Gaddafi warns of a “black Europe”. Wow… just wow

Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi is a lunatic, and I don’t think anyone would disagree with that. However, it’s refreshing to know that he’s a racist asshole too:

Speaking on a visit to Italy, Col Gaddafi said Europe “could turn into Africa” as “there are millions of Africans who want to come in”.

Okay, sure. It’s absolutely justified to express concern over illegal immigration. I’m concerned about the recent (and continuing) influx of Sri Lankan refugees. Illegal immigration is both a threat to national security and unfair to the thousands of people who attempt to immigrate legally. That part isn’t where my objection lies.

This is:

“We don’t know what will happen, what will be the reaction of the white and Christian Europeans faced with this influx of starving and ignorant Africans,” Col Gaddafi said. “We don’t know if Europe will remain an advanced and united continent or if it will be destroyed, as happened with the barbarian invasions.”

Nice, Muammar. Europe used to be such a nice neighbourhood before all the damn niggers moved in and wrecked everything, eh?

There are serious problems happening in Africa. A great deal of them can be attributed to the effects of colonialization, with major foreign commercial interests exerting undue influence over the political system, with a vested interest in keeping Africans poor and economically shackled to those same commercial interests. The lack of a concerted effort to develop both physical and human resource infrastructure also plays a major role, as do the attitudes that spawn food as aid instead of making long-term investments. It’s a knotty problem that requires a multi-faceted approach to solution.

Building a fence around Europe to keep out the ‘barbarian nigger horde’ is a solution to exactly nothing. It’s in both Africa’s and Europe’s long-term interest to invest and develop to make the African countries thrive. Africa’s benefit is obvious – improved quality of life, decrease in disease and malnutrition, new products and services, a more educated populace, the list goes on. Europe, in turn, would gain a strong trading partner (with whom they might gain a position of privileged status for their help), would benefit from any technological developments made as a result (think agriculture and natural resource management, as a start), and would simultaneously decrease the risk of illegal immigration by poor, ignorant Africans because there would be fewer of them.

And in case you thought Gaddafi’s idiocy was confined to race bigotry…

Col Gaddafi’s visit to Rome was overshadowed by another controversial speech he made – to two groups of several hundred young Italian women, hired at a fee of 70 or 80 euros each from a local modelling agency. He told them that Islam should become the religion of Europe and gave them free copies of the Koran, after he had lectured them for an hour on the freedoms enjoyed by women in Libya.

Hmm… maybe this isn’t such a great time to be talking to European women about the virtues of an Islamic state:

On Tuesday, Kayhan, which acts as a mouthpiece for Iran’s conservative Islamic leadership, reiterated its attack, adding that the Italian-born French first lady deserved to die for supporting her. “This Italian prostitute’s indignation at Kayhan’s report came while she has had illegitimate relationships with different people before and after marrying [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy,” Kayhan said.

Ah yes, the religion of peace is at it again! Those crazy Iranian rascals…

The short answer is ‘yes’

I laughed my ass off when I saw this. That being said, obviously not everyone in the Tea Party is there because they are racist – smaller and more efficient government has nothing at all to do with race. However, due to its stubborn opposition to any program designed to level the playing field or correct for historical injustices, it tends to attract the racist fringe with open, monochromatic arms. In the same way that supporting a larger role for the federal government isn’t a gay thing, but homosexuals tend to fall on the left side of the political spectrum (because that’s where all the equal rights are).

A commenter pointed out something that didn’t occur to me right away: how racist do you have to be to print out signs and go looking for a black person? I’m trying to imagine their thought process:

“Okay, so we’re going to print out these signs and take them to the rally, right?”

“Yeah, that’ll show all those liberals that the Tea Party is about state’s rights and small government, not a thin veneer of politics hastily brushed over a rotten core of deep-seated xenophobia, unwarranted entitlement and good old-fashioned ignorance!”

“Wow, that was deep.”

“Thanks. I read the New York Times today, and just said the opposite of what was written there.”

“I wish I could read.”

“Hey Steve?”

“Yeah Larry?”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to just take these signs over to the houses of one of our many black friends and/or work colleagues and/or neighbours, rather than having to sleuth around at a rally to find the token fanny-pack-wearing dark-skinned guy at a rally of thousands of white people?”

“We don’t have any black friends and/or work colleagues and/or neighbours, Larry.”

“How come?”

“Uh… because of LIBERALS!”

“Yeah! Fuck those racist asshole liberal faggot commie Muslim terrorist Mexicans!”

“You said it, Steve.”

Russia doesn’t have a race problem

I once had a conversation with a good friend of mine who wanted to go on a trip with her (black) boyfriend to Russia to meet some of her family members. I suggested that perhaps that might not be such a good idea. She asked what I was talking about. I was talking about this:

More than 100 Russian skinheads have attacked a music festival in central Russia, reports say. At least 10 people were injured while attending the Tornado festival in Miass, in Russia’s Chelyabinsk region. The skinheads were reported to have been armed with truncheons and sticks when they launched their attack on the event, attended by some 3,000 people.

What I was actually talking about at the time was reports of ethnic Uzbeks and Kazakhs being assaulted on subways and busses by gangs of young neo-Nazis, but it was symptomatic of the larger problem. Russia has well-known economic problems, made even worse by the wildfires that destroyed much of the wheat crop this past summer. As I’ve said since I started this blog, any time there’s an economic crisis the first people to be blamed are those who look different from the majority group. It happened in Uganda when Idi Amin drove out the South Asian population, almost immediately turning a prosperous country into an economic ruin by removing an entire class of workers. It’s happening in Arizona, where draconian laws are being signed into law to discriminate against Latinos, and it’s happening with violent assaults in Russia.

There is, of course, a non-trivial irony of the existence of Russian neo-Nazis. Somewhere in the area of 20 million Russians (~6 million military, ~14 million civilians) died fighting the Nazis. There’s an argument to be made that they didn’t fight the Nazis so much as the invading German army, but at any rate Russia is no friend to the Nazis. It’s then bizarre to see the mantle of the master race be picked up by the youth of Russia, but since race bigotry is fundamentally non-logical it’s not really that strange.

We can’t separate race from economics, and until we recognize that a rising tide raises all boats, we’re going to keep falling back into this trap.

Movie Friday: Peter Chao

Sometimes ridicule is a powerful weapon. Peter Chao seems to recognize this:

While I am definitely not a fan of blackface, especially when it is divorced from its historical context, I actually laughed watching this video. Not because it’s funny to make light of black stereotypes, but because those same stereotypes are being held up to ridicule here. It also pokes fun at the “I’m not racist” meme, showing that merely saying it does not make it so.

Of course, not everyone gets the satirical element…

Of course, the meta-joke in all of this, is that “Peter Chao” is not the guy’s actual name. He is New Brunswick-born Davin Tong, speaks with unaccented (or Canadian-accented if you prefer) English, and plays this character on YouTube specifically to highlight the absurdity of racism. While his take on things isn’t exactly my own, I am glad to see that race is making its way into popular discussion.

Enjoy!

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It’s a good day for Kenya

More good news!

Kenya has adopted a new constitution, more than three weeks after it was overwhelmingly approved in a national referendum… The document provides for greater checks on presidential powers and more regional devolution. It also recognises the UN human rights charter and creates a second parliamentary chamber – the senate.

It may seem a little unusual for me to provide commentary on a purely political story on this blog, which is purportedly about race, free speech, and religion (although somehow gay shit keeps creeping in… paging Dr. Freud). I’ve been following this story for a number of months now without commenting on it, but I can tell you that it’s highly appropriate.

First, there is a fundamental (and racist) misunderstanding we have in North America about Africa. The first thing to consider is the fact that Africa is not a country. You didn’t have to look much farther than the promotion of the World Cup to see that Europe and North America seem to consider Africa to be a homogeneous entity, but it is peopled by vastly different cultures and histories. There are modern democracies like Egypt, Algeria, South Africa, Ghana, Nigeria; there are corrupt dictatorships like Zimbabwe and the Congo; and there are dictatorial theocracies like Sudan and Somalia (the latter without a central government of any kind). Much of the strife plaguing the continent can be traced back to exploitation by colonial powers who used (and continue to use) the countries of Africa as a source of material wealth without building up the infrastructure needed to make the countries self-sufficient. Without the ability to harness their own natural wealth, the people of Africa are at the mercy of warlord-like governments who are largely controlled by foreign corporate regimes.

By ratifying a constitution, one that decentralizes the powers of the presidency and creates both a bill of rights and a second branch of government (ah, checks and balances), Kenya has taken a step towards true independence and freedom for its people. Such protections allow Kenya to (eventually) become a player on the international stage, much as Uganda and Ethiopia once were, and challenge the prevailing winds of prejudice against the continent.

Second, the ratification of this document was plagued by violent opposition, hate speech accusations, and (of course) religious conflict:

Church leaders who organised Sunday’s rally have also accused the government of being behind the grenade attack which led to a stampede. At least 20 people were injured in Sunday’s blast. Many Kenyans doubt the Church leaders’ claim that the government could be behind the blasts, especially as it seems most people are already backing the “Yes” campaign, says the BBC’s Will Ross in Nairobi… Sunday’s rally was organised by Christian groups opposed to a draft constitution because it retains recognition of existing Islamic courts and includes a clause on abortion.

But despite the obstacles, and despite Kenya’s entrenched religiousness (see? more gay shit!), the measure passed with a healthy 2/3 majority. This is the right step for Kenya, the right step for Africa, and the right step for the rest of the world.

“Doctor Laura” at the Michael Richards/Mel Gibson school of etiquette

The really frustrating thing about blogging is that sometimes a week will go by where a million bloggable things happen, and I’m left with the choice of either commenting on them 2 weeks late, or flooding you with Facebook/Twitter updates every 5 minutes. As a result, I am writing about this story right after it happens, but you’re not going to read this until today:

Dr. Laura Schlessinger, the talk show host who recently apologized for saying the N-word 11 times to a caller on the air, said Tuesday she plans to give up her radio show when her contract is up the end of this year.

For those of you who don’t follow talk radio (and Science bless you for that), Laura Schlessinger is a PhD in physiology who hosts a radio show in which she verbally abuses people who call in for help. Why anyone would care what a physiologist has to say about religion (she is, big surprise, a fundamentalist Christian) or relationships, or anything besides physiology, is beyond my understanding. But they do, for whatever reason, and she hands out bad advice.

On the show in question, a woman called in to ask Dr. Laura what she should do about her husband’s friends. It seems that the husband and his friends think that they have license, by virtue of the woman’s race, to make racist comments. It’s the whole “I married a black woman, and therefore I am not racist, and therefore I can say racist things and you’re not allowed to be offended” argument. The caller was looking for the proper way to broach the subject with her spouse.

In a fit of… I really don’t know what, Dr. Laura decided instead to accuse the woman of being “too sensitive”.

“Black guys use it all the time. Turn on HBO and listen to a black comic, and all you hear is nigger, nigger, nigger. I don’t get it. If anybody without enough melanin says it, it’s a horrible thing. But when black people say it, it’s affectionate. It’s very confusing.”

I’d laugh, but I’ve heard this same stupid argument from my own friends. It’s either that, or saying that it’s okay to say it because it’s in a song lyric, or that somehow “nigg-a” is different from “nigg-er“. These are all profoundly stupid arguments, and all I hear when someone says them is “I want the license to say things that I know to be racist and hurtful, and it’s your fault if you’re offended.” Congratulations, you are making the same argument as those brave freedom-fighters from Courtenay, and also rapists.

I’ve talked about the meaning and history of this word before. In essence, the word has no proper context that makes it not unbelievably offensive. It is rooted in the idea that Africans are not human, and that the sub-human treatment they received at the hands of their slave owners was justifiable. In my opinion, nobody should get to say it outside a discussion of its historical and/or sociological significance. Dr. Laura pretends as though there’s never been a good reason offered for why it’s ‘okay’ for black people to use the word, and that it’s a mystery why white people (and especially white people) aren’t allowed to say it.

I read a bunch of coverage about this issue, which I’m not going to link to because they mostly said the same thing. There was one commentary that I thought was interesting and worth sharing. A blogger mentioned the similarity between black people and the dynamic of a family. I have issues with my family, as we all do, particularly with my father. Because I was raised in a single-parent household, my dad and I frequently quarreled over pretty much everything. This, I gather, is normal parent/child stuff (incidentally, for those curious, things between my father and I are now better than they’ve been since I was a small child – growing up will do that). I used to fantasize about telling him off in front of a large crowd of his friends, perhaps at his funeral. Let’s stop this here, and simply conclude that I am not a daddy’s boy. That being said, I will not tolerate anyone speaking ill of him, even my other family members.

There are things we can say to and about our family members that sound (and may be) incredibly hurtful. But let someone from outside the family come in and try saying the same things, and sparks fly. Someone who is not in full possession of all of the facts, and who is not part of the dynamic, has no license to say things they may have heard just because someone else says them. In the same way, it’s highly inappropriate for any non-black person to use the word nigger, even if many black people think it’s appropriate to use with each other. Those who pretend that they don’t understand why this is so, and belligerently go out of their way to say it anyway, have suspect motives for doing so.

So am I saying Dr. Laura is racist? Let me answer that in this way…

DR. LAURA SCHLESSINGER IS A RACIST HARPY BITCH, AND THE WORLD WOULD BE A MEASURABLY BETTER PLACE IF SHE HAD DIED AT BIRTH.

I hope that clears up any ambiguity you may have at what I think of Dr. Laura.

Interestingly, she stumbled into another wheelhouse of mine when she said that she was quitting to restore her First Amendment rights:

“I want to be able to say what’s on my mind and in my heart, and what I think is helpful and useful without somebody getting angry — some special interest group deciding this is a time to silence a voice of dissent, and attack affiliates and sponsors,” she said.

Here’s the text of the First Amendent:

“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. Also, you can spread racist speech, and private citizens are not allowed to be upset, or protest against your stupidity in legal ways.”

Can you figure out what part I added?

Tim Wise – not just a name

I’m floored.

I’m stunned.

Flabbergasted am I.

Over the past couple of days, a debate has popped up on the comment thread of this Monday’s think-piece about my strategies to combat racism. In brief, I stated three concrete approaches that I think will, over time, markedly improve racial dialogue and equality. A commenter expressed his feeling that while he thought my overall outline was good, that the philosophy underpinning it was false and counter-productive:

“But when we have 3 generations of emotional, white guilt laden liberals dominating the debate with no end in sight, sadly this will never happen. The systemic views of those who believe we live in a hugely unjust world will not allow it.”

The commenter was very adamant in his position that the reason for racial disparities was the fault of liberal policies and the mindset that non-white people face systematic discrimination the puts them immediately behind the 8-ball from the get-go.

“Once you realize that most Conservatives couldn’t give a damn about what race you are, and dont see things through the blinders of race/gender/class, the sooner you’ll realize that we could be closer to a society with completely marginalized racism.”

Ah yes, the old “just ignore race and it will go away” canard that I’ve been railing against since I first started posting about race. Well aside from the fact that conservatives do give a damn (take a trip to any conservative-voting part of the country, you’ll see what I mean), even if they didn’t it wouldn’t matter. Racial prejudice is real, and it’s neither enlightened nor noble to pretend as though it’s not.

Why am I so surprised? Because that’s exactly what Tim Wise thinks:

After all, to deny that people of color face unequal opportunities in America—due either to the legacy of past racism, the persistence of racism today, or some other set of structural barriers—is to leave explanations for racial achievement gaps that are racist by definition. If black folks really do have equal opportunity and yet still don’t achieve at levels equal to their white counterparts, then there must be something wrong with them as black people. Either genetically or culturally they must be inferior to whites. There is no other possible explanation.

I can’t recommend to you enough that you take the time and read this article. If you have enjoyed reading any of my previous discussions on race and race issues, this guy hits all of the high points.

But lest you and I on the left feel too smugly superior, Tim follows up with an absolutely brilliant examination of liberal racism (or what I term “polite racism”)

Beyond the personal biases that exist to some extent within all of us (including those who are progressive), liberals and those on the left operate within institutional spaces and even in our political activism in ways that contribute to systemic racial inequity. This we do through four primary mechanisms. The first is a well-intended but destructive form of colorblindness. The second is an equally destructive colormuteness. These mean, quite literally, a tendency among many on the white liberal-left to neither see nor give voice to race and racism as central issues in our communities and the institutions where we operate, or their connection to and interrelationship with other issues. Both liberal/left colorblindness and colormuteness perpetuate the marginalization of people of color and their concerns, in the larger society and within progressive formations for social change.

Tim expresses everything in these two articles that I’ll try to flesh out over the next however many years I can keep blogging. This is required reading, folks. If you’ve ever said “I want racism to go away” and meant it, these two articles are a great place to start. But of course… you should keep reading here too 😛

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Three steps towards ending black-white racism

Feeling like I had been picking on religion a bit too much, I decided to re-post a series of notes I wrote during Black History Month in February, 2010. This is the 6th and final installment of that series. Next week I will go back to frothing at the mouth about how stupid everyone who disagrees with my outlook on religion is.

This post originally appeared on Facebook on Friday, February 19th, 2010.

Racism is still alive and well, as I established in previous posts. We’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to discussions about race and the role that it plays in our society. However, I think we’ve been going about it the wrong way. As I said earlier, it used to be child’s play to identify the racists in our society. They were burning crosses (and apparently still are in Nova Scotia), they were using racist language, they were actively discriminating against black people. Those days are, thankfully, over. Aside from a few incidents that bubble up from time to time, black people don’t face the kinds of brutal treatment they did just decades ago.

But racism’s not done. Like a herpes infection, just because it’s been fought down to sub-symptomatic levels doesn’t mean it can’t come back with a vengeance. As I outlined previously, we can still see some residual effects of racism apparent in the makeup of our economic and political leaders, job discrimination – both as unregulated restrictions by individual employers and in the form of well-intentioned, necessary, but ultimately fundamentally racist programs like Affirmative Action – and our portrayal in popular media. Behaving as though racism is no longer a problem only allows the infection to persist and become more deeply entrenched.

In order to completely eradicate racism, important steps need to be taken. In my mind, these steps fall into three main categories. The first is that black people need to move into prominent positions of power and authority. The second is that we take some ownership of our society, including the negative parts, and realize that racism is everyone’s problem, not just white people’s. Finally, white people need to start talking about race, racism, and their own fears and concerns without fear of reprisal. I will elaborate on each of these in order.

First, I think it’s of primary importance that black people be highly visible in positive, influential places. Stereotypes about what “blackness” is stem not only from old-time racism, but from the perpetuation of those same roles in popular media. BET and other music stations are prime culprits, FOX News is about as guilty as an organization can get before donning a white hood, but we’re doing it to ourselves too. The next step, I believe, is to change the connotative understanding of what it is to be “black”. It’s hard to say “black people are lazy criminals” when you work next to, or for, an intelligent black person. It’s even harder when most of the black people you know are strong and successful in your own field. I’ve tried my best, and continue to try, to enact this in my own field where there aren’t very many black people (although, hilariously, my manager and one of the senior scientists on the 9-person team here are also black).

Part of this movement has to be being competent and intelligent, definitely, but a similarly important component is that we have to be visible. Not just present in photographs, or around at meetings, but we have to wear our blackness on our sleeves, forcing those around us to confront the cognitive dissonance that, ultimately, destroys stereotypes. Barack Obama, Neil Degrasse-Tyson, and Will Smith are three examples that readily come to mind of people who don’t hide their race and are anti-stereotypical and prominent in their respective fields. This step will have the unintended benefit of providing positive role modeling to black kids who otherwise wouldn’t have examples to look to in their own communities.

Second, I think it’s time to drop the adversarial “us versus them” mindset. A lot of things are legitimately the fault of racism, or oppression by a majority group. The more we circle the wagons and cry “racism wolf” every time there’s an issue, we dilute real complaints. It’s similar to comparisons to Nazi-ism. There are real honest-to-spaghetti-monster Nazis out there in the world. Every time we draw a Hitler mustache on a picture of Bush, or give a police officer who tells you to pour out your beer the Fascist salute, we move a serious problem further away from the shock and outrage it deserves, and indirectly make serious threats seem less scary.

More important than that, however, is that we need to start recognizing that we are part of the system just as much as any white person is. We perpetuate our own stereotypes by conforming to racial roles, we ostracize those who behave like an outsider. Instead, we need to embrace the idea that our distinctiveness is part of the larger culture. This goes hand-in-hand with the first point – it’s harder to hate someone who is an active part of your own in-group. I am not, by any means, saying that we stop being different, but instead that we put the difference in context of those things we have in common with other groups of people.

Finally, and this is the only one that I haven’t heard other people say a thousand times before me, we need to let white people come to the table. White people are, understandably, scared and unsure about how to approach the topic of racism. For generations, white people ran this country. Gradually, however, more and more non-white faces began popping up in the landscape. While some reacted with open hostility, the rest were left with the uneasy feeling of watching as their power and influence slowly melted away. For an illustration of this, cruise the Craigslist “Rants and Raves” section for Vancouver. There are some REALLY angry white people on that forum, and the majority of them are saying the same thing: “this is our turf, stop taking away our power.” Of course they’re factually incorrect about whose land this is and who built this country, but the fact remains that being white doesn’t carry as much currency as it used to. Couple that with accusations of racism, bigotry and malicious ignorance every time you make any statement about race, and you are suddenly made to feel guilty and responsible for the existence of a system that you were born into without any idea of how to make it better.

Someone needs to start speaking up on behalf of white people. They are victims of the same system, regardless of the fact that it was largely the responsibility of their ancestors. So what? They hurt too. They are made to feel as though they have sinned, but are given few, if any, workable options of how to ameliorate the situation. I’d imagine that most white people hate racism just as much as black people do, even though they are rarely the victims. Not only that, but white people have legitimate beefs and concerns of their own related to race. Let’s remember that even MLK always made a point of acknowledging the role that white brothers and sisters played in the civil rights movement. Conversely, white people have no MLK or Malcolm or Jesse Jackson. Right now the only people speaking on behalf of white people’s issues are demagogues like Rush Limbaugh and far-right militant movements like the KKK and other White Power groups, which puts even legitimate criticism of the treatment of whites in the same category as white supremacy (not only that, but if they’re the only ones speaking for me, then I’m perhaps inclined to agree with them on a few other things). This is not to say that the races are “equal” in political standing, economic influence, or even how we think of them colloquially. However, if we are going to move forward together it’s important that we all have a voice in the progress.

So, like Al Gore at the end of An Inconvenient Truth I’m trying to lay out a concrete map of how to take ourselves back from the brink of crisis and move into a better, brighter future for all people. First, we need to redefine “black” – pushing it out, in a positive way, into the limelight by having prominent and well-placed black people talk about race. Second, we need to take an active part in the society at large, taking ownership of our important role in shaping the culture. Third, white people need to start talking about race, and non-white people need to start listening and discussing. Done properly, these steps will ensure that we can actually have a “post-racial” world, rather than just sticking our heads in the sand and pretending.

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Vancouver doesn’t have a race problem

You had to know I’d bring this all back home, right? I’ve talked before about Canada’s issues with race, and more specifically Vancouver’s, and as I’ve pointed out these aren’t isolated incidents – the issues continue:

Two men were caught on camera writing racially inflammatory graffiti aimed at people of Chinese origin, as well as derogatory comments toward police, on the wall of the Empire Centre parkade in Richmond.

Those of you not from the area may not know that Richmond, a suburb of Vancouver, has a large Chinese population that has exploded in recent years. It is perhaps more famous for housing the Olympic speed skating oval. There has been historical tension in the region between white Canadians and Canadians of Chinese descent. It comes certainly as no surprise to me that incidents like this are happening.

Police were able to identify and arrest one of the vandals, and will likely have found the other by the time this makes its way up online. It’s good that the police are able to catch the perpetrators, but that’s not a solution to the underlying problem of racial tension. By no means am I suggesting that arresting criminals is futile, but it is not a method that approaches crime prevention.

Nor is beefing up security:

Two Jewish religious institutions in Vancouver that have been targets of hate crimes have been given federal money to increase security around their buildings. On Thursday Public Safety Minister Vic Toews said the Schara Tzedeck synagogue and the Ohel Ya’akov Community Kollel would receive $20,000 from the Communities at Risk: Security Infrastructure Pilot Program.

Again, far be it from me to suggest that it’s a waste of time or money to try and secure the safety and property of people who are being actively persecuted by hate groups. It’s every person’s right to be able to protect him/herself from violence. Hate-based violence affects the entire community, both those who are the targets of hate and those who are merely empathetic and humanistic people. We should do what we can to secure our safety, and punish those who break the law…

…but we shouldn’t for a second think that approach is sufficient.

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Arizona doesn’t have a race problem

While I have mentioned it tangentially, I haven’t devoted an entire post to what is probably the biggest racial civil rights struggle since the 1960s: Arizona’s new immigration law. In brief, the law requires police officers to detain anyone they suspect of being an illegal immigrant. If a suspected person cannot prove they aren’t an illegal immigrant, they can be arrested and put in jail. When I say that the law requires police to do this, I mean just that – a component of the bill is that if an officer fails to interrogate someone, and a citizen notices it, the officer can be found in dereliction of his/her duty. Basically, the reins of law are turned over to the most paranoid and least informed members of the populace of Arizona.

The reflexive question that everyone immediately asks is “how do you tell if someone looks like an illegal immigrant?” Good question: let’s ask the governor who signed the bill

Huh… even she doesn’t know. Not to worry though, she says. People will have their civil rights protected, as it says in the bill:

“This act shall be implemented in a manner consistent with federal laws regulating immigration, protecting the civil rights of all persons and respecting the privileges and immunities of United States citizens.”

Handy! What about this right?

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”

If the law respects the right to be innocent until proven guilty, and the constitution outlaws unreasonable seizure, then the immigration bill is pretty clearly meaningless. After all, if you cannot prove that someone is illegal (which is the standard of innocent until proven guilty), you cannot compel them to prove they are illegal (that pesky 5th Amendment) and you’re not allowed to arrest them arbitrarily, then the bill is moot.

Well, the federal government didn’t argue that case, but still managed to block the bill’s enforcement, arguing instead that immigration policy is the purview of the federal government and that the law went outside the state’s jurisdiction. Of course, Arizona plans to appeal:

Lawyers for Republican governor Jan Brewer and the Arizona government filed their appeal at the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco on Thursday. “I have also asked the 9th Court to expedite the briefing schedule and its ruling, since Congress and the president have once again failed to act,” Ms Brewer said in a statement.

I want to take a moment to talk about the people of Arizona. While I think they’ve made a frighteningly poor decision and are wearing their entrenched racism out on their sleeves, I am loath to condemn them outright. Arizona has major economic problems (which this bill will only make worse, but we’re not dealing with rational people here), and as I’ve said before, racism will bubble up from beneath the surface whenever there is economic hardship. Illegal immigrants are a convenient scapegoat in times of crisis, especially if they are brown-skinned. While people affirm up and down that this isn’t a race issue, it strains credulity to think that the cops are going to be on the hunt for illegal French and German immigrants.

Especially with this guy in charge…

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