Since most Americans find overt racism unpalatable, racists and “pragicists” (pragmatic exploiters of racism) must put on a public face that conceals their racism. However, they also want to recruit and advance their agenda, so they need a way to express their racism while also maintaining what they would like to be plausible deniability. The example I will focus on involves racism and migration.
If a politician said, “I will build a wall to protect the purity of the white race from becoming mongrelized by the brown rapists swarming across our border” they would probably not last very long in office. If a recruiter for the alt right said to “normies” that “the inferior non-white races are defiling our women and robbing us of both our blood and soil…let me also warn you of the covetous Jew…” they would not be very effective at turning normies into racists. But racists need a way to get the message out in public while also being able to deny that they are racists, should someone point out their racism. This is where such things as dog whistles, coded language and chocolate chipping (see my upcoming essay) come in. The basic idea is presenting racism in a way that does not seem racist.
When it comes to migration, open racism is generally not effective in the public arena. Fortunately for the racist, centuries of American racism against migrants have provided a set of tools to lure in non-racists and provide deniability. These tools are effective because they involve presenting concerns that can be rational and non-racist.
One stock approach is to speak of migrants as criminals who are coming here to commit crimes. It is certainly rational to be concerned about crime and being worried about crime does not make a person a racist. As such, casting migrants as criminals allows a racist to appeal to non-racists and if pressed they can say they are not racists—they are just worried about crime.
Another stock tactic is to associate migrants with disease—they are bringing diseases here that will infect us. As with crime, it is rational to be concerned about disease and this does not make a person a racist. This also allows racists to appeal to non-racists and gives them cover in the form of a professed concern about health.
A third tactic is to assert that migrants are causing economic harm by stealing American jobs and exploiting social services like schools, food stamps and welfare. It is sensible to be worried about economic harms and such worries do not make one a racist. Once again, this tactic provides a cloak for the racist—they can deny their racism and assert they are just looking out for American jobs and protecting the taxpayer.
Since it is rational to be concerned about crime, disease and economic harms, how can one discern a non-racist from a racist? While this method is not foolproof, the logical way is to use the facts.
While migrants do commit crimes, they commit crimes at a rate lower than native born Americans. While having more migrants does entail more crime, so does having more babies since more people results in more crime. As such, reducing migration to reduce crime makes as much since as reducing the number of babies in order to fight crime. That is, not much sense as a general policy. If one has doubts about migrants and crime, one can examine the police data to see the truth.
While migrants do get sick, they do not present a significant health risk when one considers that Americans are already infecting each other. It is, of course, rational to be concerned that war-torn countries and failing countries might be suffering from a decline in vaccination. But Americans are also falling behind in their vaccination rates, so this is not a threat unique to migrants from certain places. In any case, worries about vaccinations and disease are better addressed by health care solutions rather than broad migration policies. Examination of health data will show that migrants are not a health threat.
While it is true that illegal migrants can lower wages because businesses engage in illegal hiring practices and can exploit undocumented workers, illegal migrants are not stealing jobs. Rather, they are being given jobs illegally. Migrants that are here legally are also not stealing jobs, they are being hired.
The main reasons Americans lose jobs is not because migrants take them. Rather the causes tend to be technological change (such as automation), economic factors (such as natural gas being cheaper than coal), and decisions by business leaders (such as sending jobs overseas). As far as checking on whether migrants have stolen jobs, think about this—how many legally run American businesses have fired their American workers and replaced them with migrants here in America? Is there, for example, a big GM plant in Michigan being staffed entirely by Mexicans?
When a person who endorses harsh migration policies and professes that is because of concerns about crime, disease and economic harms, the method to test them is to present the facts of the matter. If the person is not a racist, they will be willing to reconsider their position. After all, if they favor harsh migration polices directed at brown people because they believe that they would meaningfully reduce crime and they learn that they will not, they should change their position. If the facts have no impact on their position, then that serves as evidence that they are a non-racist who rejects facts or a racist (or perhaps a pragicist).
It might be objected that someone could actively argue that migrants are disease carrying criminals who come here to steal jobs and exploit the social system and that they are not racists. While this is possible, they would need to prove their claims and thus overturn all existing evidence to the contrary. It is also worth noting that the notion that migrants are disease carrying criminals is a very old one. If your family is not pure WASP, it is rather likely the same was said about your family. So, which is more likely: that past and present migrants were or are disease carrying criminals coming here to steal jobs or that these assertions are just tired racism hidden under a badly worn and threadbare cloak of deceit?
This essay reads as though it is your belief that the only possible cause behind any kind of restriction on immigration is racism. Further, it would appear to be your belief that all racists have a need to further their racist agendas, to spread their racist beliefs in a way that will permeate and infect the normal, non-racist members of our society without their being aware of it.
But you, in your wisdom, are aware of these tricks and will not be deceived like the rest of us.
Is that the case? Can there be, in your mind, a logical, valid reason for restricting immigration or at least controlling our border that is other than abject racism or White Supremacy?
You talk about economics, crime, disease, jobs – what about a simple attempt at having some control over the influx of people so that we can have an idea of how to structure social services, medical attention, taxation? (After all, how can we determine what a “fair share” would be for taxing the rich if we don’t know how much we’ll need?) And what of our legal process, that is respected and followed by some two million individuals and families each year? Is it fair to them, that they should have to wait as their cases are heard and approved, while others simply cross the border and take up residence?
Consider this statement:
“We simply cannot allow people to pour into the United States undetected, undocumented, unchecked, and circumventing the line of people who are waiting patiently, diligently, and lawfully to become immigrants in this country.”
What do you think? Racist?
Or perhaps your answer to my question is “yes, there is a justifiable rationale to block “migration” that doesn’t have its roots in racism. All we need do is follow this line of reasoning:
““I admire the very generous and compassionate approaches that were taken particularly by leaders like Angela Merkel, but I think it is fair to say Europe has done its part, and must send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic. Europe must get a handle on immigration to combat a growing threat from rightwing populists”
It’s a well-known fact that to certain people, intolerance is only abhorrent if it is practiced against certain protected classes – but it’s OK to hate the right, and to deny them the same rights and benefits, those protections under the law that are offered to those who, shall we say, “think correctly”.
What if we rephrase the above statement thus:
“…I think it is fair to say that the US has done its part, and mus send a very clear message – ‘we are not going to be able to continue to provide refuge and support’ – because if we don’t deal with the migration issue it will continue to roil the body politic. The US must get a handle on immigration to combat a growing threat from left-wing ideology; with the flood of illegal immigrants artificially swelling the ranks of left-leaning voters in red or even purple states and skewing our elections towards dangerous left-wing Big Government ideology”
Hmmm.
And then of course there is the disgusting racism that earned a standing ovation for this speech:
” “All Americans, not only in the States most heavily affected but in every place in this country, are rightly disturbed by the large numbers of illegal aliens entering our country.
The jobs they hold might otherwise be held by citizens or legal immigrants. The public service they use impose burdens on our taxpayers.
That’s why our administration has moved aggressively to secure our borders more by hiring a record number of new border guards, by deporting twice as many criminal aliens as ever before, by cracking down on illegal hiring, by barring welfare benefits to illegal aliens.”
i know that you gain a certain level of delight from pointing your finger at Trump and Trump Supporters, as though our issue with immigration is something that started under his racist, White Supremacist administration – but I know I can’t fool you. I’m sure you’re onto the fact that the first statement was made by Barack Obama, the one about the threat from right-wing populists was Hillary Clinton, and that it was her husband who got himself a standing ovation for his State of the Union address in 1995 by pointing out the same talking points you so readily dismiss as closeted racism.
I’m curious to know how you reacted to Obama and the Clintons – untrammeled as you were by blind hatred and a rush to cry “Racist” at every utterance from the right. Did you decry their opinions as well, or did you consider them on their merits? And what about now? Have you “evolved”?
The problem here is not one of racism, it’s one of oversimplification. The United States has wrestled with reconciling our generosity with the practical prohibitions of open borders – from the reasons that you, Obama, and Clinton cite to the simple inability of our government agencies to provide for the sheer numbers who cross. Our sense of equal protection under the law and the fair treatment of individuals as equals is simply incompatible with the idea of making some people follow a complex process while others just don’t have that requirement. And without enough judges to hear asylum cases and separate those who genuinely need refuge from those who seek to exploit our generosity – well, what then?
The oversimplification I’m talking about, of course, is the old “Everyone is a Racist” trope. The “White Supremacists are putting brown people in cages like they did in Concentration Camps”, and the accusations of mistreatment when overcrowding, lack of qualified medical personnel and shortage of adequate healthcare facilities at the border naturally result in tragedy from time to time.
The accusations borne of hate and intolerance do nothing to help the problem, they only make it worse.
Not at all. If the policy addresses a real problem and is justified by facts, then it need not be racism. For example, I agree that migrants who work in the United States should be documented and pay the relevant taxes into the system. As others have argued, undocumented workers do drive down wages because US businesses can exploit them. If these business had to check documentation status and faced fines for breaking the law, then this would be good for American workers and migrant workers.
But when people push hard on the crime, disease and so on “arguments” they are either ignorant or racists. So, if you want to push policy X, show me the facts that back X and the positive consequences of X. If you have the facts and the consequences are good, then that would be a justified policy.
My adopted state of Florida is facing a battle within the Republican party over this. The governor wants businesses to verify the status of workers; other Republicans are pushing against that because so many Florida businesses (including Trump’s) employ undocumented workers because they can pay them less. An interesting battle.
President Trump’s election victory over Hillary Clinton seemed to herald a new era for border security and immigration enforcement. But his polarizing and occasionally ignorant comments about immigrants have handed his adversaries a convenient pretext for stymying compromise on immigration reform: racism.
Left-leaning advocacy groups and a host of Democrats all too often shy away from the specifics of the debate and instead lean on cries of bigotry, resorting to claims like that of House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, who has described Trump’s approach to immigration reform as an effort to “make America white again.”
Claims that immigration enforcement equals racism ignore the reality that the group most likely to benefit from a tougher approach to immigration enforcement is young black men, who often compete with recent immigrants for low-skilled jobs.
https://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-seminara-trump-immigration-reform-african-americans-20180316-story.html
So Mike is arguing that policies that benefit young black men and hurt large corporations are racist.
https://images.app.goo.gl/yk3E8h6SHqzXm3Qr8
Clever move, comrade.
I’m not claiming that migration enforcement is the same as racism. Rather, when someone justifies migration policy with X and X happens to focus non-whites and X is not true, then one can justly suspect either ignorance or racism.
So, straw man.
So in your view the same policy can be either racist or not racist depending on your intuition as to the motives of the person who proposed it?
This surprises you?
I really am lost when Americans talk about “racism”. I have as many anchors to understanding that discussion as I do to understanding tweenys compare K-Pop bands – in Korean.
It often seems to me that Americans believe they invented racism, and that it is the only form of conflict between people. Maybe they forgot why the European settlers went there in the first place.
Anyway, one thing I do understand about the word “racist” in the American context is that it can mean anything at all the speaker wants it to mean. Intuitions, or motivated reasoning, about the thought behind the action, if there even is an action, is more than sufficient.
Come on TJ, cut it with the straw men. Don’t you realize what an idiot you sound like using those straw men fallacies? Gee you’re dumb.
But seriously…Why do you, and to some extent CT (though sometimes I’m not sure where CT is going/coming from…he’s kinda quantum that way….but just kinda), continue to be Mike’s bitch. You let him play his little sophistry games, you let him lead you where he wants you to go, you let HIM accuse YOU of using straw men arguments (the irony), you don’t hold him accountable for his past prevarications. Though I will say that lately, perhaps you’re trying…but you really need to try harder. It’s been 10 years of this crap. You present valid points, while not perfectly done, certainly in a more rational, honest, and mature manner than Mr. Clownnose (heh…mature), and then you let him steamroll you with every fallacy in the book. And he wrote the book (or two) on fallacies.
You will note that deep down inside Mike pretty much concedes that I am right on damn near everything I say to him. That’s why he’s afraid to engage me because I make him, in my admittedly pugnacious manner, to stick to facts. To either concede a point or to present a valid counter-argument to a point before allowing him to move on to the next piece of sophistry. Of course one can say (even I can say) that I am not ‘nice’ about it. But I am up front and clear in what I have so say. I don’t hide behind vagaries or play silly games with the facts or intentionally misinterpret things. So Mike runs away. He’s afraid to argue honestly and he’s afraid to address root issues/facts. At best he clutches his pearls but always retreats from an honest, philosophical discussion.
There’s a reason for this which I suggested itself as a subject of discussion because I believe in addressing root issues. There’s a greater root issue here that I raised the other day but no one was interested in going that low (that’s intended as a double entendre, just to be…uh…clear). Which I understand, to a point. This is similar to the reason that Mike refuses to engage with DH. DH does an excellent job of fisking these essays, with much more patience and perhaps time on his hands as well. DH puts a lot of time and effort into his comments. Any real philosopher, any honest man for that matter…which perhaps excludes modern philosophers, would greatly appreciate the input, engage in discussion with such a person. The need, the desire to try to understand, as much as possible, complex issues and such requires an open mind and a willingness to engage in discussion with people who hold a different point of view.
Sorry if that was a bit rambling but I gotta get back to work to pay the taxes that pay Mike’s salary, so it will have to do. Hopefully you understand what I’m getting at.
(though sometimes I’m not sure where CT is going/coming from…he’s kinda quantum that way….but just kinda)
Why, thank you! That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day! But I assure you, it’s unmerited; I’m sadly just classical, and quantum supremacy will forever be beyond me.
That’s the nicest thing anyone’s said to me all day!
Well, actually I said that yesterday, so….
But seriously, I do enjoy your points and such but just sometimes I get a little frustrated as to which thing it is we’re talking about. But that’s me. If I make this much effort to engage in something, I aspire to drive it to a point where either I disagree based on the unknowable (which is a lot of stuff) but gain an understanding from whence the other person’s perception of the unknowable is coming from OR I learn something, Now maybe I don’t learn at that exact instant in time (because I can be stubborn as well), but eventually I learn something that improves my understanding of the subject matter. Sometimes I believe dumb things because I haven’t heard, or more likely haven’t heard a good enough explanation for, the alternative. Thus why I seek differing perspectives. It’s all about me, see?
Ah. Well, my view on what we discuss here is that none of it is knowable, so I don’t bother pushing too hard unless I’m actually interested in a point.
There are individual recorded observations we can be sure of. They’re knowable. There is logic, and math. There are some generalisations and rules we can be reasonably sure of, at least within a simple, controlled environment under a narrow range of conditions – some physics (well, of the 5% of the universe that we think we can detect), chemistry, and a little biology.
Psychology is, as far as I can see, in much the same state as alchemy c. 1600; we’re on to a few relationships that could become solid, and we have a few repeatable observations, but we don’t have a causal model to build on.
Talking about social structures, economics, (“The only function of economic forecasting is to make astrology look respectable”), and politics is indeed up there with astrology. Sure, we can observe patterns, but the patterns change in detail, and until we have a much better handle on psychology, our understanding isn’t going to improve much.
We can falsify hypotheses pretty easily in most cases, by showing inconsistencies, but any hypothesis that survives multiple tests tends to be general, “common-sense”. Taxation on an item usually decreases sales of that item, but predicting the curve accurately is beyond us. Economic inequality is necessary for economic maintenance, much less growth, but any estimate of the impact of the spread of degrees of inequality on results has all the reliability of a horoscope.
And so I am content to move on pretty easily from topic to topic, confident that we reach the point of diminishing returns very quickly.
Ah. Well, my view on what we discuss here is that none of it is knowable, so I don’t bother pushing too hard unless I’m actually interested in a point.
Werner himself could not have said it better.
Yeah, I guess I am arguably insane according to the definition involving “doing the same thing over and over again…”
But I don’t really believe anything will change. Mike will continue to espouse his lefty platitudes and we will continue to provide trenchant criticism, which he will then mostly ignore.
Mike makes the same errors over and over again:
1) he has far too much faith in government and far too little faith in ordinary people
2) his understanding of economics is abysmal
3) he vastly overestimates the amount of racism in the U.S.
4) he often argues by motive rather than consequences, such as his argument that people who want to restrict immigration based on certain reasons he rejects must be motivated by racism
5) he tends to trust only far left media outlets and has trouble identifying and trusting neutral media sources
But, honestly, half the people I know think more or less like Mike, and I am able to remain friends with them. They are all good people, and mean well, as does Mike.
Agree.
But, honestly, half the people I know think more or less like Mike, and I am able to remain friends with them. They are all good people, and mean well, as does Mike.
Yes, I would say most people that I know think more or less like Mike. Even many ‘conservative’ and even conservative people. The thing is most of the people that I know who do think this way don’t put on airs of being intellectuals. Those few who do think of themselves that way mostly stopped thinking about these things when they were in college. They learned all that they needed to know and no matter how ridiculous it was, since it came from a sanctioned authority, anything outside that narrative is either wrong or something that they’re uncomfortable thinking about for very long. Among many of these people there’s a lot of rationalizing backwards from the status quo. Which is not a bad way to second guess one’s own perspectives. It should not be one’s standard for perceiving reality, however.
But generally speaking, in regards to people that I know, I try very hard to avoid these sorts of discussions at best and at worst don’t pursue them to the degree that I do here or anywhere else on line. It’s spaces like this where we <bshould be able to chase ideas down as far as they will go. But we need to do it honestly, arguing in good faith. Which I like to think I try to do, but please let me know if you think I’ve engaged in sophistry or other forms of prevarication. It’s why I come here.
And I know I’ve said this time and time again but it bears repeating, that Mike is employed by a publicly funded institution to do what he does in the manner that he does it is antithetical to what has made Western Civilization the overwhelming success that it is and has been for centuries now. Such things by themselves, independently funded I have absolutely no problem with. I still reserve the right to vehemently disagree with the ideas, but I do not disagree with the right for such ideas and institutions to exist. However, they need to exist on their own dime. They should not be funded by taxpayers and it is in my opinion a crime that we to any degree extract fees from young people for this nonsense. This student loan debt when used for useless classes that hold zero academic rigor is a moral outrage. But I suppose that’s JMNSHO.
In many cases racism is determined by motive. To use a non-policy analogy, if a white student fails a paper in my class because it is really bad paper, that is not racist. If a white student fails a paper in my class because I grade white students unfairly because I think they are all Nazis, then that is racist.
Also, are you sure you are not confusing racism with xenophobia?