What's all this fuss about illegal
immigrants? It seems that the xenophobes are back for a command performance.
The minutemen, those self-deputized, modern-day fugitive-slave
catchers, stand ready at the border to arrest, shoot and kill
Mexicans, ostensibly for the good of the nation. Individuals
such as cable-TV commentator Lou Dobbs further degrade America's
journalistic standards through their anti-immigrant, anti-Latino
invectives. States and localities enact harsh anti-immigrant
laws, then react with befuddlement when the migrant workers don't
return, and the crops are ruined because no one is available
to harvest them. Meanwhile, politicians, hungry for votes and
eager to bring out the worst in the American people, sound the
clarion call to erect a giant fence on the U.S.-Mexico border
that supposedly will make all of America's problems vanish.
Scapegoating is a time-tested American tradition,
and the concept of the scapegoat has followed humankind throughout
history. It
has served as the means by which a society may transfer its sins
and cleanse itself. Ancient and contemporary societies alike
have utilized the scapegoat as the personification of their hatred,
a receptacle into which groups and social systems pour their
fears and frustrations. Ancient societies engaged in the practice
as part of custom and ritual. During the day of atonement, a
goat was chosen by lot. The priest placed his hands on the head
of the goat, and confessed the sins of the community. The goat—or
scapegoat—was cast off, released into the wilderness, and
the people were cleansed of their sins. Through the ritual transfer
of the sins of the community to the goat, or any material object
of choice, the community was left feeling purged and guiltless.
In the modern context, scapegoating involves
a far more rational — and
far less ritualistic — process. In many instances scapegoats
serve to preserve the status quo. However, in the end, sacrificing
the scapegoat does not solve a society's problems.
The social psychologist, Eliot Aronson, developed the scapegoat
theory of prejudice, also called the displaced aggression theory.
According to Aronson's theory, people who find themselves in
adverse situations may be inclined to lash out at the source
of their problems. However, it is often difficult for people
to retaliate against the direct cause of their frustrations.
Therefore, these individuals or groups will project their frustrations
onto others, particularly those who are hated, visible and powerless.
An important example of this phenomenon is the persecution and
attempted total annihilation of Jews during the Nazi regime in
Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
Clearly, scapegoats are the victims of a highly psychological
process. However, psychology alone does not adequately explain
the forces at play. Indeed, scapegoating involves political and
economic factors as well. Under the economic and political competition
model, when resources are relatively scarce, the dominant group
in society will try to exploit a minority for material gain.
Discrimination and prejudice are heightened during times of tension
and increased competition over limited resources.
For example, Carl Hovland and Robert Sears determined that in
a given year between 1882 and 1930, there was a direct relationship
between the price of cotton and the number of lynchings of Blacks.
As the price of cotton decreased, the number of lynchings increased.
Implicit, is the assumption that during depressed economic conditions,
a society experiences heightened frustrations.
Further, in the aftermath of the Tokyo Earthquake of 1923, which
claimed the lives of 100,000 people, several thousand Koreans
were brutally massacred. Apparently, there were rumors that Koreans
were attacking and killing Japanese, plundering, and setting
fires. More important was the existence of racial hatred stemming
from the influx of Korean labor.
The group in power is able to maintain its
dominance, to a degree, through the process of "divide and conquer," that is,
forming false alliances with other oppressed and marginalized
groups. Through this process, Southern aristocracy was able to
convince poor whites to fight and die for the Confederacy, in
an effort to perpetuate a system of slavery that rendered the
labor of poor whites superfluous and kept them in poverty. And
in Civil War-era New York City, the Irish — who competed
with African Americans for the bottom rung of the socio-economic
ladder — lynched Blacks out of anger over the military
draft enacted by Congress.
In the modern-day American context, Blacks, Latinos, Asian-Americans,
Muslims and people of Arab descent (or perceived Muslims and
Arabs), gays and lesbians and other groups rotate for the title
of scapegoat du jour. As people in power keep the populace focused
on one or more of these groups at any given time, crimes are
committed in high places and go unnoticed. That's by design.
Now, the issue of so-called illegal immigration is in the spotlight.
It is far easier to blame your unemployment or low wages on
the person who picks the fruit, buses the tables, delivers the
pizza or mows the lawn, than to focus on the systemic problems
in society. Rather than make unsubstantiated claims about undocumented
workers who jump the border and steal jobs away from native-born
citizens, let us focus on what actually matters: the United States
is experiencing the largest transfer of wealth in its history.
As a result of regressive conservative economic policies, pro-corporate
tax breaks and globalization, the gap between rich and poor is
expanding.
And the American Dream is an illusion. As the Pew Charitable
Trusts recently reported, there is far less economic mobility
in the United States than was previously thought. In fact, America
is less economically mobile than many other nations, including
Canada, France, the Scandinavian countries, and Germany.
Median household income has declined over the past thirty years,
and the present generation is worse off than the generation that
preceded it. Between 1972 and 2001, the income of people in the
top 1 percent grew by 87 percent. For people at the very top
- the 99.99th percentile - the income gain was 181 percent. By
contrast, the bottom 20 percent grew by only 3 percent.
The top 1 percent of households owns almost twice as much of
the nation's corporate wealth as they did 15 years ago. Between
1978 and 2005, CEO pay increased from 35 times an average worker's
pay to 262 times, making more in an hour than a worker makes
in a month. Meanwhile, in 2004, 23 million people used food stamps,
according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, up from 17 million
in 2000. Further, nearly 47 million Americans, or 16 percent
of the population, were without health insurance in 2005.
Building a wall on the Mexico border, making English the official
language and denying legal and social services to undocumented
aliens will not cure these ills. The wall idea was tried and
failed in Berlin, Belfast and other places, just as it is doomed
to failure in Israel and Gaza.
During this time of discontent in the land,
it is convenient to scapegoat Latinos, now the largest "minority" group,
in a nation in which 100 million people, one-third of the population
and growing, are of color. Society will be able to tackle social
injustice and economic inequality only when we ignore the smokescreens
and diversions. Only when we resist the temptation to scapegoat
will we begin to address the myriad crises plaguing the nation.
When they have all of us fighting over the crumbs, the loaf is
much more easily stolen.
BC Columnist David A. Love is an attorney
based in Philadelphia, and a contributor to the Progressive
Media Project and McClatchy-Tribune
News Service. He contributed to the book, States of
Confinement: Policing, Detention and Prisons (St. Martin's
Press, 2000). Love is a former spokesperson for the Amnesty
International UK National Speakers Tour, and organized the
first national police brutality conference as a staff member
with the New York-based Center for Constitutional Rights. He
served as a law clerk to two Black federal judges. Click
here to contact Mr. Love. |