Here’s a fun little mental exercise in National Identity that you might want to try the next time that you find yourself in a group of – oh, say—over a hundred people in America.  The occasion isn’t important – wedding reception, graduation, bris, retirement party, Office Christmas Party, Bat Mitzvah – any social gathering will do.  Wait for generalized boredom and/or inebriation to overtake the crowd, then ask everyone to join in a brief, harmless little game that you promise will be more fun than doing the Hokey Pokey.   

Explain to the gathering you are going to give a brief description of a “social set” and that those who fit the description should remove themselves from the crowd at that time (they can repair to a hallway, the back of the room or another room, whatever.  Proceed to ask the following social groups to detach themselves from the main group:

• Any non-citizens of the US (visitors, visa or green card holders, etc)
• Any first generation immigrants
• Any second generation immigrants
• Any third generation immigrants
• Any Mayflower descendants, DAR, SAR, etc.
• Any descendants of slaves

Now, unless, your event is being held on an Indian Reservation, I’ll bet you’ve pretty well cleared the room, right?

This is My Country

That’s because America is unique on Planet Earth, a nation made up almost entirely of immigrants, where human beings from all corners of the Earth were welcomed to come and contribute to an enlightened social experiment, unparalleled in Human History.  At least that’s how the mythology goes . . .  Early America was, in fact, a virtual “clean slate” of limitless natural resources (or so it seemed) and land for the taking (thanks to the genocidal tendencies of “the First Waves” who did their best to annihilate the indigenous people of America and marginalize any survivors by packing them off to reservations.)

As with all ambitious social engineering projects, the American story has, of course, not always been a happy one.  According to some experts we have experienced four major waves of immigration and according to others, those waves have been accompanied by not terribly surprising ethnic, class and culture skirmishes between new immigrants and those who “got here first”, or who have become “Americanized” as some like to put it. 

As a result, American identity is almost always composed of two elements — pride of origin and pride of place.  Most of us hang on to some level of “emotional dual citizenship,” by which I mean pride and preservation of cultural tidbits from our ancestors’ countries of origin, “accessorizing” our predominant American character.  But no matter how “Americanized” we become, we all carry a deep understanding that we are only a few generations, at most, removed from being something else altogether.  And some of us don’t like to be reminded of that . . .

So it is that we are a nation of immigrants who are ambivalent, at best, about hosting more immigrants (like us).  In the 21^st century, anti-immigration sentiment is exacerbated by the implosion of “The American Dream” and a nagging fear that there may, indeed, not be as much to go around as we once believed; add to that, the overheated paranoia about “strangers in our midst” engendered by The War on Terror and you get – Arizona.

Russell Pearce: Righteous Dude of Arizona

Unless you’ve been purposely boycotting the media, you’ve probably heard something –pro and/or con- about the newly enacted Arizona law that basically makes it an Arizona-state crime to be an undocumented visitor or Economic Refugee (as I’ve recently been urged to call undocumented visitors) in Arizona.  Arizona police officers have been enlisted to help sniff out such persons despite the fact that such work doesn’t exactly fit their traditional job description.

Legal debates have raged over the Constitutionality/legality of the new law since the day that Arizona’s Gov. Jan Brewster searched her soul and decided that racial profiling was something that Arizonans can no longer do without if they are to feel secure in their state.  Some Arizona politicians charge that the Federal government is not enforcing existing immigration laws (to their satisfaction) so they have stepped up to take the law into their own hands.  My first impression was that this was a piece of political grandstanding to pressure the federal government to do more for Arizona and that reasonable Arizonans would, in the end prevail in preventing the thing from going as far as it did.   Obviously, that impression, was over-generous . . .

Arizona has a long and colorful nativist tradition, of the US border states its population is quite white and easily the most prone to racial hysteria and immigration conspiracy theories.  The erstwhile state senator Russell Pearce, who introduced SB 1070, is definitely a “native son” and has been cutting a colorful swath through Arizona state politics for some time now; although he ran into the wall trying to find financial (and Party) support to get himself elected to the US House of Representatives, he has effectively clawed his way into a pretty influential position in the state house, despite the fact that, as The New York Times points out:

“The state senator who wrote the law, Russell Pearce, had long been considered a politically incorrect embarrassment by more moderate members of his party — often to the delight of his supporters.”

Back in April, a writer for The Economist said it best:

“Russell Pearce is the quintessential Arizona Republican. He wears stars-and-stripes shirts and has clips of John Wayne and Ronald Reagan on his website. He loves guns, his family, his Mormon faith, his country and the law, which he enforced for many years as deputy sheriff of Maricopa County. He jokes that being Republican, and thus not having a heart, saved his life when he got shot in the chest once. But his main passion is illegal immigrants, whom he calls “invaders”. He loathed them even before his son Sean, also a sheriff’s deputy, got shot by one. But now it is personal.”

Indeed, Pearce, is a walking, talking vendetta who “takes no prisoners” and makes no apologies for his bigotry outside of his stated mission to “Take Back America,” and here’s how he thinks it should be done:

“In 2006, he (Pearce) came under fire for speaking admirably of a 1950s federal deportation program called Operation Wetback, and for sending an e-mail message to supporters that included an attachment — inadvertently, he said — from a white supremacist group.”

Many critics have described Pearce as “obsessive” about immigration and as Stephen Lemons at the Phoenix New Times put it:

“Pearce is a racist law machine, pumping out statute after statute targeting the brown segment of AZ’s population.”

Russell Pearce and buddy JT Ready

Not to put too fine a point on it, Pearce has been spotted hobnobbing with White Supremacists and actually had to issue a public apology, in 2006, for forwarding a repellant article on immigration from a Neo Nazi website (Pearce alleges that he hadn’t read the article before forwarding it hither and yon but, if nothing else, it says something about where he spends “quality time” on the Internet).  Despite Pearce’s protestations that he is all about “The Rule of Law” there’s this evidence to the contrary from his Wikipedia bio:

“In 1995, Pearce became the Director of the Arizona Motor Vehicle Division. Pearce was fired from that position in 1999 by then Arizona Department of Transportation Director Mary Peters after an investigation revealed that Pearce and two underlings had tampered with a Tucson woman’s driving record.”

Perhaps he mistook the Tucson woman for an “illegal immigrant” who, as such, would have “no Constitutional rights;” his exact words regarding public protests against his law were:

“They’re illegal and they have no right to be marching down our streets. They have no constitutional rights. They don’t have First-, Fourth-, Sixth amendment rights. They’re here illegally and they chose to be here illegally.”

Incongruously, despite all of his unabashed wing-nuttery, Pearce has finagled his way into the Chairmanship of Arizona State Senate’s Appropriations Committee and, as such, controls whose bills are financed – ergo, considerable power which he wields like a hopped-up potentate.  One recent story in circulation described Pearce’s punishment of a colleague for having the temerity to challenge Pearce’s facts by removing him from his panel assignment. Not surprising then, that Pearce’s bill managed to win unanimous support from Arizona House Republicans, even from some moderates who had voiced misgivings about it.  The New York Times reported on one such dissenter, State Representative Bill Konopnicki, Republican of Yuma, who:

“ . . . said that planned amendments to address legal and other concerns never materialized. In the end, he said, “everybody was afraid to vote no on immigration.”

“We are going to look like Alabama in the ’60s,” said Mr. Konopnicki, who is facing a tough election and did not believe voting no would change the outcome.”

“In the Senate, only one Republican, Carolyn S. Allen, voted against the bill, and she is one of the few leaving office because of term limits and not seeking another post. She did not respond to a message left at her office.”

Wanted:  A Few Good Scapegoats

I’m not sure whether all of that says more about Pearce, and his ilk, or the wisdom of Arizona voters but, either way, it’s definitely a cautionary tale.  Down through the generations, people of all colors and creeds have worked together and, in some cases, risked their lives to ensure justice for all in America.  People like Mr. Pearce do an end run around our principles and sensitivities by declaring that: “Illegal is not a race; it is a crime.”  But actions speak louder than words and Mr. Pearce has chosen to focus on one type of crime because it provides him with cover for his racist agenda.  Pearce is far more interested in hounding Hispanics who are desperate for jobs than going after the law-breaking employers who create the magnet that motivates poor people to risk their lives for a lower-than-subsistence paying job.

Another danger that bullies like Pearce pose is that his antics embolden others to also try to inject their personal neuroses and paranoia into our public policy.  Soon after SB 1070, passed a flurry of states rushed to jump on the bandwagon; many of those states, far from any border, can’t possibly have real or imagined immigration issues that would necessitate the kinds of ridiculous solutions that they are proposing.  For example, an Iowa Republican, Pat Bertroche, running in the 3rd District Congressional primary, offered this bright idea in a statement to the Cedar Rapids Gazette:

 “I think we should catch ’em, we should document ’em, make sure we know where they are and where they are going,” said Pat Bertroche, an Urbandale physician. “I actually support microchipping them. I can microchip my dog so I can find it. Why can’t I microchip an illegal?

“That’s not a popular thing to say, but it’s a lot cheaper than building a fence they can tunnel under,” Bertroche said.

And that from a guy who once took an oath to “do no harm.”

Now I’m not very worried that I’ll pick up my newspaper anytime soon to find this microchip legislation passing; the problem to my mind is that crazy talk like this, going on in Congressional chambers, can make more run-of-the-mill racist measures seem tame and somehow more palatable.  SB 1070 is a real-life example of just that; I agree wholeheartedly with Archbishop Roger Mahony who called Pearce’s bill “the country’s most retrogressive, mean-spirited and useless anti-immigrant law.”  Nevertheless, it is now the law of the land in Arizona.

Even an old-hand like John McCain, the senior Senator from Arizona, endorses Pearce’s bill as “a good tool to use” despite the fact that earlier in his career (when Republicans feared losing the Latino vote, more) he resisted demonizing illegal immigrants.

Following this week’s primary results in Kentucky, Rand Paul (where are all these doctors coming from?) voiced the opinion that if he had his druthers he’d exhume the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and excise the pesky piece about making private business owners put a lid on any of their racist tendencies if they want to play in the Great Society.  Evidently, Rand’s libertarian principles see the First Amendment as protecting the right to express abhorrent views (although, he looked like he wouldn’t have minded shutting up MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow by any means possible.)  Rand Paul defends the right of business owners to cater to specific classes of people (or, at least, I have to assume that this is bigger than race, in his mind and would include other familiar biases, like sex, age and sexual identity).  For example, if I’m reading Paul correctly, he would defend a nightclub’s decision to exclude any patrons over 40 years old? That would go down well with the Boomers . . .

With all of that “political stuff” in the air, Sarah Palin had to weigh in with her bumper-sticker logic, saying things like:

“Today, we are all Arizonans” when Gov. Jan Brewer signed SB 1070 into law.

Or this “ringing endorsement” for Rand Paul offered up on Fox Business Channel:

“Seeing kind of that libertarian streak of his — that is what we need to balance out the leftist liberal overreach of government that’s in power right now,” Palin said. “Rand’s gonna be great, plus on social issues, right there, he’s got some great positions.”

Go Rand! Sis-boom-bah.

That’s troubling only because of the small army of political naifs who look to Palin for guidance on “the issues” and one day will be voting for replacing the Constitution with the Bible, mass deportations and a return to segregated lunch counters.

For those Americans who care, there is a way forward, a way to preserve “liberty and justice for all” and it was stated perfectly by Eddie Glaude, Jr. in a blogpost this morning on the Huffington Post, entitled The Souls of Some White Folk;”

“Some white folk are not too happy about the current direction of our nation. They want to take back ‘their’ government. They don guns in public. They hurl invective at their opponents. They pass draconian immigration legislation. They ban ethnic studies in school districts. They insist on a view of the United States that mirrors their own self-conception: white and deeply conservative.”

“What is required of us when confronting such voices is a loud renunciation: we must reject the view of whiteness this approach to politics presupposes. And we do so in the name of democratic principles that are consistent with our commitment to justice.”

“Freedom-talk without justice-talk is empty and, potentially, dangerous. [Rand] Paul and those like him would do well to remember this. Too many Americans, of all colors, have engaged in struggles to achieve our country in light of their view of ‘justice as a larger loyalty.’ That commitment has led many Americans to risk their lives to rid us of this insidious notion that ours is a “white” nation.”

“My hope and prayer is that the legacy of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, of government in the service of good, has allowed me to flourish and has also given room to that gentle whisper — to that hushed act of solidarity — to blossom as a profound commitment to justice and freedom for all.”

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