Racism and xenophobia

To the Editor:

It’s difficult to tell whether Rahul Kanakia’s column [“America is for Americans,” Feb. 13] is meant as a serious political argument or as a witty satire directed against the nationalist xenophobes who, alas, comprise much of the American population. Most of Kanakia’s claims are false in sufficiently subtle ways that the column can be taken for serious, but every once in a while, he comes up with a real howler, like “[w]e give jobs and human rights to the poor, huddled masses,” that leads me to pray that the whole column is a joke.

Memo to Kanakia: you don’t “give” rights to someone else. Saying that we “give” human rights to immigrants is just as incoherent as saying that the U.S. government “gives” us free speech. If it’s a gift, it’s not a right. And we don’t give immigrants jobs any more than they give us their labor — it’s a marketplace transaction, and, all too often, one that is unfair in favor of the native-born American employers. Consider the fields and sweatshops full of undocumented immigrants whose employers use the immigration laws and language barriers as a source of power to enable them to pay below-minimum wages.

I agree with Kanakia on one point. He’s right that it is not racist to feel discomfort when you interact with a different culture. What is racist is to blame that discomfort on the other culture, and conclude that they are obligated to change to conform to your preferences — to “self-identify with whites” just as you do.

And it’s telling that Kanakia identifies “native-born American” culture with white culture. That’s probably very surprising to actual Native Americans. Why shouldn’t we all assimilate to Native American culture? It’s also probably very surprising to black Americans, who are just as native-born as the white ones. Why shouldn’t we all assimilate to black culture? What’s so special about white folks, other than the fact of their making up a numerical majority in the continental U.S., that their culture gets to be the mandated culture for everyone in this country?

Kanakia poses self-segregation and assimilation as the only alternatives to a grudging, “guarded” toleration. He should move beyond that narrowness of mind and spirit and learn to appreciate the opportunity to experience “off-script” responses as the fabulous array of different modes of human flourishing that they represent. Come on! Who wants to live their life from a script? He might even learn something.

Paul Gowder

Ph.D. student, Political Science