by Lee Cokorinos
It is true that growing immigrant populations are transforming the United States, but one ancient aspect of Americana remains intact: racial supremacist dreams of a "white" nation. The notion that the United States was and should forever be a White Man's Country - once the accepted creed and rationale of the Republic - resurfaces in hysterical form and very prominent places in the national discourse. In academia, electoral politics, mass media, and revived racist movements on the ground, corporate-funded anti-immigrant forces combine with age-old anti-Black formations to rally against diversity as "a dire threat to ‘the core culture.'" White "nativist movements" are once again called forth to confront the "mortal danger" posed by The Other.
Prominent leaders of the anti-immigration movement would have us believe that not an ounce of racism lies behind their efforts. The most media-visible figures in this camp, such as Lou Dobbs, Pat Buchanan, Tom Tancredo and Victor Davis Hanson may argue the case for restricting, deporting, rounding up and cutting off public services to those "illegals" stigmatized as culturally backward, unhealthy potential terrorists. But they protest that their motives for doing so are as pure as the driven snow.
In their writings and media appearances, the leaders of the anti-immigration movement claim their politics are based not on a hatred of the racial Other but on their commitment to the rule of law, the integrity of "our culture," the objective findings of social science, or better employment prospects for American workers.
On page after page of In Mortal Danger, Tom Tancredo's diatribe against non-European immigrants and multiculturalism, the presidential candidate and congressman repeatedly complains that he and his colleagues have been unfairly painted as racist or had their arguments misconstrued as racist.
But alongside these complaints Tancredo's book drips with cultural condescension toward Mexican-Americans, Muslims and African-Americans. While he claims that illegality is the problem, Tancredo soon moves past this and calls for revoking the legal citizenship of what he terms Mexican-American "anchor babies." Conjuring up racist and sexist imagery, he declares that "gravid wombs should not guarantee free medical care." One wonders whether Tancredo, both of whose grandparents immigrated to the U.S. from Italy, would apply such terminology to his parents, and thus forfeit his own citizenship.
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