Lecture Ten American Xenophobia Xenophobia Comes from two
Lecture: Ten American Xenophobia
Xenophobia Comes from two Greek words: Xenos: Strange or foreigner Phobos: Fear. Oxford Dictionary: “deep-rooted fear towards foreigners. ” Webster’s Dictionary: “fear of the unfamiliar. ” Xenophobia: a set of beliefs or ideas about foreigners as threats to the nation. An engendering of hatred toward immigrants and a casting of increases in immigration as a crisis in need of immediate action.
Samuel P Huntington (1927 -2008) • Professor of political science at Harvard • Clash of Civilizations (1993) Islamic extremism is the biggest threat to Western civilization. • Who Are We? (2004) large-scale immigration from Latin America will “…divide the United States into two peoples, two cultures, and two languages. ”
Clash of Civilizations Francis Fukuyama’s Declaration: with the end of the Cold War we have come to “the end of history. ” • Liberal democracy is the final form of government. • Liberal democracies rarely go to war with each other. • Anti-Western worldviews (e. g. , Islam) do not have imperialist motives like Stalinism and Nazism. The Clash of Civilizations Thesis: conflicts over (political or economic) ideologies was a temporary blip and the old conflict between “civilizations” would return.
Clash of Civilizations “It is my hypothesis that the fundamental source of conflict in this new world will not be primarily ideological or primarily economic. The great divisions among humankind and the dominating source of conflict will be cultural. Nation states will remain the most powerful actors in world affairs, but the principal conflicts of global politics will occur between nations and groups of different civilizations. The clash of civilizations will dominate global politics. The fault lines between civilizations will be the battle lines of the future. ” —Samuel Huntington
Who Are We? United States is a settler nation, not nation of immigrants • “Settlers leave an existing society…They are imbued with a sense of collective purpose. Implicitly or explicitly they subscribe to a compact or charter that defines…the community they create…” o Immigrants do not. • “The core of [American] identity is the culture that the settlers created, which generations of immigrants have absorbed, and which gave birth to the American Creed. At the heart of that culture has been Protestantism. ”
Who Are We? “The continuation of high levels of Mexican and Hispanic immigration plus the low rates of assimilation of these immigrants into American society and culture could eventually change America into a country of two languages, two cultures, and two peoples. This will not only transform America. It will also have deep consequences for Hispanics, who will be in America but not of it…There is no Americano dream. There is only the American dream created by an Anglo-Protestant society. Mexican-Americans will share in that dream and in that society only if they dream in English. ” —Samuel Huntington
Anti-German Xenophobia (1700’s) Benjamin Franklin: “Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens? ” Views on German immigrants to the U. S. in the 1700’s: • Instead of assimilating, they are “herding together [and] establish[ing] their languages and manners to the exclusion of ours…[they will] never adopt our Language or Customs, any more than they can acquire our Complexion. ” • Germany is not sending us their best and brightest, only “the most ignorant stupid… of their own nation…. [that are not] used to Liberty…[and who would soon] outnumber us. ” • And bring an end to English “laws, manners, liberties, and religion. ”
Anti-German Xenophobia (1700’s) Immigrant registry oath (1729) • • Perhaps the first example of state-sponsored xenophobia in U. S. Signed within forty-eight hours of arrival. Pledge allegiance to the king of England his successors. Conduct themselves as good and faithful subjects (not revolt). Not settle on lands not their own. Renounce allegiance to the pope. Only Germans were registered with regularity.
Anti-Irish and Catholic Xenophobia (1800’s) Lyman Beecher (1835): A Plea for the West Samuel Morse (1835): Foreign Conspiracy Against the Liberties of the United States • The Catholic Church, in conjunction with European monarchs, was populating the U. S. (especially the west). Maria Monk (1836): The Hidden Secrets of a Nun's Life in a Convent Exposed • Nuns were forced to have sex with priests and the resulting babies were baptized and then strangled.
Anti-Irish and Catholic Xenophobia (1800’s) White Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WAPS) • This groups came to see itself as the “real” Americans in the 1800’s (even calling themselves “native” Americans). • A group in-between Indigenous peoples and immigrants. • Catholicism was seen as inherently foreign and dangerous to “real” America. • The Catholic Church represented monarchy, aristocracy and (in the North) support for slavery. • Irish were considered a different race (i. e. , Celtic) from the Anglo-Saxon race. o Stereotypes of the Paddy and Biddy
Anti-Irish and Catholic Xenophobia (1800’s) Know-nothing Party • The Native American Democratic Association • “Americans Must Rule America” • Repealing the Naturalization Act • Using the Protestant King James Bible in public schools • Most were part of “secret” anti-Catholic organizations • “competition of foreign cheap labor in the American labor market…[reduced American workers] to a condition worse than that of Negro slavery”
Xenophobia vs. Racism • As bad as things were for Germans and Catholics, they were never denied Whiteness, so could always naturalize. • Their cases were always different from those of Blacks, Indigenous peoples and Asians. • Is their discrimination therefore not as bad? • If so, is Huntington right? • How should we think of Latinx and Muslim peoples today? As closer to the former or the latter group?
Ronald R. Sundstrom and David Haekwon Kim
Sundstrom and Kim • How can we account for discrimination that multi or non -raced groups (e. g. , Latinx and MENA peoples) experience in places like North America and Europe? • One option (not theirs): We can think of it as racism but to do so we must inflate the concept of race: o. Either by collapsing race into ethnicity or ethnicity into race. • What does this do to German and Irish xenophobia? • Sundstrom and Kim suggest a different alternative, which is to separate racism from xenophobia
Sundstrom and Kim “We argue that there is something peculiar to the treatment of those presumed to be alien—they are civically ostracized. ” “It is not enough… to argue for the expansion of an expert conception of racism; the specific difference that characterizes the exclusion of the presumed-alien must be thematized and criticized. ”
Sundstrom and Kim Xenophobia as a form of civic ostracism “a subjective belief or affect, usually from the perspective of an individual who is in their imagination, fully rooted in the nation, that some other person or group cannot be a part of that nation. These strangers cannot be authentic participants of the cultural, linguistic, or religious traditions of the nation they inhabit; they do not derive from soil of the nation’s land or the blood of its people”
Sundstrom and Kim “We acknowledge that there are important historical and social connections that operate between xenophobia, racism, and nativism and that none of them can be fully understood in isolation from the other… [but] xenophobia can be identified, contextually understood, and condemned, and…is what is needed to keep these harms from being swallowed up by nationalized narratives of racism, particularly in the United States. ”
Stop Islamisation of Europe (SIOE) “Racism is the lowest form of human stupidity, but Islamophobia is the height of common sense. ”
Sundstrom and Kim Xenophobic projects are distinct from racist projects • Problem with this: o Only racism is automatically seen as morally objectionable. o This gives xenophobia a kind of moral cover. o Allows it to be used to make common national cause among antagonistic racial groups within nation-states o e. g. , bringing Black, Indigenous and White “Americans” together in their common worry over the growth of “radical” Islam or “Illegal” Latin American workers. • Sundstrom and Kim defend their position by raising two objections to expanding or redefining the concept of race as a way of condemning the harms of xenophobia as racist.
Sundstrom and Kim 1. Expanding or redefining race would require a homogenized (i. e. , monistic) conception of racism. • Racism can only be understood in its particular context. o Racism in the U. S. is tied to a history of Jim Crow, Indian Removal, Asian exclusions and the Black/White binary. o Racism in Latin America requires understanding, Spanish colonialism, La Casta, Blanqueamiento, & Mestizaje. o Racism in Europe is largely informed by Anti-Semitism. • Monistic conceptions of racism simplify, over-generalize and so overlook these fine-grained differences.
Sundstrom and Kim 2. Expansive notions of racism subsume and obscure xenophobia and nativism. • They help to “shelter” rather than combat the harms and injustices associated with xenophobia and nativism. • Respecting this difference, Sundstrom and Kim believe, allows us to see why people of color, who normally are very sensitive to the harms of discrimination, nonetheless can be susceptible to the rhetoric of nativism.
Sundstrom and Kim “Civic outsiders are not necessarily racial outsiders. Although most racial outsiders were deemed ipso facto to be civic outsiders, this convergence does not hold up. In the United States, for example, Native Americans and African Americans were explicitly not included in the nation. Over time, however, those groups, among others, were granted, under paternalistic and dominating conditions, a degree of civic insider status. This insider status was, of course, limited, exploitative, and degrading…We do not mean to make too much of this civic insider status, but to be inside is not to be outside"
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