Friday, May 30, 2014
Tuesday, May 25, 2010
Sermon on Margaret Fuller and Arizona Legislation
Last Sunday my minister, the Reverend Nathan C. Walker, settled minister of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia, preached a sermon entitled "Separate Spheres: The Lives of Margaret Fuller and Emma Grant." The sermon centered on Margaret Fuller, a Transcendentalist, Unitarian, and social activist as well as with how America treats undocumented immigrants and the harms of the Arizona anti-immigrant legislation.
Sunday, May 16, 2010
Visual Arts, Gender, and Immigration
Sometimes words don’t tell the whole story. That’s one reason that I am very attracted to the visual arts. I was interested in what I could locate online about the issue of immigration and art. I was surprised to find a New York City gallery hosting a show in June of this year that will contain works of art by artists reacting to the new Arizona anti-immigrant legislation. The El Taller Gallery hosts a number of interesting visual art works on the topic of immigration. I also came across a New York Times article from a few years ago (during the 2006 debated over immigration reform) which discussed visual arts exhibitions around the US that focused on immigration and works by immigrants. Noting the upcoming show at Etaller, I would expect additional visual arts displays on the social justice implications of our debate over immigration in 2010. Progressive visual artists are allies with other groups that struggle for social justice for immigrants and for fair and just immigration reform.
While much of what is written about immigration, and the legal framework that many countries have assembled, focuses on a male perspective. But an every larger portion of immigrants globally are women. While some of these women bring their children to join their husbands already in a host country, many women come on their own and seek their own employment. In addition to their own needs, women immigrants often have responsibility for children and will often be involved in local community organizations that greatly increase the quality of life for the local immigrant community. Women immigrants are also often quite active in local churches and other religious organizations that, like other community centers, will assist immigrants with building language skills and access to social, medical, and educational resources.
As part of my Internet research for resources on women and immigration I came across a fairly thorough bibliography of research on this topic from 1945 to 2000. I also located a blog that features “Women Artists on Immigration” and a website from New American Media that highlights new stories on the topic of women and immigration. Women and immigration and the use of visual arts are just two more aspects of the experience of immigration in the US and the struggle for the just treatment of immigrants.
Unitarian Universalists are committed to honoring the “inherent worth and dignity” of all. This is one of the principles that drive our commitment to justice and fairness in immigration reform. It is why we welcome immigrants and demand that their human rights be respected and why we condemn discrimination and violence directed at the immigrant community. As members of a religious community, the issue of immigration is a key social justice issue that calls for our constant attention. Our voices are needed especially at a time like the present when our nation is involved in a heated debate over how immigration and immigrants should be treated by our government and conservative voices clamor for the most discriminatory and punitive solution.
Thursday, May 13, 2010
More bad legislation out of Arizona
Arizona is now toying the legislation that would prohibit ethnic studies classes at public schools. One example of such a class would be one that focused on Mexican American History. The New York Times carried a story about this legislation. The Arizona law characterizes ethnic studies classes as promoting hatred between the races. But this law seems more like one which aims at ideology. Ethnic studies classes create awareness of social processes, injustice, and takes an historical view of the treatment of various ethnic groups by the US. By outlawing these classes, the governing elite in Arizona want to control ideology and rhetoric along with the legal status of undocumented immigrants. This is turning into a out and out attack upon the immigrant communities in Arizona and their allies. I have been shocked by polls that show that well over half of the US citizens who were recently survey SUPPORT the Arizona legislation. The prestigious PEW Foundation reports the gloomy facts.
With the continuing legal attacks upon undocumented immigrants in the US, it is more important now that ever before for progressive religious groups to protest these types of laws. We need to take the unpopular side in this debate to prevent these hateful actions from spreading throughout the country. Unfortunately I just learned that in my home state, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a conservative Republican from a rural county has introduced legislation that mirrors the Arizona statute. This bill will be fiercely combated in the state and it is impossible to imagine our progressive Democratic governor from ever signing such a piece of legislation. But the conflict over immigration seems to be growing more and more strident.
With the continuing legal attacks upon undocumented immigrants in the US, it is more important now that ever before for progressive religious groups to protest these types of laws. We need to take the unpopular side in this debate to prevent these hateful actions from spreading throughout the country. Unfortunately I just learned that in my home state, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, a conservative Republican from a rural county has introduced legislation that mirrors the Arizona statute. This bill will be fiercely combated in the state and it is impossible to imagine our progressive Democratic governor from ever signing such a piece of legislation. But the conflict over immigration seems to be growing more and more strident.
Tuesday, May 11, 2010
Immigrants and Religious Organizations
Immigrants often come from sending countries where their religion has a very important place in their lives. When they arrive in their host countries, they often find a different situation. If the Roman Catholic Church was their home church, the style of worship and the form of church community may differ a great deal from what they experienced in their home country. In a situation of a Latino/a immigrant coming to the US, there are a wide variety of churches and other religious organizations that would offer a different religious experience from that in their home country. In the instance of Brazilian immigrants of Japanese ancestry going back to Japan, they will find very little evidence of Christianity, few church buildlings, and a liturgy offered in their native language very infrequently.
Because governments, in both the US and other advanced industrial countries like Japan, fail to deal adequately with the social, educational, or acculturation problems of immigrants, religious organizations often fill this void. The offer social assistance, language classes, help locating work, and often offer a locale where immigrants can celebrate the holidays of their home countries with fellow immigrants or immigrants who have become permanent residents. In my home town of Philadelphia, Catholic Social Services offers these sorts of much needed services. A number of other religious and non-religious social justice agencies are working in the city.
Since immigrants, particularly in times of economic upheaval in receiving countries like the US, are often discriminated against, treated poorly, and are often the scapegoats for problems that are actually the result of the malfunctioning of the economic system in the receiving country, religious organizations often are key groups in standing up for the rights of immigrants in society. With the enactment of the draconian immigrantion enforcement law in Arizona, many religious groups loudly declaimed that statute. Some include the Roman Catholic cardinal of Los Angeles, Latino clergy groups in Arizona, as well as Arizona Unitarian Universalists and other progressive religious groups. All of these churches and religious groups meet an important need in bringing a religious voice and the imperatives of social justice into the arena of political debate surrounding immigrant and immigration reform. So much of this debate has been highly emotional, nationalistic and one-side. The voices of religious leaders and congregations, who do not need to fear deportation if they speak our loudly and forcefully, give a much needed balance to what is often a hateful, ahistorical, and one-sided debate.
Because governments, in both the US and other advanced industrial countries like Japan, fail to deal adequately with the social, educational, or acculturation problems of immigrants, religious organizations often fill this void. The offer social assistance, language classes, help locating work, and often offer a locale where immigrants can celebrate the holidays of their home countries with fellow immigrants or immigrants who have become permanent residents. In my home town of Philadelphia, Catholic Social Services offers these sorts of much needed services. A number of other religious and non-religious social justice agencies are working in the city.
Since immigrants, particularly in times of economic upheaval in receiving countries like the US, are often discriminated against, treated poorly, and are often the scapegoats for problems that are actually the result of the malfunctioning of the economic system in the receiving country, religious organizations often are key groups in standing up for the rights of immigrants in society. With the enactment of the draconian immigrantion enforcement law in Arizona, many religious groups loudly declaimed that statute. Some include the Roman Catholic cardinal of Los Angeles, Latino clergy groups in Arizona, as well as Arizona Unitarian Universalists and other progressive religious groups. All of these churches and religious groups meet an important need in bringing a religious voice and the imperatives of social justice into the arena of political debate surrounding immigrant and immigration reform. So much of this debate has been highly emotional, nationalistic and one-side. The voices of religious leaders and congregations, who do not need to fear deportation if they speak our loudly and forcefully, give a much needed balance to what is often a hateful, ahistorical, and one-sided debate.
Friday, May 7, 2010
Ethnic Roots
Ethnicity is also a social category that is important when we discuss immigration. A key concept for investigating ethnicity is that of culture. Used in a broad anthropological sense, culture is a complex pattern of learned behavior that is shared with a group. Frequently, that group is a community that shares a common language. Another important aspect of culture is that it is symbolic. Culture is not static but changes over time.
As examples of culture, think of the holidays that are meaningful to you, your religious heritage, your language, and even the way in which you understand the world and how you express your most deeply held values. Your culture also has a role in the type of music that you enjoy, how you like to spend your leisure time, the type of visual art that you find most interesting, and perhaps most importantly, the food that you find most enjoyable.
In our contemporary global world, cultures are not distinct but frequently adopt elements of other cultures that group members come into contact with. This can result in a type of hybridity, when elements from two or more usually distinct cultures come into contact. Often this can be the focal point for cultural growth and creativity.
In the context of immigration we are usually talking about two or more cultures coming into contact. An immigrant, for example from a Latin American country with a particular culture and ethnic group identification comes to the US to work. She then comes into contact with a radically different culture, with differing ways of behavior that are thought appropriate, with differing values about those things she holds most important in her life, and with a different language. Often the stated goal is for the immigrant from another cultural setting to assimilate into the larger culture of the host country. In assimilation, the immigrant lets go of her past culture and adopts the values, language, and tastes of the host country. Americans often conceptualize their country as one “melting pot” where individuals from a diverse range of countries that, with a determined effort over time, become “Americanized,” and adopt the cultural patterns of the majority population.
Sometimes the failure to assimilate quickly enough (from the point of view of the native-born American) can lead to conflict. One small example, a number of years ago (at a time that national immigration reform was being debated) a local sandwich shop (“Cheese Steak Shop”) in South Philadelphia, an area of the city that was previously inhabited mostly by Italian-Americans, posted a provocative sign: “This is America: Speak English When Ordering!” The area where the shop is located currently has a diverse population of Latinos/as, Asians, African-Americans, and Caucasians. This sign provoked intense local and regional debate over whether immigrants who failed to learn English quickly enough (or who chose to continue to use their native language) were ‘true Americans’ or even deserved to be served lunch! A friend of mine who was making a documentary film about this incident pointed out the irony: the parents of the individual who owned the sandwich shop and posted the "English Only" sign were originally from Italy and themselves were not very good English speakers. And of course, local conservative politicians and radio talk show commentators picked up the story. Rather than an indication of a vital city with a culturally diverse population, the incident was used as a barometer of the failure of more recent immigrants to assimilate into the large American middle class culture.
As examples of culture, think of the holidays that are meaningful to you, your religious heritage, your language, and even the way in which you understand the world and how you express your most deeply held values. Your culture also has a role in the type of music that you enjoy, how you like to spend your leisure time, the type of visual art that you find most interesting, and perhaps most importantly, the food that you find most enjoyable.
In our contemporary global world, cultures are not distinct but frequently adopt elements of other cultures that group members come into contact with. This can result in a type of hybridity, when elements from two or more usually distinct cultures come into contact. Often this can be the focal point for cultural growth and creativity.
In the context of immigration we are usually talking about two or more cultures coming into contact. An immigrant, for example from a Latin American country with a particular culture and ethnic group identification comes to the US to work. She then comes into contact with a radically different culture, with differing ways of behavior that are thought appropriate, with differing values about those things she holds most important in her life, and with a different language. Often the stated goal is for the immigrant from another cultural setting to assimilate into the larger culture of the host country. In assimilation, the immigrant lets go of her past culture and adopts the values, language, and tastes of the host country. Americans often conceptualize their country as one “melting pot” where individuals from a diverse range of countries that, with a determined effort over time, become “Americanized,” and adopt the cultural patterns of the majority population.
Sometimes the failure to assimilate quickly enough (from the point of view of the native-born American) can lead to conflict. One small example, a number of years ago (at a time that national immigration reform was being debated) a local sandwich shop (“Cheese Steak Shop”) in South Philadelphia, an area of the city that was previously inhabited mostly by Italian-Americans, posted a provocative sign: “This is America: Speak English When Ordering!” The area where the shop is located currently has a diverse population of Latinos/as, Asians, African-Americans, and Caucasians. This sign provoked intense local and regional debate over whether immigrants who failed to learn English quickly enough (or who chose to continue to use their native language) were ‘true Americans’ or even deserved to be served lunch! A friend of mine who was making a documentary film about this incident pointed out the irony: the parents of the individual who owned the sandwich shop and posted the "English Only" sign were originally from Italy and themselves were not very good English speakers. And of course, local conservative politicians and radio talk show commentators picked up the story. Rather than an indication of a vital city with a culturally diverse population, the incident was used as a barometer of the failure of more recent immigrants to assimilate into the large American middle class culture.
Racism and Immigration
Not like me. Other. Different. Many times each day we make these subtle distinctions with people that we meet on the street, while shopping, or on campus. On a larger scale, our nation also makes similar distinctions and one of the sharpest and most harmful is when we treat a group of people, differently, because of their race. Understanding the debate in the US about immigration reform, the role of racism cannot be ignored. Many of the comments about the Arizona statute concerning state enforcement of federal immigration law turn on how an individual or group are to be selected to determine if they are legally in the US without the use of racial profiling which is specifically prohibited in the legislation. Most people, however, believe that this statute in actuality invites and encourages racial profiling in spite of the language in the law that forbids it.
Social theorists and social historians argue that race is not a biological phenomenon but a social and political one. The differentiation of various human populations into different races is not a biological-scientific process although it was characterized as such into the later part of the twentieth century. Looking cross culturally at different societies, we see that different societies ‘create’ racial types differently. In the US, the dominant distinction is on the basis of skin color and the divide is between black and white. But another way to look at the American racial divide is that it is a process of “constructing the other.” Groups classified as “white” are the dominant group in American society. They enjoy better access to jobs, education, housing and social services. They are also the racial group that dominates in the political and economic spheres and in the professions. And this making of certain groups of individuals “the other” on the basis of racial classification is also a way that a dominant social group legitimates its exercise of political and economic power. But since Americans look at these distinctions as racial, and hence rooted in biology, they are viewed as natural and immutable. Individuals in this country that are placed into various racial categories are usually not aware that these are a social construct, and thus something that can be changed. Americans also tend not to see the linkage between the exercise of political power and the arrangement and division of society.
Looking at different historical instances of social upheaval over immigration and the role of law in regulating immigration, these events typically occur when a host country---the destination country for immigrants---is experiencing an economic downturn and the social malaise that accompanies such a reversal of economic fortune. This is the case with the United States today. Economic downturns are often accompanied by nationalist rhetoric to “close the borders” and to deport “those in the country illegally.” But if we look at what is happening in the US, we do not hear about Canadian immigrants or immigrants from Europe. Immigrants from Mexico are at the center of the debate. No one would seriously propose constructing a Berlin Wall-like structure to separate the Canadian Province of Ontario and the State of Michigan. But such proposals have been made for the border between Mexico and Arizona. So there is more going on that just concern over immigration. It is a particular type of immigration. It is immigration from Mexico by poor, non-white individuals. And as these immigrants are constructed as ‘other,’ they are not only seen as racially or ethnically other, they are viewed as economic opportunists who come to this country so that they can ‘steal’ American jobs and ‘illegally’ access social, educational, and medical services. They also become criminals by statutory law and have even been likened by some American politicians to insects. At this point in our history, we are in a very emotional political debate over immigration that draws upon assumptions that we have about race and employs racist tactics and innuendo.
If we are seeking a just society and one where immigrants are treated fairly and made full democratic participants in our country, we need to start by first acknowledging our country’s deep seated racism. Until we take that first step, it will be nearly impossible to make progress and arrive at a reasoned and equitable adjustment to America’s approach to immigration.
Social theorists and social historians argue that race is not a biological phenomenon but a social and political one. The differentiation of various human populations into different races is not a biological-scientific process although it was characterized as such into the later part of the twentieth century. Looking cross culturally at different societies, we see that different societies ‘create’ racial types differently. In the US, the dominant distinction is on the basis of skin color and the divide is between black and white. But another way to look at the American racial divide is that it is a process of “constructing the other.” Groups classified as “white” are the dominant group in American society. They enjoy better access to jobs, education, housing and social services. They are also the racial group that dominates in the political and economic spheres and in the professions. And this making of certain groups of individuals “the other” on the basis of racial classification is also a way that a dominant social group legitimates its exercise of political and economic power. But since Americans look at these distinctions as racial, and hence rooted in biology, they are viewed as natural and immutable. Individuals in this country that are placed into various racial categories are usually not aware that these are a social construct, and thus something that can be changed. Americans also tend not to see the linkage between the exercise of political power and the arrangement and division of society.
Looking at different historical instances of social upheaval over immigration and the role of law in regulating immigration, these events typically occur when a host country---the destination country for immigrants---is experiencing an economic downturn and the social malaise that accompanies such a reversal of economic fortune. This is the case with the United States today. Economic downturns are often accompanied by nationalist rhetoric to “close the borders” and to deport “those in the country illegally.” But if we look at what is happening in the US, we do not hear about Canadian immigrants or immigrants from Europe. Immigrants from Mexico are at the center of the debate. No one would seriously propose constructing a Berlin Wall-like structure to separate the Canadian Province of Ontario and the State of Michigan. But such proposals have been made for the border between Mexico and Arizona. So there is more going on that just concern over immigration. It is a particular type of immigration. It is immigration from Mexico by poor, non-white individuals. And as these immigrants are constructed as ‘other,’ they are not only seen as racially or ethnically other, they are viewed as economic opportunists who come to this country so that they can ‘steal’ American jobs and ‘illegally’ access social, educational, and medical services. They also become criminals by statutory law and have even been likened by some American politicians to insects. At this point in our history, we are in a very emotional political debate over immigration that draws upon assumptions that we have about race and employs racist tactics and innuendo.
If we are seeking a just society and one where immigrants are treated fairly and made full democratic participants in our country, we need to start by first acknowledging our country’s deep seated racism. Until we take that first step, it will be nearly impossible to make progress and arrive at a reasoned and equitable adjustment to America’s approach to immigration.
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