All-American Nativism: How the Bipartisan War on Immigrants Explains Politics as We Know It, by Daniel Denvir (2020)
Book Review #5
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Daniel Denvir: Jacobin contributor and currently a Fellow at Brown University’s Watson Institute. He also hosts the popular podcast, The Dig, which comes out weekly on Jacobin radio. It covers immigration, criminal justice, class politics and the drug war. He lives in Rhode Island
Summary
Denvir tries to set a context for why American immigration law is so harshly applied today. He sets the table by connecting the history of nativism in this country from the Naturalization Act of 1790, which opened the country to any “free white person” and forged a forever bond between citizenship, race and the status of labor, to the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Conservative, reactionary forces were finally able to get a politician who could speak like them in base and ignorant terms and who more importantly, hated the same exact people they blamed for their economic situations. But for Denvir, the story needs to be told of the modern anti-immigration push, starting in the 1960s with the reactions to LBJ’s Great Society programs. A sense of belonging was lost and the solidarity that was shown amongst young Baby Boomers who wanted a more multiracial, egalitarian world, quickly turned into resentment, economic immiseration and a further class divide throughout the 1970s. As he goes further, Denvir begins to show the economic construction of race under capitalism and why it served the purpose of dividing labor along racial lines. For example, when southern Italians immigrated here in vast numbers by the late 19th century, they looked dark in complexion. They were disenfranchised immediately and treated almost as low as the free black men in the north. However, rather soon after that, their “whiteness” allowed them to integrate into the fabric of society and they had a government back home that advocated for them. They would be treated as white Europeans from that moment on. Negro slaves in the antebellum south had no such people who advocated on their behalf. By this point, the abolition movement was dead and Reconstruction was looking like a failure. This is the background for how Denvir attempts to explain nativism and kept changing in shape from the 19th to the 20th century.
The Meat
While basing nativism around the advancement of “free labor”, Denvir explains the conundrums that existed between the slaveholding south and the multiethnic, exploitative capitalist north. What counted as a “true American” was always a white, Protestant ancestor of Englishmen. This was the aristocracy that existed in the north and to a different extent, the south. In many respects, although much more stratified, it still exists today. The formation of these immigration laws for Denvir, allowed the country to set the terms for the exploitation of immigrant labor. This would spur on the capitalistic economic engine and allow America to craft an attractive settler-colonial narrative for its citizens to internalize. Denvir moves further by giving examples throughout the mid-19th century as to how immigration law was rewritten and tweaked constantly in order to adjust to new sets of immigrants. Whether it was the Chinese who came to work on the railroads (and later became part of the Chinese Exclusion Acts), the Irish from the Potato Famine or the Germans from the Revolutions of 1848; immigrants would be disenfranchised, exploited for their labor and cast aside. It wasn't until later in the 19th century that they found a way to enfranchise “white” Irish and Italians and other European groups, to allow them to vote and become a regular first class citizen. Xenophobia for Denvir is a class construct and does not occur in the natural order. He makes reference to that multiple times in this book. Whether one agrees with that notion, it’s clear that within the American society, xenophobia is a political tool all too often wielded to increase fears of the “other” and decrease their labor power, thus leading to total economic control over those individuals.
During the late 1800’s, Denvir gives historical reference to the Chinese Exclusion Acts and how they relate to the progressive Populist movement of farmers in the 1870s and 1880s. Cultural theorist Stuart Hall is quoted in the book saying “race is the modality in which class is lived.” This is very true and Denvir highlights this with explaining how the ten year ban on Chinese immigrants eventually came into conflict with the need for cheap, imported labor thus ending the ban after those ten hard years. By making American race law codified in so many forms, Nazi race law would eventually be heavily influenced by it. Their legal scholars looked at our Jim Crow laws, Black Codes and other disenfranchising measures post-Civil War as a way for them to legally justify their disenfranchising (and eventually exterminating) of the Jews, Roma, mentally disabled people and other “übermensch.” Industrial unionism becomes an important tool for Denvir that he believes immigrant laborers began to use effectively in the early 20th century. Relating that to the later Taft-Hartley Act which destroyed unions in this country and reshaped the labor world forever. As he explored further, Mexicans are referenced and their fights in California under Cesar Chavez. There are many instances in which disenfranchised immigrants have received both legal and de facto discrimination that embedded multigenerational poverty.
The security state plays the role of keeping these classes within their boundaries. For Denvir, this means that policing has always been tailored to reinforce class interests; those obviously of the white landowning aristocracy. Whether it was fugitive slave catchers and Pinkerton agents in the 1800s (often there being not much of a difference) or modern day city police departments and border patrol agents; they all served the same inherit purpose. They reinstate the laws of racial and class-based capitalism and make sure everybody knows their permanent role in the societal hierarchy. This comes in the form of regressive taxes in urban slums (tickets for jaywalking, tickets for expired stickers, tickets for seatbelts etc) versus the gentleness that a suburban cop would treat a white college kid who needed a ride home after a hard night of drinking. We see these dynamics played out everyday of our lives. But there are others to focus on for Denvir. He references Bill Clinton and his Republican “enemies” across the aisle who kept trying to “one up each other” according to Denvir. This was done over who could portray illegal aliens more harshly in the press. This was post-NAFTA and how Mexican labor in particular was vilified in the media every night with talks about their cartel violence. Denvir writes, “Clinton not only fueled anti-immigrant sentiment but also helped ensure that crime had a black and Latino face. He described ungoverned streets and an insecure border as the sources of a violent and narcotic threat, and proposed policing, imprisonment and deportation as solutions.” Much of this was done despite full well knowing the effects of our 1980s wars in Central America and the effects of NAFTA on Mexican and Central American farmers. Clinton didn’t care and their hate for black and brown immigrants was bipartisan in nature. Denvir would go on to relate this to the formation of ICE and the way in which the PATRIOT ACT would change our lives forever.
Conclusion
I really enjoyed the book. I wouldn't be doing any of these reviews if I didn’t at least find these books educational. I admire Denvir’s recent work and I feel as though he hits the nail on the head here. Too much of the mainstream discourse about immigration revolves around simplistic views of “illegal” versus “legal” immigration; as if TV pundits even care to study this stuff. The reality is, crossing our border without any kind of documentation is a misdemeanor offense, comparable to jaywalking. It’s an offense that you should be momentarily detained for and given a fair trial to either show you have family here or are escaping a dangerous situation in your home country and need political asylum as a refugee. Under the Obama years, the CBP was forced to do catch and release actions because we recognize how inhumane the legal process can be. America has an extremely harsh vetting process, stricter than almost every other western European nation. This harshness has reached whole new levels, almost unimaginable with what we have seen from Trump’s detention facilities and their immoral conditions and treatment of women and children. For Denvir, nativism will always raise its ugly head when inequality increases. History is constantly whitewashed and origin stories are often reshaped to fit the current times. He notes this dynamic when explaining how America shifted from an origin story of Plymouth Rock settlers to the newly minted origin story of Ellis Island. This helped perpetuate a new narrative for European immigrants who would create multigenerational families. These dinner table origin stories can still be heard today, but many don’t know the real, raw history of immigration in America. We do a poor job of teaching history in America because the themes are often too inconsistent with the ethos of capitalism and a feeling of American exceptionalism. Denvir’s book delves deep enough into the history of nativism, that I found myself learning something new every chapter. It’s not too long and it’s got an excellent prose. I would definitely recommend it. It’s a pertinent read during these difficult times.
4.5/5