In Arizona, Brown is the New Black: Immigration and the Other

"THEY CAME FIRST for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
THEN THEY CAME for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
THEN THEY CAME for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
THEN THEY CAME for me
and by that time no one was left to speak up. (Martin Niemölle)
Arizona passed a new law intended to deal forcefully with illegal immigrants.  the law makes it a state crime to not have an alien registration document and requires police to question persons they suspect of being in this country illegally.  Comparisons to Nazi Germany are partly hyperbole and partly true.  Let’s examine the psychological roots of this controversial law?
The Other
There are signs that the controversy unfolding in Arizona is reflective of how we deal with the other when the other looks different from us.  There is a xenophobic thread running through North American cultural paralleled by European’s growing discomfort with Muslim immigrants, or Asian’s distrust of Caucasian, western, capitalist immigrants.
Miroslav Volk, a Yugoslav theologian who admits to the difficulty he has reaching out to Serbs says that no matter what someone has done to you, you must be willing to begin the process of making your enemy your friend.
Newsweek’s (September 9, 2009) cover story titled “Is Your Baby Racist?” described the research of Birgette Vittrup out of the University of Texas has studied racial attitudes among families in the Austin area and found early evidence among infants and toddlers that they recognize racial difference.  One researcher noticed randomly assigned school children to either a group who wore a red T-shirt or a blue T-shirt.  The children were otherwise not treated differently.  Quickly, the subjects identified with the group wearing like colored shirts and assumed an inherent greater worth and value to being a member of their like colored T-shirt group.  What’s worse was the natural tendency to vilify those wearing the other colored T-shirt.
Anyone wishing to discover their own implicit bias might be interested in Harvard’s Project Implicithttps://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/research/ .  This 10-15 minute test may surprise you when you discover that we have implicit associations about race.
It is the tendency to vilify and denigrate the other both explicitly and implicitly that dwells in our unconscious.  It is from this oceanic realm that pogroms, ethnic cleansing, the Holocaust, and other atrocities emerge and in their collective power unleash destructive forces.  But I am suspicious of quick, easy remedies.
Fishing in a Bass Pond
The Asheville Police Department (APD) recently conducted a raid on a local nightclub frequented by Hispanics.  Reportedly they separated the patrons who looked Hispanic and proceeded to interrogate them and uncovered a number of undocumented persons.  Their professed intention was to address gang related activity.  The following week a client expressed her passion and outrage at the incident and fully expected that because I am a Cuban-American I would share her sentiment.  I did not.
First, I noted that if I took my children fishing for bass, I might consider going to a stocked bass pond where their chances of catching a fish would be substantially better.  The police were doing something similar.  By isolating the darker skinned patrons who looked Hispanic, they were improving their odds of success.  As a long-standing member of the ACLU I see enormous, substantive issues regarding constitutional protections against search and seizure.  However, I also acknowledge the efficient methods employed by the APD.  I know she was dismayed by my upside-down perspective on the incident that drew public protests.  However, I believe she was also unsettled by my unexpected reticence to let my tribal identity rule my heart and my head.  The normal response is to align with your tribe and vilify the other.  I did both and neither.

Ambivalence & the Other
Arizona’s recent legislation has stepped into the center of a minefield of ambivalent content.  Let me enumerate some of the ambivalent elements:

• We enjoy a cheap supply of labor (lower food costs, lower expenses in hospitality industry, low cost construction labor, etc) but resent undocumented workers for their downward effect upon wages.
• We accept tax payments through withholding from persons who will never collect the benefit while vigorously complaining of the drain undocumented workers place upon an already taxed social safety net.
• We proclaim the value of free trade and through NAFTA advance initiatives intended to integrate the Americas while acting toward our southern neighbors like we would toward an infectious agent that must be quarantined.
• We focus upon the surge of Mexican gangs who control drug importation into the United States while we fail to craft effective policy that addresses the demand on this side of the border that creates the market opportunity gangs exploit.
• Many Americans believe we are under siege from Muslims in our midst but it is easier to engage undocumented individuals from Mexico and Central America than it is to address other potentially volatile immigration related issues, particularly while we are at war in two Islamic nations.

The list goes on.

Take a Stand
Each of us will be called upon to fend off our tribal instinct while also honoring it.  At the moment, the debate rages over Arizona’s brazen experiment in applying immigration laws at the state level.  There are likely to be citizens in Arizona who see their state as disproportionately burdened by the federal government’s ineffective enforcement of existing immigration laws.  They may feel a tribalism about being an Arizonan and perhaps they are right, after all, what does a citizen of Arizona have in common with one from Maine (where 1% of the population is Hispanic) on this issue.
Here is a challenge you may find interesting.  Where are you noticing your tribal instinct being aroused.  Try to refrain from starting with the broadest trends that stir you to identify with your own kind, things like Brazilian, French, German, Israeli, North American, Jungian, man, woman.  Instead, bring the inquiry to a more granular level.  My company vs the competitor, my friends and companions vs those I share little affinity with, fans of my favorite sports team vs fans of this weeks opponents, people who know how to drive (like me) and those who appear deficient.  Cultivate the ability to recognize when you are being swept up by a tribal impulse to align with others like you and see if you can uncover the quality by which we exclude the other.  And whenever you can, see the folly in such dichotomies and explore the realm where you stand astride both, holding them in tension, without rejecting or inflating either.  Consider this a novel form of taking a stand, one informed by our appreciation for how psyche works.  I offer the following poem by John Milton as a subtler exposition of this blog entry.
WHEN I CONSIDER HOW MY LIGHT IS SPENT
John Milton
When I consider how my light is spent,
Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,
And that one talent which is death to hide
Lodged with me useless, though my soul more bent
To serve therewith my Maker, and present
My true account, lest He returning chide;
"Doth God exact day-labor, light denied?"
I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent
That murmur, soon replies, "God doth not need
Either man's work or His own gifts. Who best
Bear His mild yoke, they serve Him best. His state
Is kingly: thousands at His bidding speed,
And post o'er land and ocean without rest;
They also serve who only stand and wait.


Len Cruz, MD