Source of book: Borrowed from the library
This book seems particularly relevant right now. A
significant portion of the [white] US population is in the middle of xenophobic
and White Nationalist tantrum, leading to the election of an unqualified,
malevolent, emotionally unstable ur-Fascist,
who campaigned openly on said xenophobic and White Nationalist platform, and
has governed accordingly. The results have been predictable: harassment of
immigrants, children in cages, bans on entry from countries with an unpopular
majority religion, and pushes to shut down most paths to entry into our
country. Sadly, many of those pushing
this agenda have the gall to call
themselves by the name of “Christian.”
Tom Gjelten’s book, A
Nation of Nations is a good antidote to the hate, ignorance, and malevolence
of our time. I have written extensively regarding immigration history and law
recently, and those are linked at the end of this post.
Gjelten is the descendant of Scandinavian immigrants (and
his family’s story is given in the preface), and has been a correspondent for
NPR for 30 years. This book is thoroughly researched, well written, and full of
excellent information.
The book has a number of threads which connect to give a
picture of the history, the law, some of the immigrant stories, and the challenges
faced both by immigrants and by policy makers. Gjelten focuses on a particular
place: Fairfax County, Virginia, which has seen a tremendous influx
of immigrants from dozens of countries around the world.
The stories are of families from three very different
backgrounds: Korea, Libya, and Bolivia. One might, perhaps, see
three immigrant meta-narratives in these choices. The people fleeing political
or religious persecution (Libya
under Qaddafi), the people fleeing poverty and lack of opportunity (Korea in the aftermath of the Korean War), and
the people fleeing the violence that comes with political instability (Bolivia during
civil unrest.) My own ancestors fled the first two, and most immigrants today
fit one or more of these categories. (To be sure, there are also enterprising
sorts looking for opportunity - and there is no shame in that either…)
All of these immigrants were able to come to the United States
because of a significant change in the law, enacted during the 1960s.
Specifically, as part of a broader movement to grant civil rights to people who
had non-white skin, our immigration laws were changed to eliminate exclusions
based on national origin, which opened up our borders to people from places
other than northern and western Europe. (I have blogged on the inseparability
of immigration restrictions from naked racism in our past - and our present.
See below for links.)
A Nation of Nations
spends about a quarter of the book on the history of the 1965 law, and the
details of how we got what we did at that time. Legislation is like sausage:
it’s pretty messy to watch as it is made, and this law was no exception. In
order to get to “yes” with enough legislators, it was necessary to claim that
the law wouldn’t change the ethnic makeup of the United States. Whether the
proponents of the law genuinely believed this is debatable, but they clearly
had to pretend they did in order to pass the law.
In any event, this claim turned out to be ludicrously false
in actual practice. As Europe became thoroughly democratic, the demand to
immigrate from, say, England,
Germany, and Scandinavia slowed to a trickle. As The
Toupee Who Shall Not Be Named has bemoaned, there just aren’t that many
“Aryans” with blond hair and blue eyes wanting to come here. Instead, the
demand has come from other places around the globe. You know, those “shithole
countries” with people who have brown skin. Unsurprisingly, people don’t
tend to leave a place unless they think they can do much better elsewhere - or
if they have no reasonable option to stay. So people come.
From telling the stories of these families (whose stories
return here and there throughout the rest of the book), then giving the history
of the law, the author turns to the specific issues that integration of
immigrants brings. In the case of Fairfax
County, it meant some
major changes to how things were done. The first work of breaking the white
hegemony was done by African American activists in the Civil Rights Era.
Gjelten tells some fantastic stories about this in one chapter. But, when the
demographics of these historically black neighborhoods started changing, there
was some tension. It is one thing to deal with one familiar prejudice in your
school. It is another to figure out how to communicate with parents who speak
50 different languages - but are not fluent in English. Throw people who are
fleeing violence into a neighborhood that already has its street gangs
affiliated with different nationalities and ethnicities, and chances are, they
will form their own to survive.
Gjelten doesn’t sugar coat the challenges. But he does
defuse a lot of the common misconceptions about immigrants and immigration. He
also counteracts a lot of the xenophobic propaganda from Fox News (among other
idols of the Religious Right) with actual facts, not fear mongering.
I want to mention a few things that really stood out. The
first one is Gjelten’s exploration of the objection to immigration that came
from the Left when I was younger. Namely, the concern among African Americans
that when “racially prejudiced employers have more workers to choose from, they
may hire an illegal immigrant over an African American.” This is one of the few
objections to immigration that I find morally defensible. However, as most of
the Left here in the United States has realized, the damage to so-called
“unskilled labor” jobs has been done far more by technology and the decline (or
destruction, perhaps) of organized labor. The fear in this case (as in most
justifications for immigration restrictions) turned out to be well overblown.
Instead, the Left has, perhaps, realized that the problem isn’t immigrants, but
prejudiced employers…
On a related note, in the excellent chapter on the history
of diversity in Fairfax County schools, there is the anecdote of Robert Frye
(the first African American appointed to the school board) on his efforts to
get Martin Luther King Jr. Day added to the school calendar. “The first time I
suggested it, you would have thought I had cursed in church.” He eventually
succeed, but only by sharing the day with Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
Echoes of our own time, perhaps.
One thing I definitely did NOT expect from this book was a
change to how I viewed a politician of my own era. Admittedly, I have made some
unpleasant discoveries over the years. Some were easy, like realizing that Jesse
Helms and Roy Moore were racist assholes, not the paragons of Christian virtue
Fundies would have you believe. I realized that as a kid. Less pleasant was
noticing the racism of pretty much every white politician on both sides up
through the 1950s. Or seeing that White Supremacy never went away - it just
became unofficial Evangelical doctrine…
But there have been pleasant surprises too. I discovered
that MLK wasn’t the tame, uncontroversial figure that he is often made out to
me. He was a true prophet. I also discovered this utterly
amazing speech by Robert Kennedy. I now understand why he was murdered.
In this book, though, I saw a very different side of another
Kennedy. For a kid who grew up in the 80s, the old, drunk, and often incoherent
crazy uncle version of Ted Kennedy was all I knew. I had no idea that he was
one of the driving forces behind the elimination of exclusionary immigration
laws. He plays a big role in this story, and his is that of the true hero, not
the villain I was taught he was. Hmm. I wonder more and more just how much of
the Fundie/Conservative bullshit has always been motivated by racism. More on
that in a minute.
The last part of the book focuses on the backlash against
immigration, starting with 9/11. It is difficult to remember now, but up until
that point, Muslims skewed toward the GOP. Seriously. Did you know that?
As this book points out, Muslims generally integrated well
into the US.
The roughly 3.3 million Muslims here are, on average, better educated (and that
includes women), more likely to be employed (and that too...includes women),
and commit crimes at lower rates than the overall population. Immediately after
9/11, the Muslim community was prominent in donating blood, offering
assistance, and more.
Unfortunately, while George W. Bush did his best to
distinguish between the average Muslim and extremist terrorists, far too many
on the Right started gunning for Islam as the enemy. As we can see today, a
significant portion of the GOP is virulently anti-Muslim - and its politicians
make their reputation by proposing ever more draconian measures. (Muslim
registry, anyone? Travel bans?) And now, you will find American Muslims firmly
in the Democrat party.
In discussing the backlash, Gjelten spends a significant
amount of time discussing some of the objections to immigration and immigrants
that you hear. One of them is the question of “integration” or “assimilation.”
I hate the term “assimilation” personally, as it implies a Borg-like
conformity. Or, perhaps more accurately, it reflects the expectation that
immigrants “become white.” Which, of course, many of them can’t, any more than
African Americans can in our racist society. “Integration” is better, I think.
If we are a melting pot, then we reflect the various segments of our society.
My own ancestors were quite different from the original English settlers, as were
the Irish and Italians and everyone else who came here. We all changed the America we came
to, just as it changed us.
In this context, one of Gjelten’s observations is spot on:
when people are excluded, they tend to more fiercely defend their identity.
Immigrants who are continually excluded from being considered “real Americans”
are indeed likely to identify more with their own national origin or religion.
As a pair of researchers who studied second-generation immigrants concluded,
“Groups subjected to extreme discrimination and derogation of their national
origins are likely to embrace them ever more fiercely.” No shit!
There is an interesting counterpart to this, though. In many
places, Fairfax County included, various immigrant
groups are intermingled. (This is true in many places in California too.) While often subjected to
prejudice from whites, these groups have tended to develop interracial
relationships. This is something I have definitely seen in California. Whites are the least likely to
have interracial friendships, relationships, and marriages - although here in
CA, interracial friendships are actually the norm, particularly among Gen X and
younger. Unsurprisingly, forming relationships like this leads to less
prejudice. If you want to understand why California
loathes Trump so much, this is a good place to start.
I want mention as well, one final truth. There is nothing
inevitable about political affiliation. At one point not that long ago, the GOP
was, relatively speaking, the party in favor of immigration. One of the reasons
that I was a Republican in my youth was this belief that opportunity should be
available to all, regardless of race or national origin. (Please don’t laugh.
The GOP used to believe this - it was Bill Clinton and the Democrats that were
opposed to immigration in the 1990s, not us!)
This has, shall we say, changed, and changed dramatically. Gjelten notes a number of
factors, from the Democratic realization that labor unions needed to embrace
immigrants (and non-whites generally), to the careless blunders of many
well-meaning Republicans on racial issues.
But the big tipping point can be boiled down to two things:
the Tea Party and Fox News. Gjelten doesn’t quite say this. But the evidence in
the three years since he wrote this book has sure been overwhelming. We now
notice that Tucker Carlson and Ann Coulter are openly racist in their views
about immigration. It’s not a dog whistle, it’s a bullhorn. But Gjelten quotes
Bill O’Reilly as saying much the same thing in 2012. It is a concern about the
“browning of America”
that drives this. Aka naked, unashamed, evil racism. I’m not going to sugarcoat
that anymore.
I want to end with one final thought on this book. The idea
of “A Nation of Nations” is nothing new. The phrase itself came from Walt Whitman. As Gjelten points out, the idea goes
back to George Washington (who urged that the US
embrace not just the rich, but the poor of every nation), Alexis de Tocqueville
(who noted that the US
was unique at the time as being diverse, not an ethno-state), and others. It is
the vision of an America
that isn’t based on national origin, skin color, religion, or background.
Instead, it is based on a commitment to uniquely American values: freedom -
including freedom of religion, opportunity, diversity, human rights, justice
for all, and other “universal” ideals. An America that hasn’t
really ever existed in fact, but certainly has inspired as an aspiration.
It is a commitment to the equality of humankind, the rejection of hierarchy,
and the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. (Which at the
time meant well-being - a decent life…)
Since the founding of our nation, this idea has always been
in conflict with another, baser idea: that “America” is just another
ethno-state, bound together by common skin color and common [toxic] civic
religion, and justified in bullying and oppressing everyone else. That second
ideal is, unfortunately ascendant in our politics right now, although I believe
it is likely the last gasp of a generation of white bigots. Also unfortunate is
that this evil ideal dominates white Evangelicalism to the degree that many of
us who cannot go the route of White Nationalism are no longer welcome in the
American church.
Gjelten wrote this book before the rise of Trump, and one
wonders if the book would have been as optimistic had he known the future. I
would like to hope that he would be. I believe the future, ultimately, will not
be one of white hegemony. California
is (as usual) on the cutting edge here. My kids grew up in a multicultural,
multiracial, immigrant heavy world. They (much like myself) cannot imagine not
knowing people of other races, religions, and national origin. That is what America means
to us, and it is the vision that intend to work to see fulfilled in my
lifetime.
***
My immigration series:
I still have more to write, when I get time. The five
installments so far, I have looked mostly at the law and history. I hope to
eventually write about my ancestors, the reasons we can’t have a reasonable
discussion about the issue, and my vision for a more open world. Here are the
parts so far:
This review reminded me of a YA book called "Refugee" by Alan Gratz. I really liked it as a 34 year old adult, and from reading the rest of your blog I think your kids would also really like it (if you haven't already come across it!).
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