It’s been a long, hot summer of racial nightmares, from the furor over Arizona’s anti-illegal immigration law, SB 1070, to the Shirley Sherrod debacle, to the manufactured New Black Panther Party controversy.
I spent some of the stickiest weekends camping out at the former American Nazi Party headquarters right outside Washington, D.C. Now a coffee shop, it caters to a steady crowd of anti-racist activists, investigative journalists, and university students. Taking refuge from the occasional thunderstorm, we kept a careful eye on the political climate while trading information about the state of the union.
Baby, that state ain’t looking so good.
Our economy’s still limping along, and we have an absurd deficit and a drooping sense of trust in government and politicians. But more than that — more than all of that, even combined — what concerns me is the dehumanization of immigrants and racial minorities.
This isn’t to say that our nation’s statistics are particularly heartening. But it does say something about us as a nation when our lawmakers, political leaders, and peers start referring to fellow humans in animalistic, objectifying terms.
This begins with the most simplistic: “illegals.” Not “undocumented immigrants” (a value-neutral term for a class of people). Not even “illegal immigrants,” which could be asserted as the correct terminology for those who enter the country illegally. Instead, the human noun of “immigrant” is removed, and the negative adjective is placed front and center.
To classify human beings as “illegal” is to wipe away everything but their alleged criminal behavior. And this is a purposeful reclassification: Immigrants evoke images of Ellis Island, the Statue of Liberty, and the origins of most Americans.
These illegals are “breeding,” according to anti-immigrant groups. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, wants to launch an inquiry into repealing the 14th Amendment.
You see, children born in the United States automatically gain citizenship, which can be used to petition for the naturalization of family members once the child turns 21, according to the U.S. State Department. (This only applies if those family members depart the United States for 10 years.)
These children have been referred to as “anchor babies” from the late 1980s. Lately, the verb “dropping” has been used as a synonym for immigrant mothers’ childbirth. Once again, this erases the humanity of immigrant mothers, documented or undocumented; once again, it treats an entire group of people as a collective problem.
And all of this follows that same pattern history has shown again and again: Dehumanization leads to a denial of human rights. Dehumanization of illegal immigrants allows Russell Pearce, the author of Arizona’s SB 1070, to avoid criticism for his neo-Nazi ties.
Dehumanization allows representatives in Florida and Georgia to support and call for detention camps for illegal immigrants, using phrases like “collecting enough to send back” as if people were Pokémon cards or mail-in coupons.
It allows Iowa Republican gubernatorial candidate Terry Branstad to support SB1070 without invoking the specter of racial profiling because “illegal” is what someone is, not just her or his alleged transgressions. And he can support banning access to public education for sons and daughters of undocumented immigrants, because he doesn’t have to think about 8-year-olds struggling to keep up with their (white, naturalized) peers.
No matter what our individual stances are on immigration reform, we need to recognize that turning immigrants into invading hordes or faceless animals will not help the problem. All it will do is perpetuate racist, xenophobic tropes that dampen our capacity for empathy, our sense of humanity, and our American ideals. We run the risk of losing ourselves and our country in every way that matters.
It’s been a long, ferocious summer. I’m waiting, fingers crossed, for the fall.