Breathing While Brown

News analysis by Moe White

Last month the Arizona legislature passed the most draconian law yet in the ongoing battle among states to prove themselves the toughest, rightest (politically), wrongest (ethically), cruelest, and most totalitarian big brother of all 50 states. The new law not only empowers but also requires police in the state to stop and question anyone about whom they might have “a reasonable suspicion” that he or she is in the country illegally.

If stopped and questioned, people must produce a passport, birth certificate, green card, tribal enrollment card, or Arizona drivers license to satisfy the detaining officer of their legal status; if unable to do so, they are liable to arrest and being turned over to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) for deportation. In theory, in other words, every resident of or visitor to Arizona must have documentary proof of citizenship or right to residency on them at all times.

Arizona is Indian country. The Hopis are the best-known tribe, but the
state is also home to Havasupai, Maricopa, Mojave, Navajo, Paiute,
southern Ute, and Zuni, along with a dozen other Native American
nations. The earliest agriculture in the state was developed 4,000 years
ago by the Indians; the Hopi village of Oraibi, founded in 1200 A.D.,
is believed to be the oldest continuously occupied town in the United
States.

The state is also very Spanish in its heritage. The first European to
explore the area, searching for gold in 1539, was a Franciscan friar
named Marcos de Niza. A year later Francisco Vásquez de Coronado
followed. The Guevavi mission was founded in 1692, the San Xavier del
Bac misison in 1700, and the first permanent settlement, at Tubac, in
1752. In 1775 — a year before the American Revolution — the Spanish
established Fort Tucson.

So this state, home to twenty generations and hundreds of thousands of
residents whose heritage is anything but Anglo-Saxon European, has now
decided that white authority figures have the right to arrest any and
all of them on sight. After all, their very existence — the fact that
they are alive and in Arizona — might raise “reasonable suspicion” in
the state where more illegal Hispanics cross into the U.S. than any
other.

There’s a long history of this sort of bigotry. Not many Americans are
still alive to remember “NO IRISH NEED APPLY,” but quite a few have
first-hand knowledge of the Japanese internment camps of World War II,
and millions of us grew up with signs at restaurants, laundromats,
clothing stores, and other businesses limiting entry to “WHITE PATRONS
ONLY.” (This author has also seen, in Shanghai, China, of all places,
signs posted in a park in the old European quarter reading “NO DOGS OR
CHINESE ALLOWED.”)

Most of us have moved beyond those days. Members of minority groups
serve in Congress, state houses, the courts, and many lesser offices.
We’ve elected a mixed-race president, who appointed the first Hispanic
justice to the Supreme Court. But embrace of equality is not universal
in our nation; below the surface of “color-blind” equality seethes an
atavistic desire among a substantial minority to debase, remove, or
destroy “the other.”

It’s important to remind people of those powerful emotions, for two
reasons: they are at the heart of the new Arizona law, and they underlie
all the so-called “N” words that we are so careful to expunge from
polite discourse. Some people call the feelings racism; others
prejudice, or ethnic bias, or preference for one’s own cultural
heritage. Whatever the term used to describe, or disguise, the emotion,
the feelings are visceral and real, and can rarely be exorcised from a
person’s makeup.

For the benefit of those who are too politically correct to utter them,
and as part of my belief that you can’t exorcise your demons unless
you’re willing to name them, let’s do so. Here are some of the
best-known, most offensive, and least-admitted “N” words: mick, dago,
jap, chink, nigger, kike, wop, frog, wetback, polack, kraut. For
non-ethnic subcultures that raise hackles among haters, FAG and DYKE are
the favorites.

Now, I have tried, but failed, to discover comparable terms of
disrespect for the British or Scandinavians (Swedes, Norwegians, Finns,
or Danes). You know, all those Anglo-Saxon tribes — the Norsemen — that
defeated the native Celts and became the English people.

But why should there be any such epithets? They are the dominant group,
the conquerors, the ones who enslaved the blacks, almost eliminated the
Indians, stole the Nisei’s property, and burned out Chinatowns from time
to time. And for centuries, whenever one of those “lesser” groups
demanded or, worse, began to attain, rights for themselves, the same
conquerors were the ones who lynched, murdered, or legislated them back
into submission.

We all know what can happen to successful African Americans who take
pride in their success by owning nice, expensive cars or living in
upscale neighborhoods: in many places, they can be arrested for “driving
while black.” It should come as no surprise, then, that today, having
lost “their” country, “their” White House, “their” presidency — their
absolute supremacy — the angry underbelly of American hate is eager to
stamp out any possibility of illegal aliens’ being allowed to stay,
work, and become part of our society. No surprise, then, that in Arizona
“we the people” should make breathing while brown a crime.