Discrimination is illegal

Let's talk about immigration. I recognize that there are problems inherent in the acts of illegally entering and staying in this country, but I am troubled by the recent trend in the language being used to describe border crossers. It is all too reminiscent of some bad ideas and dark times. I am afraid that we are taking some major steps backwards into the ideology of race inferiority.

I've written about this already after I received my copy of Intelligence Report in January; I am still saddened by the idea that there are people who think there is such a thing as an "illegal" person. That is the language that we see most often and that is the thing that I find most loathsome in this whole debate: this idea that there are people who are themselves inherently wrong in their legality or right to exist. Rather than referring to someone as here illegally, we refer to them as a person as this illegal thing. It's a subtle difference but it is one that has caused a distinct shift in our thinking about race and identity. If we now describe people based on their status or behavior, what are we saying about a person's humanity?

When we invalidate the person themselves with a label that has nothing to do with who they are but has to do with their status, we deny their right to existence in the same way we exist. Why don't we say that people who speed are illegals? It amounts to the same thing: breaking our laws. Yet, we don't call people who break every day laws illegals; nor do we call people who are in prison illegals. Why is that? I think it is interesting to note that the people we refer to as illegals tend not to be people who came here illegally from Asia or Europe; we almost always are referring to people who crossed the border from Mexico. I find that additional bit information the straw that breaks the coyote's back in this entire thing. It is finally the thing that elucidates the true meaning behind the term and the thinking: racism rears its ugly, destructive head and calls itself nativism. It may be true that there are more people crossing the border from Mexico than there are people coming here illegally from China, but that does not change the fact that if we are talking about people who are here illegally, we are talking about all people who are here illegally. Would we be having this same discussion with the same language if the problem were originating from Canada? I doubt it.

I am puzzled by the thinking that assigns value to people based on nothing more than arbitrary birth; it is as if people think we have a choice in our birth and the ways in which we are raised. There will always be people who either willfully or ignorantly refuse to recognize their own luck in being born in a country where they are allowed the luxury of choice; these are the people who assign value to differences in DNA and seek to view the world through the lens of hatred. We will always have fringe groups who do not and cannot represent the whole. What I find very disturbing about the recent "illegal" language and movement is that it is becoming more and more a part of the common parlance and accepted as appropriate by people who should know better. I don't think the label of illegal is the same as any other descriptive label; you might call me a professor as a label of what I do and am, but not to describe my status as a person. You also wouldn't call me a legal because it is the de facto assumption. There are many labels you could apply to me or anyone else and if you choose a negative label you have chosen to paint me as something wrong. That's certainly everyone's right, but we do tend to make these things specific to the person. If you think I am a bitch, that might be because you've decided that something I've said was bitchy; chances are good you didn't come up with that decision based on nothing. That does not mean you're right, it just means you've based it something you think you've observed that is specific to me. If you were to instead call me a drunken mick, you would then be applying a stereotype to me that has absolutely nothing to do with the person that I am; I do not drink outside of an occasional glass of wine or champagne. It is the same with the label of illegal: when you apply the concept of wrong to an entire group of people you are applying something you have no right to apply. You are taking away their identity as a person who possesses biological equality and assigning them value based on the arbitrary drawing of lines on a map. You are literally stating that their citizenship is more important than their biological equality.

It is imperative that we stop referring to entire groups of people as one thing or even a set of things. What would happen if Barack Obama suddenly started calling all cognitively disabled people "retards?" What would happen if John McCain started referring to people who live in poorer areas in this country as "ghetto rats?" Honestly, the outcry on both sides would be tremendous, and rightly so. We recognize that language and the labels we apply to groups of people are powerful tools we use to understand our world and to navigate our diverse society. It isn't wrong to group people together by behavior or even race, but it is wrong to do so in a way that strips people of their equality and function as a person. It is also wrong to assume that our limited experience is true for all people at all times; just as the guy in the above picture is documenting his bad experience, he is also attempting to apply it to an enormous group of people and make it appear true for each of them. The problem with these groupings will always be that the group itself is made up of individuals who are only loosely tied together and will forever be changing. There is no such thing as a static group of people because people degrade and die; the change inherent in life is something that will always make these stereotypes unrealistic.

I've been arguing this issue on Disaboom and the thing I continually state is that our particular experiences with people who might be here illegally are specific to us and the people we've encountered; those experiences are limited in their representation of the whole. My experience with the next generation of people who came here illegally, even the people who came here illegally but are now citizens, is one of great warmth and and promise. I realize, though, that there are many people who have had the opposite experience with people in the same group. What I do not understand is the idea that these extremes of experience are anything more than a small portrait of the people we have met and nothing more. I would no more say that all children of parents who came to the United States from Mexico illegally are full of integrity and brilliance than I would that they are full of violence and degradation. How would that make sense? The ones I've known have been great, to be sure, but I do know that they are great because they are, not because they were raised by parents who came here illegally. If I were to assume that a person's integrity (or lack of it) is something they have only because they were born in a particular place then I would have to assume that my integrity or the integrity of any citizen of this country is not of our own making. Simply stated, we would take away the choice for our behavior in taking away the choice from others. We can't decide that someone else's behavior is based solely on their membership in a group of people and then decide ours is chosen and individual; it is either true for all of us or is it true for none of us.

In the end, I think the idea that people are more entitled to consideration if they are born in a geographical region is one that will doom us to ignorance and dark, dark times. Aside from the obvious fact of stolen land and an immigrant nation, we are a nation that refuses to be pinned to one cultural idea. The only basis we have to understand each other and to live with people who are vastly different from us is our acceptance of the idea that we are all born equal and all entitled to the rights that inhere themselves to humanity. If we reject that idea, for whatever reason, we are denying our fundamental American idealism and we are denying the fundamental nature of biological equality. That can never be a good thing.

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