Immigrants, Crime, Terrorists, and
Humpty-Dumpty
Martha K. Huggins
I’m still stunned by a letter to the Key West Citizen’s editor last April
(4/22/15), stating that, “Black people are born three times more likely
to commit crime than white people.”
Cringing at this historically racist and supremely incendiary statement,
I was reminded of criminology’s long history of explaining crime as caused by genetic,
physiological, psychological, and religious factors. Nineteenth-century physician Cesare Lombroso
measured the skulls, arms, and heads of imprisoned poor Italian inmates and concluded
that one very dangerous category of criminals was an ‘atavistic’ throw back to
an earlier stage of evolution. These “born criminals” were allegedly identifiable
by such congenital ‘defects’ as being left-handed, red haired, and showing the “savage”
characteristics of an Ape—‘abnormally’ long arms, high foreheads, and
sub-normal intelligence. People with an ape-like
body physiognomy, Lombroso decided, are dangerous, so “Look out,” good
citizens. Or as the 21st
century letter writer to the Key West
Citizen forewarned, “Black people are
born three times more likely to commit crime than white people.”
White US supremacists of the immediate post-emancipation
era,[i]
“generally believed that blacks were inherently savage and violent [,
but]...that the institution of slavery had tamed them. They feared that
abolition would cause them to return to their ‘primitive’ state and would lead
to mass violence against whites in a race war.”[ii] Rumors about “criminal acts by blacks were
often exaggerated or outright fabricated
by newspapers, which helped perpetuate this fear.” The Black man was seen as ‘hyper-sexual’
because of his ‘savage’ nature,[iii] which led to worries among whites that Black
men would target white women and rape them.”
Stereotypes
have consequences: in the US, when
rape was still treated as a capital crime, “the South
put blacks to death for rape far more often than whites—especially when the
alleged victim was a white woman. Of the
455 men executed for rape in the United States between 1930 and 1967, 90
percent were African American.”[iv] Such
consequences are usually ‘explained away’ through racism and then further neutralized in ways that allow a
person’s living comfortably with allowing
inhumanity to others. Heck, we’re not
all that bad!
Even today, Blacks have
been identified in random survey research as
having ”superhuman” physical abilities, while at the same time being seen
as less adept than whites at performing everyday tasks. In another recent survey, respondents saw blacks as less sensitive to
pain than whites….”[v] By combining these two myths about
Black men--that they should be feared for their superhuman strength and that
they have low pain sensitivity, you have
an ‘enabler’ for physically mistreating Blacks.[vi] As psychologists Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner
argue, “The more you cast someone as an active doer, the less you see the
person as susceptible to things being done [to them].”[vii]
Such “moral
typecasting,” as Gray and Wegner label it, neutralizes
feeling guilty about personal or institutional mistreatment of ‘Others,’ especially
Black men.
Adolph Hitler’s Nazi regime ideologically neutralized
the genocide of Jewish, LGBT folks, and Romany people, by claiming there to be
a strict hierarchy of purity within the human race: The Aryan (Nordic) Master Race was at the top--the
most “pure” of races--followed by the less “pure” ones, which included the
"parasitic" races of non-Aryan origin. These dangerous "sub-humans” were
exterminated by Nazis in numbers far greater than their proportion in the
populations of Nazi-occupied countries.
War is especially
helpful in demonizing and mistreating
an enemy, which usually includes, on the home front, each warring country’s immigrants--especially those
of the enemy’s ethnicity. “The coming of World War I brought with it a
backlash against German culture[viii]
in the United States, [increasing after]… the U.S. declared war on Germany in
1917….” [ix]
Anti-German sentiment rose across the US and “German-American businesses and
homes were vandalized, and German Americans accused of being
"pro-German" were tarred and feathered, and, in at least once
instance, lynched.”[x]
As far as religious beliefs are concerned, the US also
has a troubling history of anti-Catholic sentiment. The usual refrain was: ‘Catholics cannot be
trusted because they have greater loyalty to the Pope than to the US
government.’ Translating this stereotype
into public policy, in the 1920s, Oregon
voters got a law passed prohibiting US parents from sending their children to
private (Read: Catholic) schools.[xi] It was argued that sending a child to a
‘private’ school would undermine the ‘American Way,’ which, it was claimed, created conditions favoring a US
invasion: “Anti-Catholic nativists [i.e.,
white protestants] believed that Catholics could overthrow the government at a
moment’s notice, turning Americans into (sic) knaves of the Roman Pope.” It was argued that “only by attending a
government-controlled school could children learn to be true Americans, and
become properly grounded in American history and the principles of liberty.” [xii]
How many of us remember such discourse in the early
days of President John F. Kennedy’s run for the presidency?
The US has a
long history of evoking racial (-ist) and ethnic impurity theories to explain various kinds of immigrant criminality, even
though there is no solid scientific evidence for the assumption that immigrants are more criminal
than non-immigrants.[xiii] Irish immigrants have had a particularly
difficult time of it: Drunkenness and
criminality were central to stereotypes about them-- “The term ‘paddy wagon’
has its etymological roots in the racist term ‘paddy,’ a shortening of the name
‘Patrick,’ which was used to refer [generically and disparagingly] to the
Irish.”[xiv] Pointing
to the presumed link between Irish body types and crime, “the Simian [monkey], or ape-like
caricature of the Irish immigrant was…common…among … mainstream news
publications of the day.” [xv]
Harper’s Weekly in 1899 featured a
drawing of “three men’s heads in
profile: Irish, Anglo-Teutonic and Negro,…to illustrate the
[negative] similarity between the Irish
and the Negro…and [show] the supposed superiority of the Anglo-Teutonic. [xvi][xvii] Racial and ethnic stereotypes build on one
another.
In the early 20th century the US
public’s response to another bump of
mass migration--this time largely from Southern and Eastern Europe--was
to designate these immigrants ‘inferior’ to the prior Northern European ones[xviii]
: the new “criminals” were Italians,
considered more prone to violent crime than even [the earlier] Irish and German
immigrants,” who had by then managed to
become ‘conventional.’ Of course, all
such ethnics—Italians, Germans, Irish-- were still arrested and jailed in
numbers disproportionate to ‘old stock, native born,’ Anglos.[xix]
Never mind that the damaging ethnic discourse
against each new wave of immigrants was usually rooted in fears that these immigrants
would take “real Americans’” (read: older immigrant whites’) jobs. Such economic fears were cloaked in myths about
immigrant criminality, a safe political route for discrediting someone. In
turn, evoking sufficient ethnic, racial, and gender failings and dangers, elevates
a population’s fear to the point that people will give up any of their own Constitutional
guarantees in order to be safe. But, in fact,
with respect to alleged immigrant
criminality of the late-1920s and early 1930s, Edith Abbott, economist and
co-author of the 1931 Wickersham
Commission Report (US National Commission on Law Observance and Enforcement), pointed out that, “The theory that immigration is responsible for
crime, that the most recent ‘wave of immigration,’ whatever the nationality, is
less desirable than the old ones, that all newcomers should be regarded with an
attitude of suspicion, is...almost as old as the colonies planted by Englishmen
on the New England coast.” [xx]
Not
surprisingly, in light of our country’s history of fearing and demonizing immigrants,
“The American-led ‘War on Terror’ has...[created]
an increase in Islamophobia (fear or hatred of Islam) across the globe. This
increase...[has been] reflected in the way media outlets [have] addressed and
stereotyped Muslim populations. The most prevalent Islamic stereotype is the
radical Muslim insurgent, bent on waging jihad, or holy war, against the West.
The stereotype includes willingness to use violence as an inseparable part of
being Muslim....[xxi] It would be one thing if this were ‘just’ a
stereotype and not the foundation for an institutionally-funded US government
program. Since 9-11 our government has
dedicated more and more resources to allegedly‘ protecting’ the US from
“Islamic radicals” through the Bush administration’s creation of the Department
of Homeland Security (DHS). The “budget
authority” Congressionally allocated to the DHS—the latter came on-line in 2003--has
already cost US taxpayers slightly over 2/3 of a trillion dollars. [xxii] [xxiii] However, just as bothersome as the
mountain of tax payer dollars gobbled up by DHS is that the Department
of Homeland Security has become the
umbrella organization for a host of other (NSA and CIA apparently notwithstanding)
US international and national security entities: Office of the Inspector General (OIG),
U.S. Customs & Border Protection
(CBP), U.S. Immigration & Customs
Enforcement (ICE), Transportation Security Administration (TSA),
U.S. Coast Guard (USCG), U.S. Secret Service (USSS), and the Federal Emergency Management Agency
(FEMA), to name a few. These entities
are dependent for added funding for their
enhanced security measures on the Department of Homeland Security. Since the vast majority of such funding comes
from the DHS’ “discretionary” budget.
DHS can ‘giveth’ and ‘taketh’ away according to each subordinate
organizations’ adherence to its mandates; these may not always correspond to
each organization’s own mandates and procedures.
But most
troubling of all is that large national security agencies have demonstrated a tendency to survive and grow even after the ‘emergency’
for which they were created has subsided or ended. ‘Bureaucratic creep” practically ensures the
impossibility of reducing the organization’s size, power, and spending. The US Department of Homeland Security, ‘ye
shall have with you always,’ as your growing income tax payments will remind
you. The DHS feeds on your fears because
if you get scared enough you’ll likely to agree to just about anything they
want.
So how did we get to this point? The US
build-up of internal security wasn’t just the result of the criminally
actionable 9-11 attacks. The internal
security noose which we now find around our necks was tightened after that by
the Bush Presidency’s fear-mongering lie that Saddam Hussein had “weapons of
mass destruction.”[xxiv] This
opened the door to our ineffectual and economically and politically costly war
in Iraq, as well as to US government torture of Muslims at Abu Ghraib (Iraq),
Guantanamo (Cuba), and at other CIA ‘black sites’ throughout the world. Islamophobia is responsible for uncounted war
zone civilian casualties (so-called collateral damage) and for the maiming and
death of US fighters. In the end, all that can be said with certainty about the
US war on ‘terror’ is that, in the words of a recent headline, “Islamophobia in
America is spiraling out of control.”[xxv]
We are hateful,
angry, and afraid but presidential candidate Donald Trump assures us that, as
president, he will eliminate the danger of
a “terrorist” attack through “a total
and complete shutdown of Muslims
entering the United States....”[xxvi] The real danger of such a statement is not
just that it signals Trump’s lack of understanding of policy and his bigotry,
but that each such statement garners him more and more like-minded followers. The Daily
Stormer, “a neo-Nazi website,…endorsed Donald Trump's proposed ban on all
incoming Muslims,” writing, "Why were these monkeys ever allowed in in the
first place? Get all of these monkeys the hell out of our country – now!"
"Heil Donald Trump – THE ULTIMATE SAVIOR. Make America White
Again!”[xxvii]
In the US, post-9-11, just looking at the numbers
of mass slayings alone, it’s US right-wing—our country’s, white
‘home-grown’ “terrorists”-- who are acting like “terrorists,” albeit not labeled as such. “Terrorists”
can apparently only be Muslims who kill over three people at a time and do so
because of their allegiance to Islam and the promised ‘Islamic State’ (which, by
the way, is made up of ethnically diverse fighters—Sunni Iraquis, Boko Haram in Equitorial Africa, Somalia ISIS
allies, and US ISIS fighters, to name a few--who do not always agree about battlefield
means and ultimate objectives, with
potentially even less agreement about the ideological, political, and social
parameters of the much sought after Islamic State. .
The US now
has on average one mass shooting a day, [xxviii]
most carried out by one or more ‘home-grown’ white guys with an ideology that
often weaves together Christianity and racism. Yet these home-grown ideologically-driven “terrorists”
are not labeled as such. The latter
designation is exclusively reserved for people who ideologically associate with the Islamic faith and State --or who do
not--but are Muslims whose religion is Islam.
White Christians who interpret the ‘Word of God’ as telling them to
eliminate dark-skinned ‘miscreants’ who violate their God’s Word,’ are just “crazy,” not racist Christian religious
“terrorist” zealots with guns and intent to kill in the name of racial ‘purity. My guide to understanding the contradictory nature
of our government’s discourse is Humpty-Dumpty:[xxix]
"I don't know what you mean by 'glory',"
Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled
contemptuously. "Of course you don't- till I tell you. I meant 'there's a
nice knock-down argument for you!'" "But 'glory' doesn't mean 'a nice knock-down argument'," Alice objected.
"When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean- neither more nor less."
"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things."
"The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master-that's all."
[i] See C. Vann
Woodward, The Strange Career of Jim Crow; also
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Black_brute
[v]
Sophie Trawalter, Kelly M. Hoffman, Adam
Waytz. 2012. “Racial Bias in Perceptions
of Others’ Pain.” Plos.org. http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0048546
[vi] See
summary of above research in: http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/science/2014/11/whites_see_blacks_as_superhuman_strength_speed_pain_tolerance_and_the_magical.html
[vii]
Gray, Kurt and Daniel M. Wager.
2009. “Moral
typecasting: Divergent perceptions of moral agents and moral patients.” http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/96/3/505/
[viii]
http://corvallistoday.com/Americas/US/ww1/wwicartoonsall.htm
[ix] Ibid
[x]http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/presentations/immigration/german8.html
[xv] Ibid
[xvi] Ibid
[xvii] See cartoon
stereotypes of Irish:
https://www.google.com/search?q=anti-irish+sentiment+in+america&biw=1600&bih=742&tbm=isch&imgil=DZ7bGaKm_nmLWM%253A%253BmT05hqkRpqeuDM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fwww.capecodtoday.com%25252Farticle%25252F2014%25252F07%25252F29%25252F26296-Sen-Therese-Murray-invokes-anti-Irish-sentiment-amid-immigration-debate&source=iu&pf=m&fir=DZ7bGaKm_nmLWM%253A%252CmT05hqkRpqeuDM%252C_&usg=__BOuoLoXXb6Xtu52RqSm0hHe5hWE%3D&ved=0ahUKEwj2yLLUsc_JAhUFRyYKHQKyA8MQyjcINA&ei=O3BoVra_MYWOmQGC5I6YDA#imgrc=YeO2G2YNdLjETM%3A&usg=__BOuoLoXXb6Xtu52RqSm0hHe5hWE%3D
[xxii]
2003/2005 http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/FY_2005_BIB_4.pdf
2005/2006 http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Budget_BIB-FY2007
2007/2008: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/budget_bib-fy2009.pdf
2009/2010: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/budget_bib_fy2011.pdf
2011 http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/dhs-budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf
2005/2006 http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/Budget_BIB-FY2007
2007/2008: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/budget_bib-fy2009.pdf
2009/2010: http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/budget_bib_fy2011.pdf
2011 http://www.dhs.gov/sites/default/files/publications/dhs-budget-in-brief-fy2013.pdf
[xxiv] http://www.foreignpolicyjournal.com/2012/09/08/the-lies-that-led-to-the-iraq-war-and-the-persistent-myth-of-intelligence-failure/
[xxvii]http://www.thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/davidbadash/neo_nazi_group_endorses_trump_s_ban_on_muslims_heil_donald_trump_the_ultimate_savior
[xxviii] https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/08/26/were-now-averaging-more-than-one-mass-shooting-per-day-in-2015/
[xxix]
http://www.fecundity.com/pmagnus/humpty.html
