April 23rd, 2010 / 5:34 pm
Mean
Justin Taylor
Mean
Racist Racists Pass Racist Law Enshrining Racism in their Shit-Eating Racist State
Well, whatever you do, don’t be brown in Arizona. This is so massively fucked and evil. Happy Friday!
Does anyone remember this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijeXGv9QLRc
Does anyone remember this? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ijeXGv9QLRc
god dammit arizona just when i was getting comfortable about being from you
god dammit arizona just when i was getting comfortable about being from you
Yes. Just one of the reasons why I am a pro-gun anarchist.
Yes. Just one of the reasons why I am a pro-gun anarchist.
yep
yep
Totally fucked.
Totally fucked.
While I agree that Arizona is off the mark, there is a clear immigration problem along the border. This problem is far more nuanced than just, “There’s Mexican folks coming in to the USA.”
Shit, there just moving back to a part of the country that we took from them.
The true problem is that the United States is a drug to Mexicans. A heroine, if you will. Many of their hardest workers flee to our country to fill jobs, mostly in states far removed from the border.
What this has done has diminished much of the young industrious population from, at least, the northern states of Mexico (Frontera Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua) and it is in those regions that we are currently seeing the most bloody cartel wars that have ever occured in the history of the world.
To a certain extent I can see an argument that said “If we didn’t deplete Mexico of some of its most moral working class than perhaps we wouldn’t see such violence.”
Many of those who flee to the US flee because they’re only other option would be to work for cartels.
My suggestion to all you notherners that don’t know shit other than what you see on ther internet is quit doing drugs, get upset when you see job ads. exclusively in Spanish, and pull your heads out or your asses.
Plus, don’t talk about it if you don’t know the first thing.
Mexico is in a state of war. There’s spillover violence along the war, and that is the reason Arizona is beefing up policy.
It’s a ridiculous policy. But focusing on the policy is deterring you from the fact that Mexico is currently undergoing a brutal cartel war. You’re only looking at the American end of it. Mexico needs fucking help. Getting mad at Arizona is like getting mad at smoke. There’s fire mother fuckers.
Enjoy New York.
While I agree that Arizona is off the mark, there is a clear immigration problem along the border. This problem is far more nuanced than just, “There’s Mexican folks coming in to the USA.”
Shit, there just moving back to a part of the country that we took from them.
The true problem is that the United States is a drug to Mexicans. A heroine, if you will. Many of their hardest workers flee to our country to fill jobs, mostly in states far removed from the border.
What this has done has diminished much of the young industrious population from, at least, the northern states of Mexico (Frontera Tamaulipas, Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Chihuahua) and it is in those regions that we are currently seeing the most bloody cartel wars that have ever occured in the history of the world.
To a certain extent I can see an argument that said “If we didn’t deplete Mexico of some of its most moral working class than perhaps we wouldn’t see such violence.”
Many of those who flee to the US flee because they’re only other option would be to work for cartels.
My suggestion to all you notherners that don’t know shit other than what you see on ther internet is quit doing drugs, get upset when you see job ads. exclusively in Spanish, and pull your heads out or your asses.
Plus, don’t talk about it if you don’t know the first thing.
Mexico is in a state of war. There’s spillover violence along the war, and that is the reason Arizona is beefing up policy.
It’s a ridiculous policy. But focusing on the policy is deterring you from the fact that Mexico is currently undergoing a brutal cartel war. You’re only looking at the American end of it. Mexico needs fucking help. Getting mad at Arizona is like getting mad at smoke. There’s fire mother fuckers.
Enjoy New York.
god dam i’m too drunk to do there, their, they’re
god dam i’m too drunk to do there, their, they’re
The exception becoming the rule.
The exception becoming the rule.
This is so fucking sad.
This is so fucking sad.
“It also makes it a state crime — a misdemeanor — to not carry immigration papers.”
jesus christ
“It also makes it a state crime — a misdemeanor — to not carry immigration papers.”
jesus christ
That’s a good reason to be pro-gun.
That’s a good reason to be pro-gun.
Have you read that Kaczynski essay called “When Non-Violence is Suicide” (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/When_Non-Violence_is_Suicide)? Being an anarchist with a gun in an anarchist region with other anarchists with guns doesn’t sound like a good time.
Have you read that Kaczynski essay called “When Non-Violence is Suicide” (http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/When_Non-Violence_is_Suicide)? Being an anarchist with a gun in an anarchist region with other anarchists with guns doesn’t sound like a good time.
While border politics in Arizona are really complex, this law is just appalling. The repetition of history is shameful. Essentially, they are asking people to carry identity papers. If this is possible, anything can happen.
While border politics in Arizona are really complex, this law is just appalling. The repetition of history is shameful. Essentially, they are asking people to carry identity papers. If this is possible, anything can happen.
Actually, Arizona kind of does worse stuff than this. When they find immigrants crossing into Arizona from Mexico, they pick them up, detain them, then put them on a bus to Texas. They’re sent to a little town outside Marfa (the place where No Country For Old Men was filmed). There they usually re-enter Mexico. Mostly they have no money or food, and they’re 100’s of miles from home.
But a lot of the times immigrants, of course, die in the dessert, or are killed by civilian militias or by border patrol.
Border patrols call immigrants tonks, because of the sound it makes when you hit one on the head with a mag light.
Pretty fucked up.
But I think it’s a far jump to say that making it mandatory to carry immigration papers is like Nazism. Most immigrants who I know always have papers with them. I have to carry a passport when I go to Mexico. I think the detainment thing is scary though.
But Mexican police are notorious for detainment and harrassment. Not that this makes this okay. I’ve been searched at gun point over there, and had to pay cops money to not put me in jail for no reason, and I’ve had plenty of friends robbed at gun point by the Federalis.
I think the main issue here is race. If the Mexicans were white and forced to carry immigration papers I don’t think it would be that big a deal.
Anybody been to Europe? Don’t you have to carry your Visa with you at all times or face deportation.
A buddy of mine was working in Canada without a work permit (the permits costs thousands of dollars) and he was deported.
It’s a harsh law that Arizona passed, but the paper carrying thing isn’t a big deal. The detainment thing is fucked. But everyone should always carry proper documentation when in another country.
Actually, Arizona kind of does worse stuff than this. When they find immigrants crossing into Arizona from Mexico, they pick them up, detain them, then put them on a bus to Texas. They’re sent to a little town outside Marfa (the place where No Country For Old Men was filmed). There they usually re-enter Mexico. Mostly they have no money or food, and they’re 100’s of miles from home.
But a lot of the times immigrants, of course, die in the dessert, or are killed by civilian militias or by border patrol.
Border patrols call immigrants tonks, because of the sound it makes when you hit one on the head with a mag light.
Pretty fucked up.
But I think it’s a far jump to say that making it mandatory to carry immigration papers is like Nazism. Most immigrants who I know always have papers with them. I have to carry a passport when I go to Mexico. I think the detainment thing is scary though.
But Mexican police are notorious for detainment and harrassment. Not that this makes this okay. I’ve been searched at gun point over there, and had to pay cops money to not put me in jail for no reason, and I’ve had plenty of friends robbed at gun point by the Federalis.
I think the main issue here is race. If the Mexicans were white and forced to carry immigration papers I don’t think it would be that big a deal.
Anybody been to Europe? Don’t you have to carry your Visa with you at all times or face deportation.
A buddy of mine was working in Canada without a work permit (the permits costs thousands of dollars) and he was deported.
It’s a harsh law that Arizona passed, but the paper carrying thing isn’t a big deal. The detainment thing is fucked. But everyone should always carry proper documentation when in another country.
Hey BAC, I hear everything you’re saying, and I’m all for helping Mexico in its fight against becoming (remaining?) a narco-state. But I emphatically reject your smoke/fire analogy– the Arizona law is absolutely a fire, of the worst and most dangerous kind. It’s a terrible precedent, it’s going to be a nightmarish and rigorously abused law, it’s going to get a lot of brown people arrested, and some of them probably raped and killed, because that’s just how it goes. You wait till the reports start rolling in of born-and-raised American citizens dying in handcuffs of taser-induced heart attacks, after being stopped and apprehended on “suspicion” of being illegals. The issue is not the papers one has to carry while in a foreign country; the issue is who has to carry papers while in *their own* country.
And so as much as I appreciate your larger perspective, with its appreciation of the complexity of a problem where regional and local politics intersect with global politics and criminal enterprise, at the end of the day, the state of Arizona is part of the country I am a part of, and that’s what (a) gives me the right, and (b) charges me with the obligation, of advising my fellow-countrymen that they are A BUNCH OF FUCKING RACIST ATTEMPTING TO CREATE AN APARTHEID STATE.
The issue is *not* that I’m in New York and they’re in Arizona. The issue is they’re ignorant fucking racist pieces of shit who hate Mexicans, and dark-skinned people in general. And in the service of that hate, they’ve passed a piece of legislation that is not only morally contemptible, it’s unconstitutional, which is unsurprising, since these people hate the constitution, too.
Hey BAC, I hear everything you’re saying, and I’m all for helping Mexico in its fight against becoming (remaining?) a narco-state. But I emphatically reject your smoke/fire analogy– the Arizona law is absolutely a fire, of the worst and most dangerous kind. It’s a terrible precedent, it’s going to be a nightmarish and rigorously abused law, it’s going to get a lot of brown people arrested, and some of them probably raped and killed, because that’s just how it goes. You wait till the reports start rolling in of born-and-raised American citizens dying in handcuffs of taser-induced heart attacks, after being stopped and apprehended on “suspicion” of being illegals. The issue is not the papers one has to carry while in a foreign country; the issue is who has to carry papers while in *their own* country.
And so as much as I appreciate your larger perspective, with its appreciation of the complexity of a problem where regional and local politics intersect with global politics and criminal enterprise, at the end of the day, the state of Arizona is part of the country I am a part of, and that’s what (a) gives me the right, and (b) charges me with the obligation, of advising my fellow-countrymen that they are A BUNCH OF FUCKING RACIST ATTEMPTING TO CREATE AN APARTHEID STATE.
The issue is *not* that I’m in New York and they’re in Arizona. The issue is they’re ignorant fucking racist pieces of shit who hate Mexicans, and dark-skinned people in general. And in the service of that hate, they’ve passed a piece of legislation that is not only morally contemptible, it’s unconstitutional, which is unsurprising, since these people hate the constitution, too.
Justin, here’s the problem with your stance on this: If you dismiss it as only a racist issue then you are incapable of understanding the problem, and if you’re incapable of understanding the problem, then you’re incapable of moving toward a solution. (I say ‘you’ but I mean everyone).
Your assumptions here are this:
1. That to be anti-illegal immigration is racist.
2. That only white people are anti-immigration.
Neither one of these things is completely true. And while what Arizona is doing is disgusting I’m not sure that it is totally based on racism, and I wouldn’t paint the picture of this being a white vs. brown issue. It makes it too simple.
There are plenty of Mexican-Americans who don’t like Mexicans.
I’ve heard plenty of stories of Mexican-Americans killing Mexicans who’ve attempted to walk across their land while immigrating. Mexican-Americans discriminate against Mexicans all the time. They call the rich ones Nationals, they call the poor ones Mojos (a truncated version of mojado).
Arizona is 30 percent hispanic. I’d imagine, if it’s anything like Texas, that areas along the border are closer to 90 percent. The town I live in is 85 percent hispanic. The next one over 97 percent. Even in these towns there is anti-immigration sentiment, and anti-Mexican sentiment. It’s a highly complex culture with prejudices all its own.
I take it you’ve most likely never spent much time on a border. It’s surreal. I’ll fly you down if you want. Get you drunk on Tequila.
I guess, and I was pretty drunk when I threw up that first post, my chief concern is that this is going to be viewed as simply a race issue, and nothing could be further from the truth. Racism is part of it. Maybe 70 percent. But there are other fears and motivations involved, that are more dangerous.
As I said before I think a lot of what is happening is predicated by the violence in Mexico. I’ve heard reports of something like 20,000 deaths in the last year, as the Sinoloa Carte, Gulf Cartel and Zetas war over trade routes.
Not a week goes by that there hasn’t been massive shoot outs in the town across the river. The cartels use grenade launchers on busy streets. That causes fear in people. Fear makes people do irrational things.
Justin, here’s the problem with your stance on this: If you dismiss it as only a racist issue then you are incapable of understanding the problem, and if you’re incapable of understanding the problem, then you’re incapable of moving toward a solution. (I say ‘you’ but I mean everyone).
Your assumptions here are this:
1. That to be anti-illegal immigration is racist.
2. That only white people are anti-immigration.
Neither one of these things is completely true. And while what Arizona is doing is disgusting I’m not sure that it is totally based on racism, and I wouldn’t paint the picture of this being a white vs. brown issue. It makes it too simple.
There are plenty of Mexican-Americans who don’t like Mexicans.
I’ve heard plenty of stories of Mexican-Americans killing Mexicans who’ve attempted to walk across their land while immigrating. Mexican-Americans discriminate against Mexicans all the time. They call the rich ones Nationals, they call the poor ones Mojos (a truncated version of mojado).
Arizona is 30 percent hispanic. I’d imagine, if it’s anything like Texas, that areas along the border are closer to 90 percent. The town I live in is 85 percent hispanic. The next one over 97 percent. Even in these towns there is anti-immigration sentiment, and anti-Mexican sentiment. It’s a highly complex culture with prejudices all its own.
I take it you’ve most likely never spent much time on a border. It’s surreal. I’ll fly you down if you want. Get you drunk on Tequila.
I guess, and I was pretty drunk when I threw up that first post, my chief concern is that this is going to be viewed as simply a race issue, and nothing could be further from the truth. Racism is part of it. Maybe 70 percent. But there are other fears and motivations involved, that are more dangerous.
As I said before I think a lot of what is happening is predicated by the violence in Mexico. I’ve heard reports of something like 20,000 deaths in the last year, as the Sinoloa Carte, Gulf Cartel and Zetas war over trade routes.
Not a week goes by that there hasn’t been massive shoot outs in the town across the river. The cartels use grenade launchers on busy streets. That causes fear in people. Fear makes people do irrational things.
BAC, still not disagreeing with your assessment of the larger situation, mostly because in the absence of better or other information I’m accepting what you tell me at face value, but mitigating circumstances do not make a bad law good. They just don’t. The purpose of this law is to empower individual police officers to detain any person whom they choose to, on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant, and the standard for said suspicion need be no more established than the color of that person’s skin. The law, therefore, represents not merely a rollback of a generation’s worth of work against racial profiling and discrimination in general, it creates a de facto set of race-based codes. I can’t stress this enough- even as the law is remarkably bad immigration policy, the truly monstrous aspect of it is *not* how it deals with illegal immigrants, but in how it deals with American citizens, who are now at a very real risk of being stripped of their status as citizens at any given moment. It is a complete reversal of the core conviction of American law, that a person is assumed innocent of all crimes until and unless the state can prove that they have in fact committed one. This law takes an entire segment of the citizenry and essentially brings them up on permanent charges of suspicion of illegal immigration. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where any of my friends with darker skin than mine have to carry around their papers “just in case.” Because you and I both know that in the entire life of this shitty law (which will inevitably be struck down by some court or other, as soon as a case rolls along) no cop is ever going to detain a caucasian on suspicion of having sneaked in from the Caucuses.
BAC, still not disagreeing with your assessment of the larger situation, mostly because in the absence of better or other information I’m accepting what you tell me at face value, but mitigating circumstances do not make a bad law good. They just don’t. The purpose of this law is to empower individual police officers to detain any person whom they choose to, on suspicion of being an illegal immigrant, and the standard for said suspicion need be no more established than the color of that person’s skin. The law, therefore, represents not merely a rollback of a generation’s worth of work against racial profiling and discrimination in general, it creates a de facto set of race-based codes. I can’t stress this enough- even as the law is remarkably bad immigration policy, the truly monstrous aspect of it is *not* how it deals with illegal immigrants, but in how it deals with American citizens, who are now at a very real risk of being stripped of their status as citizens at any given moment. It is a complete reversal of the core conviction of American law, that a person is assumed innocent of all crimes until and unless the state can prove that they have in fact committed one. This law takes an entire segment of the citizenry and essentially brings them up on permanent charges of suspicion of illegal immigration. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to live in a world where any of my friends with darker skin than mine have to carry around their papers “just in case.” Because you and I both know that in the entire life of this shitty law (which will inevitably be struck down by some court or other, as soon as a case rolls along) no cop is ever going to detain a caucasian on suspicion of having sneaked in from the Caucuses.
“Racism is part of it. Maybe 70 percent. But there are other fears and motivations involved, that are more dangerous.” For my own part, and with all due respect, hearing all that you’re saying here as being expressed with genuine nuance and out of deep concern, I nonetheless think this reduction of racism to a role in, rather than a key to, the whole thing is mistaken. Just to be clear, I know you’re not disavowing racism, or trying to whitewash it at all, but, all the same, having read closely about this for some time now, I’d argue that it does saturates the entire affair, through and through. For starters, racism as a phenomenon cannot an ‘issue’ among others; it’s an encapsulating mode – not necessarily a series of ideas in people’s heads but a commonsensical frame of communication – in which those ‘other’ fears and motivations you metion attain an urgency and level of necessity that turns violent and discriminative action into the ‘tough but fair’ maintenance of law and order and simultaneously renders any other non-reactionary solution to the problem ‘unrealistic’. That large numbers of Mexican-Americans would be against movements of immigrants without authorization across the borders is an eminent example of how thick racism is: the only reason to assume that Mexican-Americans would not be ferociously anti-immigration is to assume that they are somehow immune to American racism precisely because of their race. Not really, though, as they show that very distinction between “anti-immigration” and “anti-Mexican” sentiment is no distinction at all. For these American-Mexicans are indeed anti-Mexican in being anti-immigration, not seeing themselves as the same as those moving across the border. And in being anti-Mexican as well as anti-immigration by default, they only make painfully clear the false dichotomy behind that wider distinction, which is really only drawn to justify the ruthless crackdown as responsible moderation, as some kind of middle position where ‘good-hearted’ persons end up in the ‘realistic’ anti-immigration camp and which conveniently relegates racism to the empty category of the ‘anti-Mexican’ camp. Once that architecture is in place, even better if some white person mouths off about ‘spics’ – we, the anti-immigrant crowd, can condemn it and seem all the more non-racist because of earnest moves not to seem like we condone ‘bad words’. To put it another way, the white establishment of authority brokers a kind of naturalisation deal with Mexican-American ‘Nationals’: by joining in our racist attacks, or, that is, by making racism ‘anti-immigration’, they may be (falsely) freed of the uncomfortable squeeze of being neither Mexican nor American.
Meanwhile, in terms of the the social disintegration of everyday life in the Mexican north, it owes much to the long-term effects of the Reagan drug wars, as I’m sure you know, as well as the population overconcentration in the maquiladoras, the deliberate sabotaging of radical politics by the US in Mexico, and the relationship between exploited Mexican labour, trade zones and US investment in making sure Mexican labour remains cheap inside the country, as well as just beyond the border, by disbarring it from civil rights. In that sense, the structural point of anti-immigration, oddly enough, as opposed to the professed (and probably believed) intention of the anti-immigrant authorities who want to ‘stop’ it, is actually not to stem the flow of cross-border movement at all but to ensure that it can continue, less disruptively: which is to say, by making illegal immigration more punitive, and residence in the States illegally a crime one can be searched and seized at random for, at just the moment the number of Mexican indigent labourers moving across the border has become large enough to become a political constituency demanding recognition inside the States for their work, a crackdown happens, which is nothing other than the capitalist state’s response to ensure that the illegality of the movement is maintained, which, in turn, ensures that the pool of exploitable labour may be maintained, a pool that not just the border region of the United States but the country more widely depends upon.
In the end, though, the law is especially egregious and especially racist in that the bulk of these so-called ‘illegals’ are basically refugees from the very violence you describe. The drug wars are a Mexican affair precisely because they are a battle over control of the trade in drugs into the United States. Because of that, while spectacular violence is happening within a hair’s breadth of the US and may spill over in fluctuating but isolated spillovers, the drug wars lack any real incentive to ‘come’ to America because the war is over who owns the routes into America. Moreover, the link between illegal immigrants and drug smugglers is really insane like the urban myth here in Australia that boatloads of refugees are a means of moving terrorists into the country. The Mexicans immigrating are largely looking for refuge from the wars. This law is really an effort also not to have to deal with the displacement that the politics of the North American continent cause.
“Racism is part of it. Maybe 70 percent. But there are other fears and motivations involved, that are more dangerous.” For my own part, and with all due respect, hearing all that you’re saying here as being expressed with genuine nuance and out of deep concern, I nonetheless think this reduction of racism to a role in, rather than a key to, the whole thing is mistaken. Just to be clear, I know you’re not disavowing racism, or trying to whitewash it at all, but, all the same, having read closely about this for some time now, I’d argue that it does saturates the entire affair, through and through. For starters, racism as a phenomenon cannot an ‘issue’ among others; it’s an encapsulating mode – not necessarily a series of ideas in people’s heads but a commonsensical frame of communication – in which those ‘other’ fears and motivations you metion attain an urgency and level of necessity that turns violent and discriminative action into the ‘tough but fair’ maintenance of law and order and simultaneously renders any other non-reactionary solution to the problem ‘unrealistic’. That large numbers of Mexican-Americans would be against movements of immigrants without authorization across the borders is an eminent example of how thick racism is: the only reason to assume that Mexican-Americans would not be ferociously anti-immigration is to assume that they are somehow immune to American racism precisely because of their race. Not really, though, as they show that very distinction between “anti-immigration” and “anti-Mexican” sentiment is no distinction at all. For these American-Mexicans are indeed anti-Mexican in being anti-immigration, not seeing themselves as the same as those moving across the border. And in being anti-Mexican as well as anti-immigration by default, they only make painfully clear the false dichotomy behind that wider distinction, which is really only drawn to justify the ruthless crackdown as responsible moderation, as some kind of middle position where ‘good-hearted’ persons end up in the ‘realistic’ anti-immigration camp and which conveniently relegates racism to the empty category of the ‘anti-Mexican’ camp. Once that architecture is in place, even better if some white person mouths off about ‘spics’ – we, the anti-immigrant crowd, can condemn it and seem all the more non-racist because of earnest moves not to seem like we condone ‘bad words’. To put it another way, the white establishment of authority brokers a kind of naturalisation deal with Mexican-American ‘Nationals’: by joining in our racist attacks, or, that is, by making racism ‘anti-immigration’, they may be (falsely) freed of the uncomfortable squeeze of being neither Mexican nor American.
Meanwhile, in terms of the the social disintegration of everyday life in the Mexican north, it owes much to the long-term effects of the Reagan drug wars, as I’m sure you know, as well as the population overconcentration in the maquiladoras, the deliberate sabotaging of radical politics by the US in Mexico, and the relationship between exploited Mexican labour, trade zones and US investment in making sure Mexican labour remains cheap inside the country, as well as just beyond the border, by disbarring it from civil rights. In that sense, the structural point of anti-immigration, oddly enough, as opposed to the professed (and probably believed) intention of the anti-immigrant authorities who want to ‘stop’ it, is actually not to stem the flow of cross-border movement at all but to ensure that it can continue, less disruptively: which is to say, by making illegal immigration more punitive, and residence in the States illegally a crime one can be searched and seized at random for, at just the moment the number of Mexican indigent labourers moving across the border has become large enough to become a political constituency demanding recognition inside the States for their work, a crackdown happens, which is nothing other than the capitalist state’s response to ensure that the illegality of the movement is maintained, which, in turn, ensures that the pool of exploitable labour may be maintained, a pool that not just the border region of the United States but the country more widely depends upon.
In the end, though, the law is especially egregious and especially racist in that the bulk of these so-called ‘illegals’ are basically refugees from the very violence you describe. The drug wars are a Mexican affair precisely because they are a battle over control of the trade in drugs into the United States. Because of that, while spectacular violence is happening within a hair’s breadth of the US and may spill over in fluctuating but isolated spillovers, the drug wars lack any real incentive to ‘come’ to America because the war is over who owns the routes into America. Moreover, the link between illegal immigrants and drug smugglers is really insane like the urban myth here in Australia that boatloads of refugees are a means of moving terrorists into the country. The Mexicans immigrating are largely looking for refuge from the wars. This law is really an effort also not to have to deal with the displacement that the politics of the North American continent cause.
“mostly because in the absence of better or other information I’m accepting what you tell me at face value”
Wow, that’s mighty white of you. You’ll allow me to tell you about the place where I live, and consider it as perhaps a truth, while simultaneously seeking applause for your extremely distanced judgement of an entire state.
And I’m not arguing that the law is okay. The law is a bad one. I’m merely arguing that it’s not limited to racial motivations. When you take that stance you diminish the ability to positively discuss immigration policies. It’s not unlike what conservatives do when they assume moral authority on all issues based on a supposed closer proximity to god. It’s a dogmatic reasoning, and therefor, in my opinion, juvenile.
“mostly because in the absence of better or other information I’m accepting what you tell me at face value”
Wow, that’s mighty white of you. You’ll allow me to tell you about the place where I live, and consider it as perhaps a truth, while simultaneously seeking applause for your extremely distanced judgement of an entire state.
And I’m not arguing that the law is okay. The law is a bad one. I’m merely arguing that it’s not limited to racial motivations. When you take that stance you diminish the ability to positively discuss immigration policies. It’s not unlike what conservatives do when they assume moral authority on all issues based on a supposed closer proximity to god. It’s a dogmatic reasoning, and therefor, in my opinion, juvenile.
Hey, dude, try not to forget that we are two disembodied voices having a conversation on the internet, attempting to establish a baseline level of respect and trust–or anyway I was. I don’t know a goddamn thing about you or where you live or who you are–and vice versa, I might add. So that quote of mine was intended as an expression of good faith on my part, and I don’t deserve to have it thrown back in my face.
I’ll concede the point that racism is not the only component of the anti-immigration or immigration-reform positions; though “concede” is a funny word inasmuch as I’ve never denied what you’re claiming. But even as you agree with me that the law is a bad one, you seem unwilling to address my central concerns, which all have to do with domestic rather than international policy. Motivations, fears, mitigating circumstances and all other exigencies notwithstanding, this law crawled from the same miserable festering pit that is bringing us the Show Us The Birth Certificate cries, and all the rest of that fake-grass roots Tea Party bullshit. The fact that those people have figured out how to take a really-existing and frightfully perilous issue–immigration–and exploit it for their own sickfuck ends is entirely unsurprising. It’s how they’ve always worked, and will always work. You only have to look at John McCain’s sudden support for this law–which is basically the inverse of everything he’s stood for his entire career as an Arizona senator–to understand that this is not about policy at all; it’s about cynically trying to court the favor of the most extreme elements of a party in absolute disarray. So I’ll give you this much credit: John McCain et al. are probably not racists–they’re far, far worse.
Hey, dude, try not to forget that we are two disembodied voices having a conversation on the internet, attempting to establish a baseline level of respect and trust–or anyway I was. I don’t know a goddamn thing about you or where you live or who you are–and vice versa, I might add. So that quote of mine was intended as an expression of good faith on my part, and I don’t deserve to have it thrown back in my face.
I’ll concede the point that racism is not the only component of the anti-immigration or immigration-reform positions; though “concede” is a funny word inasmuch as I’ve never denied what you’re claiming. But even as you agree with me that the law is a bad one, you seem unwilling to address my central concerns, which all have to do with domestic rather than international policy. Motivations, fears, mitigating circumstances and all other exigencies notwithstanding, this law crawled from the same miserable festering pit that is bringing us the Show Us The Birth Certificate cries, and all the rest of that fake-grass roots Tea Party bullshit. The fact that those people have figured out how to take a really-existing and frightfully perilous issue–immigration–and exploit it for their own sickfuck ends is entirely unsurprising. It’s how they’ve always worked, and will always work. You only have to look at John McCain’s sudden support for this law–which is basically the inverse of everything he’s stood for his entire career as an Arizona senator–to understand that this is not about policy at all; it’s about cynically trying to court the favor of the most extreme elements of a party in absolute disarray. So I’ll give you this much credit: John McCain et al. are probably not racists–they’re far, far worse.
Sure. I’ll buy that. A very solid look at it.
The only thing I would say, in response to your view that I’m relegating racism to only being a contributing factor, is that, sorry, racism is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
I’d say another key contributing factor is economic turmoil. The anti-immigration camp has done a great job of getting people to believe that citizens will have to foot the bill for immigrants on things like health care and education.
I’d say another factor is nationalism.
But all of this is obscured, the whole topic made more difficult due to skin tone.
If Canadians were moving into the United States in mass, and Americans decided that we wanted them deported, and we told them all that they had to carry papers, or what have you, would that be racist?
No. It’d just seem fucked up.
But the whole situation is fucked up. And I don’t think it’s fair to just simplify it as entirely racist.
Sure. I’ll buy that. A very solid look at it.
The only thing I would say, in response to your view that I’m relegating racism to only being a contributing factor, is that, sorry, racism is a contributing factor, not the only factor.
I’d say another key contributing factor is economic turmoil. The anti-immigration camp has done a great job of getting people to believe that citizens will have to foot the bill for immigrants on things like health care and education.
I’d say another factor is nationalism.
But all of this is obscured, the whole topic made more difficult due to skin tone.
If Canadians were moving into the United States in mass, and Americans decided that we wanted them deported, and we told them all that they had to carry papers, or what have you, would that be racist?
No. It’d just seem fucked up.
But the whole situation is fucked up. And I don’t think it’s fair to just simplify it as entirely racist.
Exactly.
Yeah, I’m loving that analysis of it.
And, shit, I mean I’ve agreed with you completely on the domestic end of it.
I just wanted to broaden the debate. I worried the scope was too narrow.
Didn’t mean to throw the quote back in your face. More just teasing.
Wanna kiss and make up?
Exactly.
Yeah, I’m loving that analysis of it.
And, shit, I mean I’ve agreed with you completely on the domestic end of it.
I just wanted to broaden the debate. I worried the scope was too narrow.
Didn’t mean to throw the quote back in your face. More just teasing.
Wanna kiss and make up?
Yeah, I mean I agree that racism is not the only factor in the mess but the entanglement of all those other issues – economics, nationalism, rights – in racism and of racism in those issues is inseparable. It can’t be put in a category over here and the other issues over there – that’s basically what I mean. The very fact that a Canadian immigration issue would not be seen as a racial issue is partially my point about the looming role racism plays in the border conflicts. Racism isn’t only an obscuring factor, the very specificity of it reveals that it’s constitutive. Naturally, stripping people of their civil rights is an evil that stretches beyond racism, and would be evil of a differently composed constellation in some counterfactual scenario where Canadians were being deported, mandated to carry papers and so on (though it could still be racist, even then, depending on how Canadians in that scenario are ‘biologised’ as criminal). But the very sense that there can be a non-racist argument for anti-immigration in this current context is precisely the most pernicious way in which the racism of the thing operates. It’s not that racism is all there is to the issue in terms of what has created the social disorder on the border but rather that one cannot be for anti-immigration without being for the racial privileges that subtend and secure the border as a (white) American right.
Yeah, I mean I agree that racism is not the only factor in the mess but the entanglement of all those other issues – economics, nationalism, rights – in racism and of racism in those issues is inseparable. It can’t be put in a category over here and the other issues over there – that’s basically what I mean. The very fact that a Canadian immigration issue would not be seen as a racial issue is partially my point about the looming role racism plays in the border conflicts. Racism isn’t only an obscuring factor, the very specificity of it reveals that it’s constitutive. Naturally, stripping people of their civil rights is an evil that stretches beyond racism, and would be evil of a differently composed constellation in some counterfactual scenario where Canadians were being deported, mandated to carry papers and so on (though it could still be racist, even then, depending on how Canadians in that scenario are ‘biologised’ as criminal). But the very sense that there can be a non-racist argument for anti-immigration in this current context is precisely the most pernicious way in which the racism of the thing operates. It’s not that racism is all there is to the issue in terms of what has created the social disorder on the border but rather that one cannot be for anti-immigration without being for the racial privileges that subtend and secure the border as a (white) American right.
Kiss, Kiss, BAC. I think we’re pretty much on the same page here. About to run out the door, but this has been a solid discussion; thanks for having it with me.
Kiss, Kiss, BAC. I think we’re pretty much on the same page here. About to run out the door, but this has been a solid discussion; thanks for having it with me.
The cartel war is the result of America’s so-called “War on Drugs”, not of the emigration of workers. Silly argument.
The cartel war is the result of America’s so-called “War on Drugs”, not of the emigration of workers. Silly argument.
I can’t speak for Americans, but as a Brit and a European, I can say that anti-immigrant feelings and measures are widely considered to be mildly to genuinely racist. (Re: the idea that people wouldn’t care about this if the Mexicans were white.)
I can’t speak for Americans, but as a Brit and a European, I can say that anti-immigrant feelings and measures are widely considered to be mildly to genuinely racist. (Re: the idea that people wouldn’t care about this if the Mexicans were white.)
if you’re brown, get down. that’s all i’m saying
if you’re brown, get down. that’s all i’m saying
I hear what you’re saying, Brian but I have actually lived in Arizona before (though not on the border, I was in the Phoenix area) and I am a person of color and I am the child of immigrants so this issue feels like far more than 70% racism. I loved living in AZ and one of the things I loved most was that there was a group of people who were lower on the social totem pole than black people. For once I felt like wow, this is what white people must feel like, because everyone was busy hating the Mexicans. That’s just sad, isn’t it?
This is the United States and the law of the land does not require us to carry proof of identity. You may have to do that in Mexico or Europe or wherever but you don’ t have to do that *here*. The problem with this legislation is that it will not stop narcotrafficking or border violence. Those are very serious issues and they need to be dealt with but I think its naive to assume that this legislation will make any kind of impact on drug violence. Instead, it will allow law enforcement officials to racially profile Mexicans and people who look like Mexicans and that can be almost anyone with brown skin. That American citizens of Mexican descent will have to now walk around with proof of identity just in case they’re stopped because a law enforcement official might think they are undocumented immigrants is not that far from a police state.
I hear what you’re saying, Brian but I have actually lived in Arizona before (though not on the border, I was in the Phoenix area) and I am a person of color and I am the child of immigrants so this issue feels like far more than 70% racism. I loved living in AZ and one of the things I loved most was that there was a group of people who were lower on the social totem pole than black people. For once I felt like wow, this is what white people must feel like, because everyone was busy hating the Mexicans. That’s just sad, isn’t it?
This is the United States and the law of the land does not require us to carry proof of identity. You may have to do that in Mexico or Europe or wherever but you don’ t have to do that *here*. The problem with this legislation is that it will not stop narcotrafficking or border violence. Those are very serious issues and they need to be dealt with but I think its naive to assume that this legislation will make any kind of impact on drug violence. Instead, it will allow law enforcement officials to racially profile Mexicans and people who look like Mexicans and that can be almost anyone with brown skin. That American citizens of Mexican descent will have to now walk around with proof of identity just in case they’re stopped because a law enforcement official might think they are undocumented immigrants is not that far from a police state.
Yes, and war on drugs doesn’t happen in a vaccuum. Globalization, neoliberal economic policies, etc. contribute to displacement of folks and also play role in shaping drug trade and informal economy.
Yes, and war on drugs doesn’t happen in a vaccuum. Globalization, neoliberal economic policies, etc. contribute to displacement of folks and also play role in shaping drug trade and informal economy.
And I think there’s also an analysis relevant to folks critical of the criminal industrial complex — this potentially sets a precendent for giving scary amounts of power to local law enforcement by empowering them as federal immigration agents.
And I think there’s also an analysis relevant to folks critical of the criminal industrial complex — this potentially sets a precendent for giving scary amounts of power to local law enforcement by empowering them as federal immigration agents.
I don’t feel like nationalism or the economic stuff can ever be fully separate from racism and its roots in imperialism. It all goes together. There’s a reason some activists call neoliberal economic policies neocolonialism.
I don’t feel like nationalism or the economic stuff can ever be fully separate from racism and its roots in imperialism. It all goes together. There’s a reason some activists call neoliberal economic policies neocolonialism.
Um, it’s related. If you have a mass exodus of smart, moral andhard working people then you have a population that is depleted of smart, moral and hard working people. And when there is a depletion of smart, moral and hard working people, then the population is more suseptible to crime.
Look at Detroit. Crime has gone up since jobs have left. Why? Part of it is because in times of economic turmoil crime goes up, and part of it is due to the fact that many people who are smart, moral and hard working have left for better opportunities.
The war on drugs is part of the cartel wars. Lack of opportunity in Mexico is another reason for cartel wars. A feeble government is another reason for the cartel wars. NAFTA is a contributing factor to the cartel wars. And a mass exodus of smart, moral and hard working people is another reason for the cartel wars.
The argument isn’t silly at all. If there was no war on drugs there would still be cartel wars, because if drugs were legal there would still be Mexican cartels.
Making something legal doesn’t mean people don’t die or kill over it.
Oil’s legal. Don’t we have wars for that all the time. Land is legal. There’s wars over land. Who’s being silly?
Um, it’s related. If you have a mass exodus of smart, moral andhard working people then you have a population that is depleted of smart, moral and hard working people. And when there is a depletion of smart, moral and hard working people, then the population is more suseptible to crime.
Look at Detroit. Crime has gone up since jobs have left. Why? Part of it is because in times of economic turmoil crime goes up, and part of it is due to the fact that many people who are smart, moral and hard working have left for better opportunities.
The war on drugs is part of the cartel wars. Lack of opportunity in Mexico is another reason for cartel wars. A feeble government is another reason for the cartel wars. NAFTA is a contributing factor to the cartel wars. And a mass exodus of smart, moral and hard working people is another reason for the cartel wars.
The argument isn’t silly at all. If there was no war on drugs there would still be cartel wars, because if drugs were legal there would still be Mexican cartels.
Making something legal doesn’t mean people don’t die or kill over it.
Oil’s legal. Don’t we have wars for that all the time. Land is legal. There’s wars over land. Who’s being silly?
I totally salute this article.
Thank you for posting it.
I totally salute this article.
Thank you for posting it.
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/26/BARD1D55P7.DTL
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2010/04/26/BARD1D55P7.DTL