Shhhh! I'm Listening to Reason!
March 27th 08, 09:12 PM
White Nationalism and Immigration Today
By Loretta J. Ross
As a human rights activist, I am convinced that examining white
nationalism and its relationship to the maintenance of racism and
xenophobia should be at the center of any attempt to explain U.S.
immigration policies. While it has been commonplace to dismiss it as
an aberration of the paranoid right-wing fringe of American life, in
fact, white nationalism is disconcertingly close to mainstream
politics.
At the beginning of the 21st century, U.S. immigration policies
are confronting a color triangle with three sets of opposing forces.
On the one side are white nationalists who want to tighten immigration
restrictions. A second leg of the triangle is formed by neo-liberal
global elites who want to relax immigration restrictions for skilled
professionals as they tighten restrictions on the secondary labor
market. The third leg is formed by the global human rights movement
which envisions a world in which people, empowered by policies that
respect their human rights, are free to move without immigration
restrictions. These three sets of forces are in tension in determining
immigration policies and a next generation of growth for the U.S.
White nationalism is the organized expression of white supremacy.
It propagates the ideas of white supremacy while denying its racist
and xenophobic roots. White supremacists believe in biological
determinism: that the white race is genetically, culturally, and
economically superior to all other races of people. White nationalism
has a vested interest in denying the privileged position of whiteness
because this would belie their claim to victimhood status, relieving
whites of responsibility for racism and xenophobia. Yet white
nationalists remain obsessed with identity borders, conflating race
with nation. The central question for them is maintaining white
dominance, and non-white immigrants threaten their power.
White nationalism enters into corridors of power via the extremist
edge of the Republican Party, but also taints every Euro-centric
political formation, from the right to the left. When white
nationalists converged with Christian nationalists in the 1964
presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, they created a new stream of
nationalism in the United States that opposed both internationalist
secular elites perceived "above" them, and multi-culturalist threats
from "below."
The Immigration Act of 1965 lifted many of the race-based
immigration restrictions and allowed Asians, Latin Americans, and
Africans to come to the United States. This influx of immigrants re-
energized the anti-immigrant movement. Nativism helped to sweep Ronald
Reagan into power in 1980, who used his office to openly declare war
on immigrants and refugees, whom, he claimed, overran U.S. borders,
took jobs away from Americans, and caused unemployment. Contemporary
anti-immigrant organizations representing white nationalism sprang up
during this period, including the Federation for American Immigration
Reform (FAIR), and the American Immigration Control Foundation. These
groups claim responsibility for winning California's 1994 precedent-
setting Proposition 187, barring the provision of all government
services, save emergency medical services to undocumented immigrants,
and for the success of the English Only movement.
White nationalists and white supremacists tend to choose legal,
electoral strategies when Republicans are in power, because they have
influence within that party. Yet the currency of their anti-immigrant
political agenda was revealed when a Democrat, President Clinton,
signed the 1996 Immigration Act in the midst of an economic boom, to
crack down on undocumented immigrants, and approved legislation that
dramatically cut welfare benefits to immigrants.
Anti-Immigration in the Future
There are ebbs and flows in America's social relationship to white
nationalism, which sometimes tightens and sometimes eases immigration
restrictions. The civil rights movement of the 20th century forced the
most sustained and comprehensive regrouping of the white nationalist
movements in the United States. White nationalism has retreated and
then reasserted its influence using both the ballot and the bullet.
And white nationalists have often set the parameters of the debate
when their sentiments correspond with -- but are not simultaneous to --
those of the governing and economic elite in debates over nationalism,
citizenship, and immigration. For example, new proposals to deny
citizenship to children born in the U.S. of undocumented immigrants
appeal to both groups, who believe that the fewer rights allowed
sweatshop workers and migrant farm workers, the better. Neo-Nazis in
Europe and Australia, and unrepentant pro-apartheid groups in Southern
Africa share these beliefs.
While I have focused my analysis on white nationalism, it would be
incorrect toassume that their beliefs are held only by those who are
white. Xenophobia and racism have been successfully internalized by
non-whites in the U.S., as intragroup prejudices among people of color
replicate the power relations established by the white supremacist
construct.
White nationalism challenges human rights activists to create a
way to confront racism and xenophobia in the U.S. beyond individual
bad attitudes. Human rights education offers a promising strategy,
although education alone is not sufficient without political,
structural and economic change. Human rights education is certainly a
better strategy than weak multi-culturalism or tolerance programs that
try to teach people basic social courtesies while ignoring or
downplaying the structural permanence of racist and xenophobic
oppression. The task is to show people that human rights are the best
expression of a value system for a democratic society free of poverty,
racism and xenophobia. Only then will white nationalism finally be
defeated and the Statue of Liberty will again welcome the hungry and
the oppressed.
http://www.nnirr.org/news/archived_netnews/whitenat.htm
By Loretta J. Ross
As a human rights activist, I am convinced that examining white
nationalism and its relationship to the maintenance of racism and
xenophobia should be at the center of any attempt to explain U.S.
immigration policies. While it has been commonplace to dismiss it as
an aberration of the paranoid right-wing fringe of American life, in
fact, white nationalism is disconcertingly close to mainstream
politics.
At the beginning of the 21st century, U.S. immigration policies
are confronting a color triangle with three sets of opposing forces.
On the one side are white nationalists who want to tighten immigration
restrictions. A second leg of the triangle is formed by neo-liberal
global elites who want to relax immigration restrictions for skilled
professionals as they tighten restrictions on the secondary labor
market. The third leg is formed by the global human rights movement
which envisions a world in which people, empowered by policies that
respect their human rights, are free to move without immigration
restrictions. These three sets of forces are in tension in determining
immigration policies and a next generation of growth for the U.S.
White nationalism is the organized expression of white supremacy.
It propagates the ideas of white supremacy while denying its racist
and xenophobic roots. White supremacists believe in biological
determinism: that the white race is genetically, culturally, and
economically superior to all other races of people. White nationalism
has a vested interest in denying the privileged position of whiteness
because this would belie their claim to victimhood status, relieving
whites of responsibility for racism and xenophobia. Yet white
nationalists remain obsessed with identity borders, conflating race
with nation. The central question for them is maintaining white
dominance, and non-white immigrants threaten their power.
White nationalism enters into corridors of power via the extremist
edge of the Republican Party, but also taints every Euro-centric
political formation, from the right to the left. When white
nationalists converged with Christian nationalists in the 1964
presidential campaign of Barry Goldwater, they created a new stream of
nationalism in the United States that opposed both internationalist
secular elites perceived "above" them, and multi-culturalist threats
from "below."
The Immigration Act of 1965 lifted many of the race-based
immigration restrictions and allowed Asians, Latin Americans, and
Africans to come to the United States. This influx of immigrants re-
energized the anti-immigrant movement. Nativism helped to sweep Ronald
Reagan into power in 1980, who used his office to openly declare war
on immigrants and refugees, whom, he claimed, overran U.S. borders,
took jobs away from Americans, and caused unemployment. Contemporary
anti-immigrant organizations representing white nationalism sprang up
during this period, including the Federation for American Immigration
Reform (FAIR), and the American Immigration Control Foundation. These
groups claim responsibility for winning California's 1994 precedent-
setting Proposition 187, barring the provision of all government
services, save emergency medical services to undocumented immigrants,
and for the success of the English Only movement.
White nationalists and white supremacists tend to choose legal,
electoral strategies when Republicans are in power, because they have
influence within that party. Yet the currency of their anti-immigrant
political agenda was revealed when a Democrat, President Clinton,
signed the 1996 Immigration Act in the midst of an economic boom, to
crack down on undocumented immigrants, and approved legislation that
dramatically cut welfare benefits to immigrants.
Anti-Immigration in the Future
There are ebbs and flows in America's social relationship to white
nationalism, which sometimes tightens and sometimes eases immigration
restrictions. The civil rights movement of the 20th century forced the
most sustained and comprehensive regrouping of the white nationalist
movements in the United States. White nationalism has retreated and
then reasserted its influence using both the ballot and the bullet.
And white nationalists have often set the parameters of the debate
when their sentiments correspond with -- but are not simultaneous to --
those of the governing and economic elite in debates over nationalism,
citizenship, and immigration. For example, new proposals to deny
citizenship to children born in the U.S. of undocumented immigrants
appeal to both groups, who believe that the fewer rights allowed
sweatshop workers and migrant farm workers, the better. Neo-Nazis in
Europe and Australia, and unrepentant pro-apartheid groups in Southern
Africa share these beliefs.
While I have focused my analysis on white nationalism, it would be
incorrect toassume that their beliefs are held only by those who are
white. Xenophobia and racism have been successfully internalized by
non-whites in the U.S., as intragroup prejudices among people of color
replicate the power relations established by the white supremacist
construct.
White nationalism challenges human rights activists to create a
way to confront racism and xenophobia in the U.S. beyond individual
bad attitudes. Human rights education offers a promising strategy,
although education alone is not sufficient without political,
structural and economic change. Human rights education is certainly a
better strategy than weak multi-culturalism or tolerance programs that
try to teach people basic social courtesies while ignoring or
downplaying the structural permanence of racist and xenophobic
oppression. The task is to show people that human rights are the best
expression of a value system for a democratic society free of poverty,
racism and xenophobia. Only then will white nationalism finally be
defeated and the Statue of Liberty will again welcome the hungry and
the oppressed.
http://www.nnirr.org/news/archived_netnews/whitenat.htm