The Latino Threat
LEO CHAVEZ: Those who foment terror of the “threat” of brown babies are not likely to listen to facts when they have deep-rooted prejudices to express. Among the biggest threats undocumented immigrants pose is that their vulnerability and our scapegoating of them for taking jobs we won’t do allow American citizens to expose themselves as hypocrites.
I LIKE THE WRITEUP OF THIS BOOK THE LATINO THREAT and I like, too, the existence of it, as it demonstrates that more and more sensible talk on immigration and Latinos and Hispanix and migrants and our history and our place here and our struggle here is making its way into the mainstream and about TIME
Leo R. Chavez, a cultural anthropology professor at UC Irvine, is patient and careful. No matter how racist and stupid and infuriating the fearmongers like the Minutemen vigilantes and assorted right-wing radio hosts and columnists are about the so-called Latino threat, Chavez meticulously reiterates or quotes their charges and then tidily corrects them, unfortunately not quite so energetically and amusingly as the doctor in Kurosawa’s “Red Beard,” who breaks the villains’ arms and then immediately mends them.
As Chavez proceeds through his study in “The Latino Threat,” he doesn’t free us to rage; he keeps us focused on the Styrofoam horse the anti-immigrants have glued together from spit and fearful imagination and wheeled into our fair Troy:
“In the final analysis, the discourse surrounding Latina fertility and reproduction is actually about more than reproduction. It is also about reinforcing a characterization of whites as the legitimate Americans who are being supplanted demographically by less-legitimate Latinos. For this reason, the empirical evidence examined here may be easily dismissed by those who prefer perpetuating a discourse that undermines Latino claims of citizenship.”
That is, he knows those who foment terror of the “threat” of brown babies are not likely to listen to facts when they have deep-rooted prejudices to express. Among the biggest threats undocumented immigrants pose is that their vulnerability and our scapegoating of them for taking jobs we won’t do allow American citizens to expose themselves as hypocrites.
Not only do we fear illegal immigrants and, of course, continue to hire them for wages and under conditions few citizens would accept, but we also demonize them and, no more decently, discount the real contributions of legal immigrants as well as of the multigenerational citizens who happen to have Spanish-sounding last names.
The whole article was good to read, and I look forward to checking the book out.
i take faith with what you say nezua. there is always the need for pragmatic discourse for a solution to be found with anything. the convolution of addressing human situations (in this case immigration), the scope of “not right” by “special interest” groups and government, the ignorance displayed and insisted on, the easily lead, is so much more than i can understand. i just assume it is about a border, position, distraction, about power? obviously it is not about the individual’s life, continually resulting in personal catastrophic consequences.
i am not subject to the harshness of the reality’s, that is a migrant workers life. i will not, in thought or deed, do anything to contribute to the struggle or to the injustice done to them.
i am not afraid of a brown baby, but i am afraid for them. a brown baby is so beautiful. i am not afraid of an immigrant, but i do respect their courage, spirit, hard work, and loyalty to family…the mexican, spanish, latino/chicano, indian, are all beautiful cultures i want to learn from.
i come to your blog and i am learning, well trying to. immigration was not something i thought about, but today it is.