It’s not just Arizona. That state is a symptom of a broader malaise. For the GOP, American equals white.
Don’t blame it all on Arizona. The Grand Canyon State simply happened to be in the right place at the right time to tilt over to the dark side. Its hysteria is but another symptom of a political virus that can’t be quarantined and whose cure is as yet unknown.
If many of Arizona’s defenders and critics hold one belief in common, it’s that the new “show me your papers” law is sui generis: it’s seen as one angry border state’s response to its outsized share of America’s illegal immigration crisis. But to label this development “Arizona’s folly” trivializes its import and reach. The more you examine the law’s provisions and proponents, the more you realize that it’s the latest and (so far) most vicious battle in a far broader movement that is not just about illegal immigrants — and that is steadily increasing its annexation of one of America’s two major political parties.
Arizonans, like all Americans, have every right to be furious about Washington’s protracted and bipartisan failure to address the immigration stalemate. To be angry about illegal immigration is hardly tantamount to being a bigot. But the Arizona law expressing that anger is bigoted, and in a very particular way. The law dovetails seamlessly with the national “Take Back America” crusade that has attended the rise of Barack Obama and the accelerating demographic shift our first African-American president represents.
The crowd that wants Latinos to show their papers if there’s a “reasonable suspicion” of illegality is often the same crowd still demanding that the president produce a document proving his own citizenship. Lest there be any doubt of that confluence, Rush Limbaugh hammered the point home after Obama criticized Arizona’s action. “I can understand Obama being touchy on the subject of producing your papers,” he said. “Maybe he’s afraid somebody’s going to ask him for his.” Or, as Glenn Beck chimed in about the president last week: “What has he said that sounds like American?”
To the “Take Back America” right, the illegitimate Obama is Illegal Alien No. 1. It’s no surprise that of the 35 members of the Arizona House who voted for the immigration law (the entire Republican caucus), 31 voted soon after for another new law that would require all presidential candidates to produce birth certificates to qualify for inclusion on the state’s 2012 ballot. With the whole country now watching Arizona, that “birther” bill was abruptly yanked Thursday.
The legislators who voted for both it and the immigration law were exclusively Republicans, but what happened in the Arizona G.O.P. is not staying in Arizona. Officials in at least 10 other states are now teeing up their own new immigration legislation. They are doing so even in un-Arizonan places like Ohio, Missouri, Maryland and Nebraska, none of them on the Department of Homeland Security’s 2009 list of the 10 states that contain three-quarters of America’s illegal immigrant population… [emphasis added]
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The nativist movement is an attempt by the GOP to steal power through misinforming the public. The following individuals would recognize their tactics. nThe fourth would approve.
Fascism will come wrapped in a flag and carrying a Bible. ~ Sinclair Lewis 1935
Anyone who has the power to make you believe absurdities has the power to make you commit injustices. – Voltaire
The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders…tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peacemakers for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. – Herman Goering
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land, it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. — James Madison
I posted just the first page of an excellent three page article. I encourage you to read the rest,
8 Responses to “Arizona Reveals Republican Racism”
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Once all these idiotic conservative Republicans and teabaggers open their eyes and wake up, they’ll see that our country has benefitted overall from the influx and presence of Hispanics, just as it did from the influx and presence of Chinese, Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Scandinavian, etc. well before them. And they’ll finally figure out that our country today is in far better shape than when Obama took the reins from his worthless predecessor, the white, conservative, religious right cowboy George W. Bush, who did nothing but actively make the rich richer, damage our Constitution by taking on powers not permitted him, and who ruined our relationships all across the globe.
Jack, I think there are a few Native Americans who would say that the nation would have been better off without the influx of Spanish, french, Enhlish, Dutch and everyone else since.
Who’d have ever thought that I would agree with Herman Goering? Jeez, what is this world coming to. These laws are nothing but prejudicial and racist – no two ways about it. That it is spreading to other states is frightening.
Jack – I agree with you with one exception – those immigrants (with the exception of the Chinese) are all white. It’s the brown ones that they hate. If they could get away with it, they’d ship all the African Americans back to Africa. I have no doubt about that.
Lisa, I quoted Goering to show how closely his words are mirrored in the GOP strategy.
Good point, Lisa G. For a supposedly God-fearing, civilized race, we Caucasians have a very poor track record of abuse and outright genocide when it comes to our handling of blacks and Native Americans.
Too true, Jack.
White America occasionally reverts to type, this is one of those times, the dog whistle message is being sent out to all corners of the country, they actually believe that their country has been taken away from them by the browns and the blacks. We have to keep pushing that idiotic message back in their faces.
Holte, thankfully, there are a few white Americans, myself included, who do not differentiate between flavors of people.