Douthat Part Deux

Ross Douthat, did you read my blog? Your recent blog entry offered the kind of nuanced and more historically-accurate account of the history of Americans' assimilationist impulses I wanted from your column Monday. What you write there is so much more interesting and better formed I wonder why you didn't just go with it in the first place instead of the two Americas "conceit." The Catholic-Muslim parallel is a much more interesting (and appropriate) conceit if Times columnists feel the need to employ one.

Bravo for this recovery:

It would be nice, obviously, if you could draw a bright line between benighted exclusionists and enlightened assimilationists in American history. But the record doesn’t really support that kind of line-drawing. The two tendencies can be separated, and sometimes were. But they just as often coexisted in the same movements and institutions — and in the same human hearts.

But this is exactly why modern-day progressives are nervous when conservatives speak of assimilation. For starters, the assimilationist ethos -- even among the "enlightened -- was saturated in the now-outmoded racial theories of the past. One very well could be a racist in the sense that one believed racial categories were real and classifiable and explained differences between social groups and be an assimilationist, or even reject immigration restriction on nativist grounds. Forgive contemporary progressives for their skepticism over whether elements of American conservatism have moved beyond such perspectives.

Second, assimilation was and remains an idea imposed upon immigrant groups. As such, it was inherently coercive. In explaining to newcomers how to become "American," the Americanizers worked their political and social values into their lessons. While the worry that new immigrants will join the Wobblies has passed, concern that they will become terrorists obviously has not. But lest we forget the McVeighs and Rudolphs of the nation's recent past, demanding that some immigrants demonstrate their loyalty fully before receiving full acceptance into the nation has limited bearing on our safety. With that in mind, what should modern-day Americanizers ask of immigrants? To abandon emotional, cultural, and political connections to their homeland, which was the original meaning of the metaphor of the Melting Pot? To resist the urge of bringing foreign perspectives on global affairs with them, or at least those that are not convenient for confronting our enemies and supporting our allies as in the Cold War? To shed the political and class solidarity found in their working-class ethnic communities? To refrain from joining any movement that advocates expanding the American social safety net, or else risk having one's ethnic group being ostracized as welfare hounds? 

Progressives' discomfort with the inherent chauvinism of assimilation has led then to develop no answer at all to what immigrants should be required to do to Americanize. They have essentially punted the question back to ethnic and religious organizations -- like the one under attack in lower Manhattan, or the Latino groups under fire from Arizona conservatives I've discussed before. As a result, the only consensus Americans have formed on the issue of assimilation is that immigrants should learn English, they can keep their hard-to-pronounce names, and they can keep their food (hooray for number three!). Progressives need to work harder on their end of the debate and explain, as Randolph Bourne tried in his "Trans-National America" essay so long ago, how immigrants can transform America for the better, rather than merely be transformed themselves. 

Finally, to champion Americanization is to ignore the ways in which immigrants themselves have chosen to assimilate to American life. Beginning with Oscar Handlin, the entire field of immigration history has been built on this exact narrative. The problem the Vatican had with democracy that Douthat cites is exactly this kind of story -- members of the clergy in the United States argued for the adaptation of some Church doctrines (including the superiority of the Catholic Church over Protestant sects) to fit the pluralistic and democratic American political culture of the late 19th century. Pope Leo XIII, in turn, condemned what was being called "Americanism" within the Church. It would seem that the same accommodation is taking place in most American mosques without Americanizers or nativists pounding on the door - and irrespective of the opinions of foreign imams.

Douthat's Two Americas

Good for Joan Walsh for cleaning Ross Douthat's clock on Salon today. His column in this morning's Times was Washington Post opinion page-quality stupid.

Walsh points out his most disturbing and glaring historical inaccuracy, and outright logical fallacy, in recalling the violent nativist/Know Nothing response to Catholic immigration in the 1800s. Let me pile on by pointing out that the "the two Americas" Douthat is writing about in terms of the nation's history of immigrant assimilation were really one America until the middle of the 20th century. By our modern standards, with the occasional exception of an individual like Horace Kallen, intolerance prevailed up to that point. The difference between camps was merely in degree. And there has been, in fact, very little tension between the "constitutional" and the "cultural" Americas he cites -- culture drove the constitutional conversation.

Or, to be more historically accurate, a cultural understanding derived from racism drove the constitutional. 1920s immigration laws weren't "draconian." They were racist. They were written from the perspective that race created culture and that Anglo Saxons, having the best genes, had the best culture and therefore were the most desirable potential Americans. Everyone else had to overcome the handicap of their racial identity demonstrably. I simply do not understand what Douthat sees that is usable in that past.

I think what he and other conservatives are calling for is not assimilation but the old spirit of "100 percent Americanism:" a demonstration of unquestioned loyalty according to the terms they set. These terms have to do with more than just bringing Islam up to speed with Western standards of individual rights -- a project, I must admit, I support (mainly because I believe such standards are truly secular in nature, unlike the Christian fanatics now so eager to bash Islam and ignore their own religion's sordid history on the matter). Conservatives also demand a forfeiture by Muslim immigrants of any political conception of the world that does not meet the demands of the post-9/11 national security state. They are simply not allowed to bring the perspectives of the nations they have left to bear on a conversation about the American projection of power in the world. This demand is just as damaging to the principles of American democracy as any interruption of the right to free exercise of religious faith. Douthat would be right to remember, too the America that threw German Americans into detention camps for not supporting a war against their homeland enough, or that beat them for not buying enough Liberty Bonds. Or the more than one hundred thousand Japanese Americans whose disloyalty was perceived to be too great a risk not to strip of their rights, liberty, and property -- a position another commentator on that side of the aisle astoundingly has defended.

In our own time, to describe the United States as "an accessory to the crime" of 9/11 is wrong and offensive. But it is not the same as endorsing the act. But that doesn't matter to the America Douthat really wants us to live in, which would rather the person making that comment never participate in the conversation at all.

Making Sense of the "Ground Zero Mosque" Controversy: Religion, Assimilation, Countersubversion

Rather than wading into the question of whether or not the Cordoba House should get its building permit, I want to take a poke at understanding the reaction of those most stridently against its establishment. (Readers can gather from my previous scribblings about mosque construction that I would vote to approve the lower Manhattan project, although - for those who care about my personal opinions - my reaction to the controversy itself is more or less Hitchensesque.)

The most startling part of the Cordoba House controversy is the disproportional quality of conservative opponents' responses. These reactions, of course, were ginned up by the ultra-Right blogosphere and the Murdoch media empire in willful denial of the plain facts that, first, the building will not be a mosque, and second, that there is already a mosque four blocks from the World Trade Center site. Unfortunately, the controversy - now grown to the level of presidential comment - has also distracted from the fact that what's happening in Manhattan is going on all across the country. 

Some of the over-reaction has to do with conservatives' own view of Christianity. They are the driving force behind the 62 percent of Americans who view the United States as a "Christian Nation." Figures like Sarah Palin and Newt Gingrich have been just as explicit in their opinions that national identity is wrapped up in Christianity, even if the latter feels no need to live up to his own religiosity in his personal life. While they may accept the principle of tolerance that allows those "peace-loving" muslims that Palin has tweeted about to practice their religion, this religiousized nationalism will always leave the Islamic community at the margins.

But conservatives' perception of Islam itself is much of the problem. The issue runs deeper than their mere ignorance of a major world faith. The understanding of Islam that conservatives are operating from fundamentally denies the possibility of its assimilation into American society. They have assumed this position because they are even more ignorant of the politics and history of Muslim nations than they are of the tenets of the faith. The religion and its affect on politics in many Middle Eastern nations have become inseparable to these conservatives. This is why Gingrich thinks it's relevant to insist that no mosque be built near Ground Zero before Saudi Arabia allows the construction of Christian churches. Islam to him and his conservative supporters is the House of Saud (or Hamas, or Hezbollah.) Despite the counterexamples offered by places like Indonesia, Turkey, and even Syria, Islam is shariah. As one mosque protester told the New York Times, “I do believe everybody has a right to freedom of religion. But Islam is not about a religion. It’s a political government, and it’s 100 percent against our Constitution.”

This view of a monolithic and oppressive ideological enemy of Liberal democratic values is strikingly similar to the way conservatives thought about Communism during the Cold War. The conservative approach to radical Islam broadly, from a declaration of war on the totalitarian ideology of "Islamofascism" to the opposition of cultural centers, is a lingering hangover of this era. Then, conservatives claimed the nation faced subversion by a dedicated minority that was loyal only to an international conspiracy. They argued that Communists simply used American civil liberties to shield their true destructive intent, and therefore deserved no Constitutional protection. Their key to securing the nation at home and abroad was constant exposure of Communists "true intentions" as a monolithic international conspiracy and unending confrontation with its proponents. Rejecting a mosque is to claim its parishioners cannot entirely be trusted and the threat of subversion or terrorism is too great to tolerate. An opponent of a mosque in Murfreesboro told the same Times reporter “A mosque is not just a place for worship. It’s a place where war is started, where commandments to do jihad start, where incitements against non-Muslims occur. It’s a place where ammunition was stored.”

Clearly, the exotic nature of Muslim immigrants to what Republicans euphemistically call "Mainstream Americans" exacerbates this overactive countersubversive imagination. The California grandmother the Times quoted worried that the nation will be overtaken by Muslims in the future because of immigrants' high birth rates, an interesting extrapolation because there are more Jehovah's Witnesses and Buddhists in America than Muslims (0.6 percent of the population). And one could argue that Catholics faced a similar conspiratorial barrier in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when more ignorant varieties of Protestants believed Catholic practitioners were loyal only to the Pope.

For those raised at the height of the Cold War, though, the conservative countersubversive imagination is ingrained in a political world view. We simply argue past them when we argue for tolerance. They would rather have the targets of their suspicion "refudiate" on the terms they set and claim represent the rest of us.

Mike Blake/Reuters, via New York Times

 

Immigrant Reform and Immigrant Integration

After being distracted by state-level shenanigans these past weeks, I finally got around to reading the actual text of the Democratic proposal on immigration reform. Like it or hate it, it really is the quintessential American solution to a problem -- throw some technology at it. The proposal is also has a very long and stilted title that creates the pithy acronym REPAIR. It took me about 8 years to figure out the PATRIOT Act was actually an acronym, too, so I guess that's the way Congress is just going to roll now.

"Immigration reform" is also a misnomer. The REPAIR proposal is really is all about "illegal immigration reform," except for the part that fast-tracks the immigration of foreign math and science nerds. That's not exactly news, but I read the summary curious if I could find any mention of what in the historical period I study would be called "Americanization," but it today referred to more pleasantly as "immigrant integration," or the effort to provide educational assistance and language instruction to immigrants. There it was, tacked on to the end of a sentence in the last paragraph of the last page of the summary.

The Homeland Security Act created an Office of Citizenship in the US Citizenship and Immigration Services division of the new Department of Homeland Security in 2002. Its task is "to promote instruction and training on citizenship rights and responsibilities and to provide federal leadership, tools, and resources to proactively foster immigrant integration," according to its website. President Obama's budget, as the Center for American Progress pointed out, provided $10 million for immigrant integration programs to the Office of Citizenship. Most of this money it dispensed in the form of $100,000 grants to communities and non-profits. Sen. Hillary Clinton and Rep. Mike Honda had introduced a bill providing more robust support for immigrant education through the Department of Education and other grant programs, but the bill failed to clear the 110th Congress.

The system in place to provide immigrants with the education they need to transition into life in the United States is essentially identical to the same one that existed in the 1910s and 20s. One of USCIS's grants even went to the YMCA in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a group that literally did the same work 90 years ago. A patchwork of uncoordinated, poorly funded, and volunteer-staffed initiatives is what immigrants have to rely on, short of the municipal ESL classes in night school that perpetually cannot meet demand. Even the educational materials available to immigrant integration programs on the USCIS website have been produced by other volunteer groups -- mirroring similar guides written in the early 20th century by the likes of the American Bar Association and the National Catholic Welfare Conference. Since naturalization exams haven't changed much since the end of the Progressive Era either, USCIS focuses on the areas immigrants must master to pass their examinations -- US History, Civics, and English.

Americanization in the early 20th century focused on breaking immigrants of their Old World ways to ensure they became good democratic citizens. In an era dominated by pseudoscientific views on race, immigrants from Southern and Eastern European nations were viewed as needing Americanization to overcome innate racial inferiority (Immigrants from any farther weren't even eligible for naturalization). Democracy, the argument, was an Anglo-Saxon invention, and immigrants from non-Anglo nations had to be caught up to speed rapidly so as to avoid an underclass of low skill, insular, corrupt, and potentially revolutionary ghetto dwellers. Then, as now, national security concerns seeped into immigration politics -- with the outbreak of World War I Americanization efforts were redoubled to ensure the loyalty of foreign-born populations to the US government.

It was an insurmountable task for Americanizers, made all the more insurmountable by the fact that many preferred to focus on acculturating immigrant women to the bland American palate and the standards of modern child-rearing rather than language skills or who to harass to get the trash picked up. Assimilation was a one-way street socially and culturally, made all the more so by the demands of wartime. After the war, a bill to create a robust Americanization office within the Bureau of Education failed. Instead, Congress gave up altogether on assimilation and passed restrictive immigration laws.

Elements of this pattern seem to be repeating themselves as the legislative momentum to "crack down" on undocumented immigrants builds on the state level. Obviously, a return to the culturally chauvinistic (if not outright racist) approach of Americanization in the early 20th century is worth avoiding. But a robustly-funded, nationally-coordinated, and professionally-run immigrant integration system should be more than a throw-away clause at the end of a legislative proposal. Perhaps, too, we need to reconsider the utility of having immigrants memorize minutiae about the US Constitution and History to prove they are "American" (it's disturbing to ponder how many Tea Party activists would pass the naturalization test). Learning English, basic legal rights, and some economic literacy will do immeasurable good to make immigrant communities less vulnerable to exploitation and economic hardship. From a political perspective, massively funding immigrant integration also attacks head-on the knee-jerk cultural and social resentment immigration opponents feel toward newcomers, which they vent whenever they have to press #1 for English or see bus ads in Spanish.