Immigrant Crossing: Intersecting Race and Gender

Next week, I am releasing a novel about an immigrant who is accused of murder. The book is a thrilling and creative exploration of what it means to be an American, and who gets to make that decision. We glorify the immigrants who crossed the country in covered wagons, and the immigrants who first landed at Plymouth Rock, while militarizing the southern border and deifying new immigrants as gangs of thugs. The reasons for these seemingly complicated conflicting feelings are rooted in the same old triumvirate of dickishness; subjectification, the warrior/thug complex, and the consolation prize.

OH MY GOD! THE HORDES!

In 2011, I wrote about how Tom Tancredo and his masculinity clones were attempting to highlight the MS-13 gang as an example of how immigrants from Latin America were thugs. We pick a group with whom we identify, and label outside groups as thugs. This is the Warrior/Thug Complex. With immigration, it's easy. Immigrants come from other cultures,

Yeah! A wall. It worked so great for the Chinese!

they often speak other languages, and usually speak it with a funny accent (like those darn Canadians). Best yet for deciding who is not a proper warrior, immigrants from lower latitudes are usually brownish. It's like a storm trooper's uniform except they can't take it off.

In a society that suffers remarkably little violent crime, masculinity will not survive unless males can be convinced that they are at risk of imminent violence at any moment. Thugs must be identified in order to allow men to be warriors, otherwise advocates of irrational violence just seem like tinfoil hats (thanks to Eric Schultz for that phrase). Immigration provides masculinity in the new world and increasingly in Europe with hordes of thugs needed to make men believe they must continue to glorify violence or suffer the consequences.

ESL- English as a Second cLass Marker

Americans of a certain educational class get goose pimples every time they spot errors in how people use English. We cite old wives' tales as grammar rules, and try to pretend that language is static. This is ridiculous considering just how rapidly language evolves, and is ever-evolving. Just consider that the word selfie is now in every major American dictionary.

Sorry to those looking for solid rules. Language doesn't fit into neat categories,
and when it does it is still evolving and changing.
1- Ever heard of sarcasm? e.g. "I could care less by completely ignoring you."
2- Except in a plural acronym e.g. M.D.'s.
3- Just because 'literally' is the antonym of 'figuratively' does not mean it cannot be used figuratively. If that were true, it would be bad grammar to write the word 'large' in a small or medium-sized font.
8- Except when 'effect' is a transitive verb.
10- Just because it's nonstandard, doesn't mean it's not a word.
Addendum i- Prepositions are fine to end sentences with. Please stop spreading this old wives' tale. To quote Churchill, "This is just the sort of nonsense up with which I will not put."
Addendum ii- I find it ironic when people claim there is only one narrow definition of  'irony.'
Conclusion- Grammar is a nefarious tool to discover those who don't belong.
Feel free to use proper grammar, but don't think less of those who don't!

The reality is that grammar is now what it has always been, a way of telling the unwashed masses from the educated elite. When a grammar sheriff of Nottingham tells Robin Hood that he should not end a sentence with a preposition, he is reflecting the belief of extreme elitists from the 17th Century who designed a grammar which reflected Latin in order to better determine which of their peers had been to a proper Latin college (i.e.- not Shakespeare).

Today, we mostly use grammar and "proper English" to determine who has been middle class or above for long enough to be considered properly American, and therefore a properly subjectified man (or privileged woman). Better yet, by pointing out "errors" in grammar, we can objectify others instead of considering the substance of their ideas, arguments, and legitimate claims at liberation. By focusing on how an Asian immigrant speaks funny, or on how black men don't speak "white," we can lump these people into groups less deserving of the consolation prize.

Overseers Over Seeing

And our consolation prize is the same as it was in the antebellum south. We are White (Straight) Men. This fact may alienate us from our children, other men, even our wives and lovers, but at least we are at the top of the heap, the head of the pack. Even within the group of white men, we may not be the CEO in charge of Georgia Pacific Paper Company (The Koch Brothers), or even a small-business owner. But at least we are not brownish. Seeing the welfare state erode before us, knowing that starvation and ostracism awaits us if we fail to succeed as proper men, we are rightfully terrified that we could fail even if we are hard working and relatively competent. Most men don't realize that it's just a Cracker Jack prize. We have little individual control over our economic situations, even if we are white, but we have a little more than those brownish guys do.

Give us your sick, tired, and poor
so that we can laugh at them as
we point out how they are not real men.

Immigration is the great story of the new world. If America is exceptional, it is not exceptional like a souffle. It is exceptional like a potager, a mix of all the vegetables in the garden in one tremendous stew. It seems like blindness that leads so many Americans to fight each wave of immigration, or complete disregard for history. I assure you it is not. The reason that Sheriff Joe is elected to office repeatedly in Arizona isn't that people don't know how important immigration is to our success, but because immigration provides too great a foil for American masculinity. Hating immigrants is one of the costs of masculinity.

On its own, masculinity is a great weight on men. We would not carry that burden unless there were carrots and sticks. Xenophobia provides both. It is another part of masculinity that we must dismantle before we can be free.