Donald Trump has announced that he plans to rescind birthright citizenship through an executive order.
While possibly a ploy to encourage support among his white nationalist base in the upcoming midterm elections, this new proposal fits into the Trump administrations larger policy project: making America white again. While they cannot change the demographic reality of the nation, they will make the nation whiter by fiat.
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Despite popular handwringing about the Democratic Party’s left-wing moves, recent tracking from Latino Decisions and the NALEO Education fund indicates that registered Latino voters and likely Latino voters support the progressive plank of the party. Young women like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Ayanna Pressley are proof of the eagerness among the communities of color, who form an important part of the Democratic coalition, for important social reforms.
Latinos Care About a Fairer Economy and Society, not Just Immigration
The Latino Decisions/NALEO poll shows that Latino voters would be more likely to support candidates who have policies that align with the progressive wing of the Democratic Party. Respondents overwhelmingly favored candidates who wanted a clean DREAM act, universal background checks for gun purchases, expanded access to health care, protection of social programs like Medicare and Social Security, and reproductive rights.
Last month, the Trump administration made it clear that the 2020 census would include a question regarding citizenship. The administration claimed that the new citizenship question was added to make sure that key sections of the Voting Rights Act were being upheld. The block-by-block census data could identify communities under threat and the Justice Department, headed by Jeff Sessions, could keep an eye on those vulnerable communities. The administration argued that it was nothing for community or civil rights organizations to worry about.
The census is constitutionally mandated in order to ascertain the number of people living in the country. Using that information, representation can be apportioned, congressional districts can be drawn, federal funding can be issued, states can make long-term plans. But the census is important because it one of the ways that the state “sees.” That is, government officials at local, state, and national levels do not personally know every single constituent or person living in their district, city, state, or country. It is impossible for them to know something or anything about everybody, yet these officials must. In order for highly organized states to function, they must know key aspects about the populations they encompass. The census, a series of questions asking individuals to describe themselves and their families, is one of the many ways governments know their populations (others include social security numbers, driver’s licenses, birth certificates, death certificates, tax returns, etc.).
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In 2012, Republicans issued an infamous autopsy that outlined the future strategy of the party that would include enticing Latinos. “If Hispanic Americans perceive that a GOP nominee or candidate does not want them in the United States (i.e. self-deportation), they will not pay attention to our next sentence…. If Hispanics think we do not want them here, they will close their ears to our policies” the RNC report read. A year into Donald Trump’s presidency, it appears that Latinos across the board have heard their message. It is clear that Republicans don’t have just a Latino problem—they have a generational crisis on their hands.
With so much in the headlines recently, it would have been easy to pass over a significant development in the Republican Party. On September 17, 2017, the New York Times released a confidential memo from the Senate Leadership Fund to Republican donors explaining the implications of the Alabama Senate special election. In it, the establishment wing of the GOP, including Mitch McConnell and his allies, concede that the Republican Party is Trump’s now.
The Senate Leadership Fund explains that the neoliberal branch of the GOP had been able to hold off the angry insurgent nationalist wing of the party in 2010 and 2014. “However, this year’s Alabama Senate special election shows that the 2014-16 playbook for winning Republican primaries needs to be recalibrated and improved….[The] electorate has dramatically realigned itself with President Trump at the helm,” states the memo.
On Friday April 14, 2017, Iowa representative Steve King was a guest on Iowa Press, an Iowa public television political show. The interviewer, Kay Henderson, pressed King on criticisms that he was a racist. In response, King defended earlier statements he made with a lengthy discussion on declining fertility rates in the Netherlands and the United States. He clarified that Western nations and the U.S. were no longer meeting their replacement levels (according to him 2.15 children per mother). This was to their detriment. “If you believe in Western Civilization and you believe in the American dream and the American civilization, then we ought to care enough to reproduce ourselves,” he explained.
Henderson did not press King on his notion that civilization—a compendium of institutions, social customs, laws, economic systems, and cultural productions—could be passed on only through sexual reproduction and birth. King was asserting that civilization was genetically inherited, not learned or shared. That is, King believes that white American babies are born with a biologically determined knowledge of the English language and capitalism.
Over the last year and a half we have witnessed the pyrrhic victory of the Republican Party. Yes, Donald Trump was elected president, but less than half the population of the nation voted, he lost the popular vote by nearly 3 million votes (less than a quarter of Americans voted for Trump), was definitively helped by foreign influence, and his campaign appealed to the darkest forces in American culture and history. Trump literally announced his presidency by calling the largest community of the largest minority group in the United States criminals and rapists.
History is a frustrating thing. Most have learned that history is a certainty, a fact, a singular, straightforward, correct answer. Our confidence in its authoritative certainty was forged in history lessons from kindergarten through high school. Multiple-choice and true-or-false questions have honed a belief in its singular truth. The Declaration of Independence was signed in 1776. George Washington was the first president. Pearl Harbor was attacked in 1941. A+.
History is not a hard science. It is not just an accumulation of facts. History is deeply rooted in the humanities, more closely connected with literature than math or science. History is not physics—for every human action there is not an equal and opposite reaction. There is no formula that predetermines or explains the cause and effect of past and present. Historians craft the cause and explain the effect. While dates, times, bills, and people are facts, they have no larger meaning without the analytical work that people must do. History is how we make meaning. History is how we explain the past and make sense of the present. History is not infallible; it is interpretive. Yet, history has been used in the exercise of politics as a form of concrete evidence. Politicians and influential leaders have wielded history in their bidding to influence the American electorate.
Day 1: Make America Safe Again
Monday July 18, 2016 was the first day of the Republican National Convention. Following the presumptive candidate’s restorationist theme of “Make America Great Again,” the theme for the day was the multitude of threats that the nation faced and how to correct them. After hours, of speeches it became clear what the most significant threat to the nation was for Trump and his supporters: people of color. American decline was not caused by neoliberal policies, outsourcing, massive tax cuts, deregulation, and a disbelief in government. Instead, the speakers screamed, it was Muslims, Mexicans, and Black lives that threatened America.
