Drawing the line
In response to recent speech acts in California, as summarized by George Skelton in the L.A. Times.
Racism, like other poisons, tends to be odorless, tasteless, invisible. It collects in our words and accumulates in our laws. Undetected and untreated, racism eventually attacks the heart of our society: the premise that all men are created equal.
In retrospect, racism is easy to detect. One need only go looking for bodies, whether of corpses hanging from trees or families on sale in public markets as “24/7 workers.” But in the present tense, our prejudices are far less obvious.
In the California of 2005, you will not find the racism that we now associate with the American South of 1805. But if you listen carefully to the hearts of men, you’ll hear it, all the same, beating its telltale drum. The drum of civil war between men whose only difference is their place of birth.
And what does this drum sound like?
Some call them “illegal aliens.” It’s a legal term, no doubt. But most Californians don’t use arcane legal terms in daily conversation. We don’t say “Vehicular License Fee” when we mean “the car tax.” Likewise, we don’t say “illegal aliens” when we don’t mean “criminal foreigner.”
They are criminal, we are told, because they entered the U.S. without permission from the U.S. federal government. Unlike other matters of dispute between citizens and the government, this breach concerns outsiders to whom we would rather not give the benefit of the doubt.
So we say “They should stand in line like the legal immigrants.” As if there were one line.
In the real world, however, there are several lines, separate and not equal.
There is the line for white men from Austria. It’s a very short line, in fact. You need only fly in as a tourist and then find someone to contract you for a spell until you can file for residency. Right beside this all-but-nonexistent line, there are others, far longer.
These are the lines for colored people from poor countries like Guatemala, Mexico and El Salvador. Unlike, say, a now famous high school graduate from Austria, these grammar school drop-outs from Central America are survivors of actual wars. They are the socioeconomic refugees of failed states and dictatorships.
Their lines are long because they were born in the wrong country, they were born into poverty. Had they been born in the right country, a rich country, or, had they simply been born into wealth, then the lines shift.
Legally, of course, every one is equal, etc. and so on. In practice, the lines between rich and poor, white and colored, Mexican and Austrian, legal and illegal are seldom as straight.
Consider the other crime of the “illegal aliens”—their failure to pay federal and state income taxes. As a matter of conversation, it is a damning attack.
For even though we can no longer accuse them of collecting welfare (they can’t), or failing to pay sales and real estate taxes (they do), or not spending their money in the U.S. (over 90%), or stealing from the social security trust fund (to which they are net contributors), we can still rail against the illegals for failing to pay income taxes.
Of course, most income taxes are paid by employers and no employer will admit to hiring illegal workers. But we don’t fault the employers for failing to pay these taxes, we fault the employees.
If you had illegal income, would you claim it on your tax returns? As a matter of fact, the I.R.S. acknowledges it is owed billions by right outstanding citizens who are not entirely honest.
Of course, there’s a big difference between a white lie and a lie told by a brown person, particularly when the color of your skin cannot be camoflagued by the amount of green in your pocketbook.
We blame the illegals for beign shiftless. Then, when we learn that illegals work two jobs a day, every day, we blame them for what their employers fail to do: honor labor laws, pay taxes on wages earned.
We accuse the illegals of being an ignorant, unschooled lot. Then, when we learn that our public schools are providing their children an education, we accuse them of using up resources intended for “our children.”
Yes, we now live in an America filled with legal and illegal children. Once again, we live in an America where schoolbooks and pencils are for some children, but not others. A level playing field, indeed.
Of course, double standards are the very logic of racism. We take offense at the appearance of a billboard for a spanish-language television station which claims to be serving “Los Angeles, Mexico.” Naturally, we hold place names like Germantown, Pennsylvania, Germantown, Maryland, Germantown, Winsconsin, Germantown, Ohio, and Germantown, New York to a different standard.
None of what I have just written will surprise even the most diehard and vociferous enemies of the illegal alien. No doubt, they will wish to refute my claim that race matters, that the line between right and wrong, legal and illegal, is often drawn around the color of one’s skin.
They will likewise take issue with my argument that money—or a lack thereof—is at the heart of the matter and that our renewed hatred of the illegal is really just the same old scorn for the poor.
I welcome any refutation that Americans from Latin America, illegal aliens some or all, aren’t the new niggers in town.
Update: Well, I was wrong. In some parts of the U.S. the provocative statement above may be true, but, for the most part, it’s gays who have become the new boogie men. Really, it’s official.
