No matter how the Bush administration and Congress act on illegal immigration in the US, any legislation or executive order is unlikely to answer the question: How many immigrants living in the country today are here illegally?
Depending on the source, the numbers range widely - from about 7 million up to 20 million or more.
But in a letter to a constituent in 2004, Sen. John McCain (R) of Arizona wrote: "According to the US Border Patrol apprehension statistics, almost four million people crossed our borders illegally in 2002." Although many are caught and made to leave the country, a significant number try again. No one knows for sure how many succeed, but Senator McCain's assertion would mean that the number crossing the border and disappearing into the US economy could be much higher than official estimates.
Nearly 14 million people (including 4.7 million children) live in "mixed status" families - in which the head of the household or the spouse is in the US illegally - Pew reported last summer. This is partly because children born in the US- regardless of their parents' legal status - are automatically US citizens.
It is obvious, to even the most casual observer, that we are in the midst of transformations so broad and comprehensive that they are revolutionizing the world in which we live, think, work, play, and pray—as never before in human history. The physical, intellectual, and social world we inhabit has changed more—faster and more often—in the past century than in the previous 20,000 years. The ground
is still shifting under us as relentless technological progress in the post-industrial world, coupled with social changes, as diverse as redefinition of the value and nature of work; the changing roles of men and women and changes in the nature of the family; the distribution of wealth; and the attitude towards others not of our racial group, all combine to radically alter the way we think and act. In so-called advanced societies, such as that in the United States, stress levels are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain, as we separate the rhythms of our life from those of nature. Perhaps it is only to be expected that in the face of such persistent change, and the lack of firm and unchangeable anchors that provide needed stability and constancy, we see such alarming levels of depression, anxiety, violence, and hedonism.
The ineluctable truth is that we are entering a bifurcated world, with a comparatively few healthy, well-fed techno-elites, and a much larger number of people condemned to a life that, in the words of Thomas Hobbes is “poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” The techno-elites, with a struggle, to be sure, will master or at least contain their most critical environmental stresses of the next century, but the vast majority of mankind, crippled by poverty, a lack of technology, and indifference on the part of their rich neighbors, will be unable to do so.
Even in the U. S., where the gap between rich and poor is steadily widening, we are witnessing an increasing polarization between the techno-elites and the technoilliterates. The fact that many of the latter are African-Americans and Hispanics only exacerbates problems in an already racially-divided country.
If we are to make our way safely through the uncharted waters of the next century, we must, in my view, look increasingly beyond the lure of technology to the deeper roots of human community, rebuilding positive aspects of the social cohesiveness of earlier times, and learning to put aside the ancient tribal hatreds that have divided and destroyed civilizations from time immemorial. We must consider all of the inhabitants of this globe as fellow travelers on a spaceship, endowed with glorious yet finite resources, and we must learn to replace the selfishness of “the natural man” with a genuine concern for the good of all mankind. Continuance of the current disparity between rich and poor—for every sixty-five dollars earned in rich countries, one dollar is earned in poor ones, and the gap is widening—is simply a recipe for disaster on a scale never before seen in human history.
We begin to understand the interconnectedness of all peoples everywhere as we internalize the Apostle Paul's famous statement to the Athenians: “[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth” (Acts 17:26). The implications of Paul's prescient observation are clear: all men and women everywhere literally are brothers and sisters, members of the same spiritual family, with all of the obligations and responsibilities of sibling relationships that implies. If we value the future, prejudice, bigotry and racism, all of which have caused so much suffering and harm since time began, must be replaced with the brotherhood of which Jesus and every other great religious leader in history taught.
Moore, Race in the 21st Century
If the colorline was the problem of the 20th century United States, then navigating a crisscrossing, superhighway of color-coded lines may well be the challenge of the 21st. The United States is a multiethnic nation. Always has been.
From American Indians who were invaded by Europeans, to Africans forced to come as slaves, to Asians recruited to work in gold mines and build railways, to Mexicans who became U.S. residents overnight when land was taken in war and annexed into the infant nation, the United States has grown on the sweat of many peoples.
But with demographic projections showing those currently considered non-white or minorities becoming the majority of the U.S. population by the middle of the 21st century, much attention is being paid to our Technicolor future.
Why?
In the words of theologian Cornell West: "Race matters."
Working on Race
Racism today is not as blatant as a sign saying who is or isn't welcome at a given venue, but it continues, and it has tangible consequences. Study after study cites race as a key factor in everything from economic level and quality and availability of medical care, to where people live and go to school, to the diseases they suffer, to projected life spans.
Racism factors into law enforcement, influencing who is and isn't stopped for traffic violations; body searched in airports; charged with crimes; given warnings, acquitted, convicted, and sentenced harshly or leniently.
"Fighting racism is not something you can put a period at the end of," said Loretta J. Williams, Ph.D., director of the Gustavus Myers Center for the Study of Bigotry and Human Rights in North America at Boston University. "We can chip away at it, but eliminating racism is very difficult because it goes to the basis of how power is structured."
The bad news is that we are entering the 21st century with a stratification of power still based on color, Ms. Williams said. The good news is that racism is not an act of God; it's a human construction.
Native Americans
Preservation of sovereign rights is key to preservation of Native American culture -- and that is key to preservation of Native Americans, he said. Mr. Deer rejects the notion of Indian peoples joining a U.S. melting pot.
"The melting pot is a myth," he said. "That's why there are so many ethnic communities. If Indians became a part of a melting pot, there is no other place on earth where Indian culture can be perpetuated. If we become little brown Americans, there will be no place on earth for us. In the 21st century, I want my children to maintain their identity and place in the world
African Americans
"Fragmentation of metropolitan areas into competing inner cities and suburbs isolates minorities and poorer people in the cities and older suburbs and sucks resources out of the cities as more affluent whites move farther away creating a seemingly endless suburban sprawl, he said. While environmentalists have challenged this coopting of the nation's countryside, the civil-rights community has been quiet on the issue, he said.
The NAACP and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg school system are appealing the court decision.
"While we celebrate Brown versus the Board of Education, we have a system that is closer to Plessey versus Ferguson -- the case preceding Brown versus the Board of Education, which called for separate-but-equal facilities," Mr. Powell said. "Fragmentation of metropolitan areas, tracking, magnets schools and the use of color-blind language that disempowers people of color were all created after Brown. They are all doing the same thing -- consolidating white power."
"Racism is alive and well, but people in political power are actually saying, ‘We don't have racism anymore,' or ‘I'm color blind,'" Mr. Gordon said. "But that's a lie. Nobody is color blind in that respect.
Asian Americans
The fastest growing ethnic group in the country is the Asian American community. It's also one of the most diverse, including people from Far Eastern nations like Korea, China and Japan; those from Southeast Asian nations like Cambodia and Vietnam; Pacific Islanders from Tonga, Fiji, Samoa and the Philippines; and Near Eastern countries like India and Pakistan. The experiences, cultures and viewpoints of Asian Americas are as vast as that continent. Still, coalitions of organizations representing people from these countries share common concerns. One is anti-Asian violence.
"I think it's a backlash to immigration," said Kathy Thomas-Sano, executive director of the National Federation of Asian Americans in The United Methodist Church. "There is a view that Asian Americans are better off than others, and that's not necessarily the case."
Hispanic Americans
By 2020, Hispanics, with roots in every Spanish-speaking nation in the hemisphere, are expected to be the largest racial-ethnic group in the United States. But numbers alone will not ensure voices and issues of that diverse community will be heard. That's why empowerment is the key concern of the Methodists Associated to Represent the Cause of Hispanic Americans (MARCHA).
"The key issue is always the empowerment of Hispanic people at all levels of society," said the Rev. Jose Orlando Rivera, executive director of MARCHA. "We need to deal with the human and civil rights of Hispanics, especially those who are undocumented."
Mr. Rivera pointed to efforts like California's Proposition 187, which sought to deny education, health and social services to immigrants and their children. The measure was approved by voters in a 1994 referendum, but later declared unconstitutional in federal court.
Actions against undocumented immigrants often affect the entire Hispanic community. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) raids on factories for undocumented workers or other dragnets in Hispanic communities snare everyone, Mr. Rivera said.
"INS assumes you are undocumented until you prove otherwise," he said. "There have been cases of documented or U.S.-born Hispanics arrested and kept in jail until family members could bring papers of proof. I cross the border all the time. It's not enough for me to say I'm Puerto Rican. They have to send me some other place to prove that."
Arab Americans
The biggest concern of Arab Americans is being shown negatively in the media, said Hussein Ibish, spokesperson for the Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Between entertainment outlets and network news organizations, the Arab Americans have been cast as the ultimate villains, he said.
"People say that we don't want to see Arab villains, but that's not true," he said. "Villains come in all ethnicities and races, but when there is only one kind of Arab -- a cruel and nasty one -- portrayed to the U.S. public, that's a problem."
Arab Americans second most pressing concern is government discrimination against them, Mr. Ibish said. Currently there are at least 25 Arabs in U.S. jails awaiting deportation who have not been charged with any offense because the evidence against them is a secret, he said.
"No one knows what they are accused of," Mr. Ibish said. "These people are green-card holders with American children and American wives. And all of the people who are in jail on `secret evidence' charges are Arabs. We consider this official discrimination against Arabs."
Seeing White
"Racism to me is spiritual disease," said Marian Groot, center co-chair. "I think we have to begin to look at the ways maintaining privilege and power damages us as humans. Something in our culture teaches us that there is not enough for everyone, and so we hoard."
White people often take for granted the privileges afforded them because of their racial designation, she said. They assume their life experiences are norms. The invisibility of whiteness to Whites helps lock racism in place, Ms. Groot said.
"As long as we do not have to see and acknowledge that we are given benefits and privileges simply because we are members of the dominant group, we can name racism as black people's problem or Native American peoples' problem," she said. "And as long as we assume an identity as an individual rather than a member of the white race, we do not have to take any responsibility for racism."
McIntosh, White Privilege: Unpacking the Invisible Knapsack
Thinking through unacknowledged male privilege as a phenomenon, I realized that, since hierarchies in our society are interlocking, there is most likely a phenomenon of white privilege that was similarly denied and protected. As a white person, I realized I had been taught about racism as something that puts others at a disadvantage, but had been taught not to see one of its corollary aspects, white privilege, which puts me at an advantage.
I think whites are carefully taught not to recognize white privilege, as males are taught not to recognize male privilege. So I have begun in an untutored way to ask what it is like to have white privilege. I have come to see white privilege as an invisible package of unearned assets that I can count on cashing in each day, but about which I was "meant" to remain oblivious. White privilege is like an invisible weightless knapsack of special provisions, maps, passports, code books, visas, clothes, tools and blank checks.
In unpacking this invisible knapsack of white privilege, I have listed conditions of daily experience that I once took for granted. Nor did I think of any of these perquisites as bad for the holder. I now think that we need a more finely differentiated taxonomy of privilege, for some of these varieties are only what one would want for everyone in a just society, and others give license to be ignorant, oblivious, arrogant, and destructive.
I see a pattern running through the matrix of white privilege, a pattern of assumptions that were passed on to me as a white person. There was one main piece of cultural turf; it was my own turn, and I was among those who could control the turf. My skin color was an asset for any move I was educated to want to make. I could think of myself as belonging in major ways and of making social systems work for me. I could freely disparage, fear, neglect, or be oblivious to anything outside of the dominant cultural forms. Being of the main culture, I could also criticize it fairly freely.
In proportion as my racial group was being made confident, comfortable, and oblivious, other groups were likely being made unconfident, uncomfortable, and alienated. Whiteness protected me from many kinds of hostility, distress, and violence, which I was being subtly trained to visit, in turn, upon people of color.
For this reason, the word "privilege" now seems to me misleading. We usually think of privilege as being a favored state, whether earned or conferred by birth or luck. Yet some of the conditions I have described here work systematically to overempower certain groups. Such privilege simply confers dominance because of one's race or sex.
Disapproving of the system won't be enough to change them. I was taught to think that racism could end if white individuals changed their attitude. But a "white" skin in the United States opens many doors for whites whether or not we approve of the way dominance has been conferred on us. Individual acts can palliate but cannot end, these problems.
To redesign social systems we need first to acknowledge their colossal unseen dimensions. The silences and denials surrounding privilege are the key political tool here. They keep the thinking about equality or equity incomplete, protecting unearned advantage and conferred dominance by making these subject taboo. Most talk by whites about equal opportunity seems to me now to be about equal opportunity to try to get into a position of dominance while denying that systems of dominance exist.
It seems to me that obliviousness about white advantage, like obliviousness about male advantage, is kept strongly inculturated in the United States so as to maintain the myth of meritocracy, the myth that democratic choice is equally available to all. Keeping most people unaware that freedom of confident action is there for just a small number of people props up those in power and serves to keep power in the hands of the same groups that have most of it already.
Although systemic change takes many decades, there are pressing questions for me and, I imagine, for some others like me if we raise our daily consciousness on the perquisites of being light-skinned. What will we do with such knowledge? As we know from watching men, it is an open question whether we will choose to use unearned advantage to weaken hidden system of advantage, and whether we will use any of our arbitrarily awarded power to try to reconstruct power systems on a broader base.
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McIntosh, List of White Privileges
1. I can, if I wish, arrange to be in the company of people of my race most of the time.
2. If I should need to move, I can be pretty sure of renting or purchasing housing in an area that I can afford and in which I would want to live.
3. I can be pretty sure that my neighbors in such a location will be neutral or pleasant to me.
4. I can go shopping alone most of the time, pretty well assured that I will not be followed or harassed.
5. I can turn on the television or open to the front page of the paper and see people of my race widely represented.
6. When I am told about our national heritage or about "civilization", I am shown that people of my color made it what it is.
7. I can be sure that my children will be given curricular materials that testify to the existence of their race.
8. If I want to, I can be pretty sure of finding a publisher for this piece on white privilege.
9. I can go into a music shop and count on finding the music of my race represented, into a supermarket and find the staple foods that fit with my cultural traditions, into a hairdresser's shop and find someone who can deal with my hair.
10. Whether I use checks, credit cards, or cash, I can count on my skin color not to work against the appearance of financial reliability.
11. I can arrange to protect my children most of the time from people who might not like them.
12. I can swear, or dress in second-hand clothes or not answer letters without having people attribute these choices to the bad morals, the poverty, or the illiteracy of my race.
13. I can speak in public to a powerful male group without putting my race on trial.
14. I can do well in a challenging situation without being called a credit to my race.
15. I am never asked to speak for all the people of my racial group.
16. I can remain oblivious of the language and customs of persons of color, who constitute the worlds' majority, without feeling in my culture any penalty for such oblivion.
17. I can criticize our government and talk about how much I fear its policies and behavior without being seen as a cultural outsider.
18. I can be sure that if I ask to talk to "the person in charge" I will be facing a person of my race.
19. If a traffic cop pulls me over, or if the IRS audits my tax return, I can be sure I haven't been singled out because of my race.
20. I can easily buy posters, postcards, picture books, greeting cards, dolls, toys, and children's magazines featuring people of my race.
21. I can go home from most meetings or organizations I belong to feeling somewhat tied in rather than isolated, out of place, outnumbered, unheard, held at a distance, or feared.
22. I can take a job with an affirmative action employer without having coworkers on the job suspect that I got it because of race.
23. I can choose public accommodations without fearing that people of my race cannot get in or will be mistreated in the places I have chosen.
24. I can be sure that if I need legal or medical help my race will not work against me.
25. If my day, week, or year is going badly, I need not ask of each negative episode or situation whether it has racial overtones.
26. I can chose blemish cover or bandages in "flesh" color that more or less matches my skin.
Kendall, Understanding White Privilege
Privilege, particularly white or male privilege, is hard to see for those of us who were born with access to power and resources. It is very visible for those to whom privilege was not granted. Furthermore, the subject is extremely difficult to talk about because many white people don't feel powerful or as if they have privileges that others do not. It is sort of like asking fish to notice water or birds to discuss air. For those who have privileges based on race or gender or class or physical ability or sexual orientation or age, it just is-it's normal.
For those of us who are white, one of our privileges is that we see ourselves as individuals, "just people," part of the human race. Most of us are clear, however, that people whose skin is not white are members of a race. The surprising thing for us is that, even though we don't see ourselves as part of a racial group, people of color generally do see us that way.
White privilege has nothing to do with whether or not we are "good" people. We who are white can be absolute jerks and still have white privileges; people of color can be the most wonderful individuals in the world and not have them. Privileges are bestowed on us by the institutions with which we interact solely because of our race, not because we are deserving as individuals. While each of us is always a member of a race or races, we are sometimes granted opportunities because we, as individuals, deserve them; often we are granted them because we, as individuals, belong to one or more of the more favored groups in our society.
Far too many of us who are white erroneously believe that we do not have to take the issues of racism seriously. While people of color understand the necessity of being able to read the white system, those of us who are white are able to live out our lives knowing very little of the experiences of people of color. Understanding racism or whiteness is often an intellectual exercise for us, something we can work at for a period of time and then move on, rather than its being central to our survival. Further, we have the luxury of not having to have the tools to deal with racial situations without looking incompetent.
White privilege allows us not to see race in ourselves and to be angry at those who do. I was asked to address a meeting of white women and women of color called together to create strategies for addressing social justice issues. Each of the women had been working for years in her own community on a range of issues from health care to school reform. As I spoke about the work that is required for white women and women of color to collaborate authentically, the white women became nervous and then resistant. Why was race always such an issue for women of color? What did I mean when I said it was essential for white women to be conscious of how being of their race affects every hour of their lives, just as women of color are? They were all professionals, some said, why did it matter what color they were? The silencing of dialogue here occurred because the white women didn't see the race of the women in the room as an issue. It did not occur to them that their daily experience was different from that of the African Americans, Latinas, and Asian Americans in the room. Had I not been asked to raise the issue, the responsibility of doing so would have been left to the women of color, as it usually is.
• We are able, almost always, to forget that everything that happens in our lives occurs in the context of the supremacy of whiteness. We are admitted to college, hired for jobs, given or denied loans, cared for by the medical profession, and we walk down the street as white people, always in the context of white dominance. In other words, part of the reason that doors open for us is our unearned racial privilege. But we act and often believe that we have earned everything we get. We then generalize from our perceived experience of deserving the opportunities we receive to thinking that, if a person of color doesn't get a job or a loan, it's because she or he didn't earn it.
However, if we are truly to understand the racial context of the twenty-first century, we have to grapple with our dogged unwillingness to understand the patterns of discrimination for what they are. We must ask how we participate in not seeing the experiences of people of color that are so very different from white people's. We should question our resoluteness to identify class rather than race as the primary determinant of opportunity and experience, particularly when there is so much evidence to the contrary. In short, white people can continue to use unearned privilege to remain ignorant, or we can determine to put aside our opacities in order to see clearly and live differently. As Harvey Cox said in The Secular City, "Not to decide is to decide."
"Not many films have the possibility of making their audiences better people. I don't expect " Crash " to work any miracles, but I believe anyone seeing it is likely to be moved to have a little more sympathy for people not like themselves. The movie contains hurt, coldness and cruelty, but is it without hope? Not at all. Stand back and consider. All of these people, superficially so different, share the city and learn that they share similar fears and hopes. Until several hundred years ago, most people everywhere on earth never saw anybody who didn't look like them. They were not racist because, as far as they knew, there was only one race. You may have to look hard to see it, but " Crash " is a film about progress. "
Roger Ebert
