So I will be presenting this paper today and I think that this is my favorite academic paper I have ever written...I doubt anyone will read it all but it gives you taste of what I have to do with my Mulligan's hangover at school the next day, this is the rough draft....
U.S. Sentiment Towards Mexican-Americans in the 21st Century: Progress Towards Equality? Or Progress Towards a More Hybrid Racist Paradigm?
I have a few central goals in writing this paper. First, I theorize racism towards Mexican-Americans, in America, has not diminished in many ways, but rather become a hybrid form of past discriminatory practices. I will be examining the social implications of this type of racism by viewing race and subsequent discriminatory laws as a racialized social system, defined by Eduardo Bonilla-Silva. I propose that the passing of SB 1070 merely perpetuates the theory of viewing racism through the lens of being a product of a racialized social system; such is the case in Arizona. Further, laws like SB 1070 and Proposition 187 are destined to fail at resolving issues of immigration or creating ethnic unity. I plan to illustrate parallels between the recently passed Arizona Law, SB 1070, to “Operation Wetback.” After noting similarities, I will show that little has been accomplished towards dissuading illegal immigration, and that laws such as these have had a devastating impact upon Mexican-Americans and their ethnic integration in America.
I will first address the Immigration law in question here, Arizona Immigration Law SB 1070, also known as “Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act”, and what it entails. The main controversy of SB 1070 is the part of the bill where state officials are able to inquire about one’s immigration status by subjectively judging with “reasonable suspicion” as to whether the person “appears” to be an illegal immigrant. It is stated more specifically as,
“For any lawful contact made by a law enforcement official or agency of this state or a county, city, town or other political subdivision of this state where reasonable suspicion exists that the person is an alien who is unlawfully present in the United States, a reasonable attempt shall be made, when practicable, to determine the immigration status of the person (SB 1070)
Other controversial components in SB 1070 include the newly imposed clauses, which state illegal immigrants are considered to be in direct violation of federal immigration laws if they are found on public or private land and are to be processed immediately. Continuing, no suspension of sentencing is available until a sentencing is imposed. In sum, there is no release time before processing or sentencing once one is deemed “illegal”. There is also a clause within the bill meant to discourage the hiring of day labor within the illegal immigrant community, for example, the line outside of Home Depot. For the interest of this paper I will deal more directly with the “reasonable suspicion” part of SB 1070.
When writing “Rethinking Racism: Toward a Structural Interpretation”, Bonilla-Silva defined the term racialized social system as, “societies in which economic, political, social, and ideological levels are partially structured by the placement of actors in racial categories or races” (Bonilla-Silva, 96). He renounced the idea of race as being a difference of biological phenotypes and explains that race is divided socially, and subsequently, that racism is a term that should be studied solely as a “viewpoint of racialization”, not as an ideology that creates societal racial phenomena. He also stated that, “In all racialized social systems the placement of people in racial categories involves some form of hierarchy” (Bonilla-Silva, 96). I propose that the example of SB 1070 fits all the criteria in both of these aforementioned quotes. It seemingly fits perfect into the format of creating an extension of an economic, political, social and ideological form of structural racism. A bill like this is surely cannon fodder for even more racial profiling by state officials and police officers, thus counterproductive towards reaching a multi-ethnic society. In turn, this creates more fear and doubt among the populace, much like California’s passing of Proposition 187 in 1994 by, then governor, Pete Wilson.
Proposition 187 was a bill aimed towards illegal immigrants and moved to bar them from receiving various social services, like public schooling. There seems to be a mirroring effect of Proposition 187 to SB 1070. Kitty Calavita believes that, in regards towards Proposition 187, voters chose to pass such a bill to “send a message” partly due to economic frustrations. According to Calavita, “Proposition 187 is neither simply an instrumental response to economic conditions, nor a purely symbolic measure meant only to declare the cultural or political dominance of the majority. Rather, it can be best understood as a particular type of symbolic statement, the content of which and motivation for which are grounded in prevailing economic conditions” (Calavita, 96).
I think that the passing of SB 1070 shows some of the general populace’s malcontent with our current economic crisis and the subsequent scapegoating of immigrants. Currently, our country is in the second greatest recession in its history. People are angry and likely looking for outlets to displace their resentment. In some ways, illegal immigrants are a more readily tangible target to point economic siphoning at rather than at governmentally backed banking and credit institutions. I maintain that Calavita has validity in her argument and that the current recession could have a great deal in validating a public tool of discrimination to “punish” such economic “drains” on society. This idea seems to dovetail into Bonilla-Silvas’s idea of racialized social systems being economic, political, social and ideological. Perhaps this also denotes that banking and credit institutions are in the highest class of the American hierarchy and immigrant workers, consequently at the bottom. Coincidentally, Proposition 187 was determined unconstitutional in 1997 by the Supreme Court and later abolished in 1999 by Governor Gray Davis.
Tying into this idea of creating a symbolic message, perhaps in a different power role, are the social ideologies created by mass media conglomerates when dealing with the issue of immigration. In an article written by Brader, et al, the authors address the effects of social opinion on immigration through skewed portrayals in the media. When dealing with the issue of media stereotyping, they wrote: “Group cues might alter public perceptions about the severity of the problem. Negative stereotypes about Latinos in particular might boost concerns about cultural assimilation, consumption of scarce public resources, crime and so on” (Brader, 2008). They state that when the white populace views portrayals such as this, it creates feelings of resentment towards certain ethnic groups of immigrants. Further, other “white” ethnic immigrants do not face the same issues and that due to inaccurate media portrayal, voters often become emotional over issues not pertaining to the immigration patterns themselves.
When one considers all the elements that come together around something like immigration, especially immigration from Mexico, Bonilla-Silva’s theory of race being a racialized social structure really begins to hold merit. The opinions of the public could not be formed in such symbolically angry ways just off of the old ideologies of racism. The mass conglomerate media would not be portraying such abysmal pictures of immigration simply because they felt racist. The Governor of Arizona and the other public representatives that drafted SB 1070 could not have all been blatant racists and nor could the entire state of California been full of racists when it passed Proposition 187 in the 1990’s. Bonilla-Silva’s ideas suggest that this is a way of dealing with a situation using our racialized social structure. When discussing the involvement of whites in a racialized social system, Amanda E. Lewis stated, “The importance of studying the role of whites as racial actors cannot be measured by the level of whites’ felt racial identities or explicitly felt groupness but rather stems from their racialized social location and their status within the racial hierarchy” (Lewis, 2004). The implication of this is such that racialized social systems predominantly deal with various ethnic groups. These minority groups are then dominated, thus lower in the racial hierarchy that is ruled by whites. In a sense, there is no “race” in the whites’ part of a racialized social system, merely a roost of dominance in status.
I have established forms of the racialized social system and the white hierarchy that controls sentiment through scapegoating and media exploitation, I will delve into 1954’s “Operation Wetback”. “Operation Wetback” was a program passed as a response to illegal immigration during the years of the Bracero Program. The Bracero Program was a created to help fill a need for agricultural labor and railroad construction during World War II in America. This program was formed by political leaders in America and Mexico to grant temporary work visas to Mexican citizens. Exploitation occurred within both governments; the affluent upper class in Mexico and business “leaders” in America. One example included the exclusion of the elderly, sick, and women from emigrating to partake in the Bracero Program (due greatly to the desire for workers to stay fluid and not settle down to live in the U.S.). Estimates of migrant workers are up to 75,000 workers on the railroad systems and nearly 50,000 working in agriculture until the end of the war. At the end of WWII, the railroad exchange system ended, but leaders in the agricultural industries decried a need for labor so the Bracero program continued on until 1965.
As a result of denying many Mexican citizens in the Bracero Program and the continued need for cheap agricultural workers, many emigrated illegally to America. After the end of WWII, many Americans began to fear an “invasion” of illegal immigrants, and this led to task forces being created to “combat” illegal immigration. General Joseph Swing was elected the Commissioner of the INS and set up some small teams to start roadblocks and deportation methods in border areas. These roadblocks had great “success” in deporting undocumented workers and soon led to the passing of “Operation Wetback”. Essentially, it was a large-scale version of deportation tactics. In his historical analysis of “Operation Wetback”, author Kelly Lytle Hernández wrote that General Swing claimed to have deported 1,089,583 persons during the year of 1954 (Hernández, 2006). This number sounded impressive and lead to public sentiment shifting in regards to stopping illegal immigration and the government’s effectiveness in dealing with the issue.
However, the whole point to Hernández’s article, “The Crimes and Consequences of Illegal Immigration: A Cross-Border Examination of Operation Wetback, 1943-1954” stated that the success of this program was due to 10 years of prior deportation tactics. These tactics, in which America and Mexico had already perfected, and the number of deportations in 1954, were falsified and showcased as a “publicity campaign.” In this article Hernández writes, “The over one million deportations recorded for 1954 cannot be attributed to that summer’s campaign because FY year 1954 closed on 30 June 1954, just two weeks into the summer campaign.” (Hernández, 2006). He also notes that these numbers were drawn from the year before the project was officially created as “Operation Wetback.” One more integral part to the success of this program was the cohesion between the Mexican and American governments allowing for many of the deported to be detained in central Mexico in detention camps. This would therefore “solve” the prior problem of deportees simply crossing a border town the day after deportation. The significance of these distorted numbers allowed for public sentiment to shift towards believing in the efficiency of border patrol tactics in the U.S. It also furthers the importance of controlling the flow of media information, or disinformation, in this country with issues dealing in immigration (very much akin to Proposition 187 and SB 1070). I draw parallels to SB 1070 and the aforementioned programs because, in essence, the tactics remain the same. During “Operation Wetback” citizens were stopped solely based on their physical appearance, ethnicity, or occupation, and were demanded to show their papers or risk immediate detention and deportation. This is in essence the same paradigm under which SB 1070 operates, though not yet on such a macro level.
Earlier in this essay, I discussed California’s Proposition 187 and why the public would pass such a bill to send a message to the immigrant populace, likely due to economic strain and the need for a scapegoat. However, I did not delve into why there is such a large illegal immigrant population, why they would endure such blatant racism, and the psycho-social effects of such “language” being used by the state and media. In his article, “California Dreaming: Proposistion 187 and the Cultural Psychology of Racial and Ethnic Exclusion,” author Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco discusses the hypocrisy of the Californian Politicians. He points out the irony of one time senator, and later Proposition 187 supporter, Governor Pete Wilson’s decision to encourage workers to fill the need of California’s big time “agribusiness” during the 1980’s and his role reversal ten years later when pushing for immigration reform. This is an example of the dichotomous “push and pull” factors facing American Immigrants. In one message, the governments and large business leaders encourage immigration to support exploitative manual labor needs, and subsequent sub-par wages, while at the same time decry the need to “close our borders” and protect American jobs and services. Suárez-Orozco writes, “On February 6, 1995, less than three months after the passage of Propostion 187, California Attorney General Don Lungren called for a new guest-worker program to bring temporary agricultural workers to the state” (Suárez-Orozco, 1996).
What message does this send to immigrant workers? That it is okay for you to come to our country and work manual labor for exploitative wages, but it is not okay for your children to attend our public school systems? All this while big time American transnational businesses set “free” many third world countries in South and Central America through programs like the North America Free Trade Agreement. The programs merely ensure that the wealthy and powerful business partners in these countries will continually push poor landowners and agricultural workers off of their land. The only natural thing for these poor, exploited, and often homeless people to do is gravitate and emigrate towards the most affluent settings visible to them, America. This is the same America where agricultural and work force owners are always in need of cheap exploitative labor to maintain the current market.
The central point of this paper to illustrate that while many Americans feel that this country is rapidly becoming an egalitarian racially harmonized society (after all; there are no more distinct Jim Crow laws, legalized segregation, slavery, and various forms of racial inequalities that have been major issues in the past few centuries), there seems to be a sense of Neo-Liberal ideologies in that racial inequalities exist solely due to apathy or lack of effort in minorities. I believe that laws like SB 1070 exemplify that this is not the case in America. The idea of racial profiling people, even if one were to ascribe to the idea of police being able to differentiate immigrants from citizens using “reasonable suspicion”, through legal and governmental agencies, holds horrifying implications of racial prejudice.
This type of blatant political, economic, social and ideological racism seems as if it could only be reasonably spawned in a society set upon the parameters of being a racialized social system. How else can one explain there not being riots in the streets or civil uprisings, at least in politically substantial amounts? Not unless one starts to view this country’s views and actions towards race as being grounded in and nurtured by a racialized social system. How else can one rationalize the forms of accusatory neo-liberalism, discriminatory laws, indirect racial rule and segregation? When a society has been set up to believe that occurrences such as these are not actually racist in formation; there is a need to examine the foundation upon which it is built. I leave you now with a quote from Howard Winant discussing race theory,
“Now racial theory finds itself in a new quandary. Empires have been ended and Jim Crow and apartheid abolished (at least officially). How then is continuing racial inequality and bias to be explained?” (Winant, 2000). This writer asks, “How indeed?” Perhaps it is time to look for alternate explanations towards structural racism towards Mexican- Americans and immigrants.
