I usually try to avoid anything political here, but I can’t always succeed. I saw something on the news today that I just have to vent about because, well - a favorite webcomic sums it up pretty well here:
This morning on CNN, there was an article commenting on immigration rights marches, that inevitably involve undocumented immigrants, demanding immigration reform measures to be top priority for the next American president. The title of the article was: “Mexican flag waving’s one bad tactic,” and it was written by Latino-American opinion writer Ruben Navarrette, Jr. And here’s where I begin to take issue: first - an opinion piece, which wasn’t labeled as such, simply does not belong among the top headlines on a news website, where it blends in with facts and figures and purports to be fact unless you look closely enough (which most people reading the news, sadly, do not) - one person’s opinion is not fact to be taken along with the daily news. But that’s just the beginning.
Reading the article it doesn’t take long to realize that this opinion piece is nothing more than a thinly-veiled screed against immigration-rights reform and activism to that end, and a particularly insidious form of it no less. Let’s take the first sentence that jumps out, from the first paragraph:
…illegal immigrants are in no position to demand anything, except maybe a window seat on the deportation bus..
So here, the essence of the argument is basically that the best strategy for marginalized populations is to stay silent, and just really really hope that things will change for the better for them. And then if they hope hard enough (and, of course, quietly and out of the way of the white/privileged majority), things really will change! Because that’s how things have always changed in this country, right? Minorities and marginalized populations have quietly and politely crept up to the master’s table and asked, piece by piece, for some shadow of equality that ‘they’ should ‘just be happy with’ already.
Fucking wrong. The essence of the article was pretty simple at its core - though veiled in journalistic eloquence: how dare you take to the streets and make yourselves visible, demanding rights and justice? Navarrette’s resentment towards the people taking to the streets was clear from the beginning of the article - no matter how hard he tried to hide it; the entire piece parroted the dangerous and ugly sentiments of the people on the wrong side of the civil rights movement, and then the women’s rights movement and gay rights movements, that ‘these people’ should ‘learn their place,’ and worst, he perpetuates the circular logic of marginalization: that silenced populations have no voice because there’s some virtue in their silence.
Real and lasting change comes from running through the process — illegal immigrants becoming legal residents, and legal residents becoming U.S. citizens who can vote and run for office.
Well, in a perfect world this might be right - except that here the process is broken, racist, and slanted against people who have for whatever reason come to this country without documentation. It’s basically impossible, without some type of immigration reform, to take Mr. Navarrette’s advice - so here’s our argument: Don’t engage in activism for immigration reform, just go and get citizenship, which, because of our racist system, is impossible and will be impossible without serious immigration reform. Brilliant.
If Navarrette had his way, undocumented immigrants would stay comfortably away from his world view and off of his neighborhood streets - they wouldn’t be out waving flags and demanding the rights and justice that every human being deserves based on the fact that they are human beings, regardless of citizenship, nationality, ethnicity, race, gender, sexuality, religion, or any other category or classification. If Navarrette got his way, he could continue to construct them as second-class human beings, as less-worthy of rights and respect, and he could continue to expect them to cower and be somehow grateful for whatever tiny movement on immigration reform manages to come through the US government process.
I sincerely hope he won’t get his way.
But, you say, Navarrette is Latino-American, so surely, this can’t be an example of racism. Surely, you remind me, he speaks on behalf of the undocumented immigrants’ “best interests.” Well aside from the fact that nobody but oneself speaks on behalf of one’s own best interests - this is, I think, a most insidious example of our system’s deep racism. Racism and privelege, or working for the greater good? Let me quote Navarrette again:
So which came first — the chicken or the huevos rancheros?
It seems to me that this article was nothing more than racist propaganda, under the guise of “news,” further under the guise of “advice on ‘good civics’”.
The most dangerous part of this article is that it’s just too easy for people to read it and say, hey here’s this Latino-American guy who agrees with me, and it’s on CNN, so it’s not racist and it must be right, I guess it’s okay to think this way.
Well it’s not, and Mr. Navarrette may have done a lot more harm than he’ll ever realize - so shame on him, but even more than that, shame on you CNN, for printing this nonsense and tacitly consenting to it alongside news headlines and, in the minds of god knows how many people, thereby making it fact.
