Choosing Country Over Color
The other way just doesn't work -- or win
Great WAPO piece exploring how, in the 1920s (or roughly one century ago), America was experiencing much the same social fear and political turmoil over that question posed by Jesse Plemon’s character in Alex Garland’s movie Civil War:
What kind of American are you?
The good kind?
Pass as white, born here?
Or the not-good kind?
Don’t pass as White, not born here?
Here’s how I described that historical process in America’s New Map:
In the early twentieth century dominated by longitudinal migrations, America assimilated tens of millions of South and East European immigrants then widely, if incorrectly, considered to be of inferior genetic stock—particularly the oft-rejected Ashkenazi Jews. We later came to recognize our culpability in the horrors that ensued from our unthinking embrace of “scientific” applications of social Darwinism, plenty of which still circulate in our body politic.
As a synthetic nation with a multiverse of cultures, America has historically processed immigrants by first demonizing them as “invaders,” then condemning them as “parasites,” then criticizing their slow assimilation, then mocking their entry on the lowest rungs of the economic ladder, then begrudging their ascent, then accepting them into sports and entertainment, then admitting they are “not so bad once you get to know them,” then allowing them into the corridors of power, and finally admiring their “immigrant journey.” Outside of Anglo-Saxons, every immigrant group has traveled this pathway once reaching America, their consolation being that any inbound population is immediately granted a status superior to Blacks—the enduring target of Armageddon-triggering, ultra-right-wing visions of race war.
Despite such successful assimilation, America then spent decades attempting to lock in our racial profile through a quota system—the Immigration Act of 1924. Effectively barring immigration from non-White countries for decades, the act reflected that era’s profoundly entrenched institutional racism. Our quota system lasted until the peaking of the Civil Rights Era, when the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act abolished the National Origins Formula, finally allowing America to recast its racial profile in the image of the world it purposefully created with its brand of globalization. In 1960, Europeans made up four-fifths of US immigrants, but by 2010 that figure had reversed, as non-Whites expanded to four-fifths of that flow.
In a brilliant bit of graphic artistry, here’s how that effort played out in terms of immigrant flows into the US over those decades:
Go to the WAPO story for the details and quasi animation. Here’s the gist:
Through 1900, most of our immigrants came from (lime green) northern and west Europe (the “right” kind of immigrants, Donald Trump might call them)
Starting at the turn of the century, that flow shifted decidedly toward (yellow) southern and Eastern Europeans — at that time decidedly considered not the “right” type
So we put that squeeze on with the 1924 act and its impact was felt until the 1965 act allowed for a more natural (i.e., non-European) flow (here come the orange Latinos, teal Asians, and purple Africans).
So basically, we went from a predominant East-West flow (Europe to US) to a predominant South-North flow (LATAM to US) — an alteration and flow that I am predicting — on the basis of the impact of climate change — will grow exponentially this century.
The WAPO piece goes on to describe all the thinking of that early 20th century time period that led to the 1924 quota system and it can be boiled down to this:
For America to remain a viable nation it needs to remain an overwhelmingly White nation.
Gotta sound familiar, right? I mean, we code our language in such a sophisticated manner today, but isn’t that the gist of White Christian nationalism — the preservation of one type of identity that all others must subordinate themselves to?
The WAPO piece even identifies the trip-wire: when the percentage of foreign-born Americans reaches 15%:
That chart gets you this one from America’s New Map:
There was some serious discussion on our end about whether or not the book should so prominently make this argument. What does the decline of Whites in America have to do with our role in the world?
But there was never any doubt in my mind because it was the primary reason why I wanted to write the book — namely, to link together two sets of fear:
White America’s fear of losing its privilege and identity and centrality within these United States, and
Americans’ fear of losing our nation’s privilege and identity and centrality within a globalization of our creating but no longer featuring our likeness.
Both of these fears are hampering our status as a competitive superpower, in the manner suggested by a friend and colleague Eric Boger, who, upon seeing the brief said:
I get it! The least racist superpower wins!
There’s no way to put it more succinctly.
We choose country over color at home and we remain what America needs to be in this world: the furthest along and most successful example of a multi-state union featuring a multicultural make-up — i.e., globalization in miniature.
The entire world — thanks to climate change, demographic aging, and the emergence of a global majority middle class centered in the Global South — is being compelled down the same path of becoming less of what they were in the past and more of what globalization is today.
Resistance is futile! You will be assimilated!
Scary, I know.
It’s like that whole bit about us all being in this together is ACTUALLY HAPPENING!
But here’s the good news: America is firmly in the lead on this steep learning curve, and that’s a great position to be in.
The WAPO piece ends brilliantly:
The renewed backlash against immigration has little to offer the American project, though. Closing the door to new Americans would be hardly desirable, a blow to one of the nation’s greatest sources of dynamism. Raw data confirms how immigrants are adding to the nation’s economic growth, even while helping keep a lid on inflation.
Anyway, that horse left the stable. The United States is full of immigrants from, in Trump’s memorable words, “s---hole countries.” The project to set this in reverse is a fool’s errand. The 1924 Johnson-Reed immigration law might have succeeded in curtailing immigration. But the restrictions did not hold. From Presidents Johnson to Trump, efforts to circle the wagons around some ancestral White American identity failed.
We are extremely lucky it did. Contra Sen. Ellison DuRant Smith’s 100-year old prescriptions, the nation owes what greatness it has to the many different women and men it has drawn from around the world to build their futures. This requires a different conversation — one that doesn’t feature mass expulsions and concentration camps but focuses on constructing a new shared American identity that fits everyone, including the many more immigrants who will arrive from the Global South for years to come.
Those who argue for choosing color over country mistake homogeneity for strength when nature teaches us that heterogeneity ensures survival.
Humans rule because we’ll do anything and eat anything to survive.
Three-quarters of the world’s species are going extinct around us right now. We will survive this massive-culling-of-our-own-making by being the species most willing to adapt.
And that means choosing country over color.
Sign up to take the America’s New Map MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) at edX
