Becoming White: The Weakness in Democrats’ “People of Color” Coalition
Rather than joining forces with this coalition, many immigrants see an alternative path to safety – becoming white.
Rather than joining forces with this coalition, many immigrants see an alternative path to safety – becoming white.
Part of the problem is our ignorance. Almost everything Americans know about the Nazis is based on events in 1945, not 1933. We don’t understand where Hitler, the Nazis, and their concentration camps come from, so we can’t see parallels playing out right before our eyes.
The man who stood at the Berlin Wall and taunted a dictator believed a world with fewer barriers was a world Americans would dominate. That was the Republican Party I joined as soon as I was old enough to vote.
This is the unspoken American Dream, embraced by centuries of immigrants to this country: If I work hard and experience success, one day my grandchildren can blindly persecute people just like me. Key to this American Dream is the central challenge of so-called “assimilation” – becoming white people.
Ronald Reagan liked immigrants. So did most Republicans. When you listen to Reagan explain the subject in his own words you realize why he won 49 states in 1984, and why no Republican apart from his VP has reached 51% since then.
The rising power and influence of corporations is not a happy development. However, in a climate dominated by an increasingly unstable US regime, it is a comfort to know that there is an alternative power center available. A corporate ID offers at least some protections against abuse by police and immigration officers in the ‘land of the free.’