Brits or Germans coming in, nobody would mind. It's the browness and the Spanish that you can't stand, that harms our (ahem) 'national identity.'"
ReplyDeleteI agree with Alicia on one point. If a significantly higher percentage of Mexican immigrants spoke English, I think a lot of the anxiety would vanish.
As for the problem being one of "browness" [sic], perhaps Alicia is unaware that Germans were widely criticized during their mass emigrations into 19th century America. I hardly think it was due to the shade of their complexion.
Anything Alicia has said, or is likely to say, on this subject can be rebutted simply by referring back to Glenn's original post. It effectively summarized her position on this issue and the vacuity of that position.
ReplyDeleteLet's assume Glenn is correct: That most opponents of immigration or illegal immigration are not racist, but that some definitely are. My questions for Glenn are:
ReplyDelete1. At what point do YOU recognize the argument as a racist one? For example, when Hutus in Rwanda described Tutsis as "cockroaches" was that racist? Or Not? Is is racist to describe illegals as a "plague", a "hord", or an "invasion"?
2. Now that you've given your answer some thought - have you ever applied it? I mean, have you ever recognized a racist argument against illegal immigration, and called it as such? If not, when do you plan on doing so? When you do, do you expect to have your own arguments above used against you?
Just wondering.
Earlier immigrants came to this nation to stay, and become Americans. Most of the Mexican illegal immigrants have no intention of becoming citizens. They come here intending to return home to Mexico, and Mexico facilitates this. An increasing number of them have the avowed purpose of "restoring" the American southwest to Mexican control. Look at the charters for organizations like MAPA and Mecha. Most of the earlier waves were LEGAL immigrants who came through customs in SF and NY. Most of the earlier waves of immigrants began to assimilate in the second generation, in the American southwest we have second and third generations who still show no signs of assimilation.
ReplyDeleteLet me say this to Willis, alicia-fl(I hate to link her name to Willis-sorry, alicia) and all the others who agree with their position that you are a racist if you oppose ILLEGAL immigration.
ReplyDeleteI will guarantee you that they will say that we should be a nation of laws, that the law is the highest thing that we can achieve, etc. Unless the law disagrees with their belief, and then the law must change to conform to their beliefs or it should be violated.
I say this. I want the laws enforced with respect to immigration, and I want them enforced in every town, city, and county in the United States. The law says illegal immigrants are to be prevented from coming into the US, and that the ones who come must be returned. That is the law and it must be enforsed. If alicia and Willis do not like the law, then they should get it changed.
Thi
The open borders movement (that strange coalition of greedy business interests, Hispanic ethnic chauvinists, and holier-than-thou Christians)constitutes a fundamental assault on democracy and the concept of the self-determination of a people. The vast majority of US citizens oppose illegal immigration and want their democratically enacted immigration laws enforced. This is of no consequence to the open borders gang;their message to the people of the US is this: your communities will undergo massive demographic transformation and you have no right to any say in the matter.
ReplyDeleteAlicia claims that opposing illegal immigration is really racism against "brown" people, i.e. Mexicans. Boy, what a racist statement. A good chunk of the population of Mexico is of European descent, including President Fox (Irish). At the same time my Arab ancestors headed to the US and Canada, a large number of Arabs headed to Latin America (their descendants are Shakira, Salma Hayek, Carlos Slim, etc.). The simple fact is, "Hispanic" or "Latin" are not racial identities but ethnic ones, and "constructed" at that for the purposes of grabbing political power. An Hispanic or Latino can be of any race or complexion.
ReplyDeleteGlen, I think your response here is not entirely in its place. The UN definition of race is much broader than just skin color and can apply to different ethnic groups. So you are trying to play on a technicality when you refer to Rwanda. When you speak of US culture, what do you mean by this? It seems to me that you're talking about white culture, and so your reasoning about a unified culture when speaking in the US context needs to be unpacked if it is to avoid the racism charge. What are people afraid of when they are afraid of immigration? I think much of that does come down to an issue of fearing the change others will bring, also known as xenophobia. There is some level of discriminatory thought. I agree though, there are legitimate issues to be considered, and being for more restricted immigration does not necessarily make one racist. But you would need to unpack the issues much more. In most cases, those against immigration do exhibit some form of discrimination and hatred for the other's presence in their country. The level of immigration into the US is so minimal compared to other places. That it creates this much debate, vitriol and fear seems like a testament to racist attitudes.
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