We’ve seen tribes go at each other’s throats in Rwanda and Kenya, religious groups blow each other up, from Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland to Sunnis and Shiites in Iraq. The riots over the Ferguson ruling are about a perception in a racial minority community that black Americans live under an entirely different legal system than whites, while our focus on border security is almost entirely directed at the southern border where brown people cross, hardly the Canadian border, above which all those white, hockey-fans live. What’s up with that?
The fear of “someone or something different” from our common experiences is an atavistic response that stems from the malevolent lives that cavemen faced a very, very long time ago. When something or someone “different” sauntered up to your cave, “men” did not run up joyfully to greet what or whom they did not understand. Fear of death or attack – not understanding the risk parameters of what the clan faced from this “intruder” – generated a prudent distrust of anything new or different. Frequently, their fear was justified. Fear was a life-preserving response, and even when there is an intellectual understanding of the “new,” in many there remains an ancient emotional fear response that simply has not evolved at the same rate as technological, political and social change all around us.
Likewise, when resources – be they objectively quantified or politically limited or controlled – are scarce, there is a tendency of incumbents to hold on tight to what they have or think that will have to the exclusion of anyone they believe covets those resources. When there is a shortage of people to generate obvious resources, the opposite feeling is often engendered. Why the bio-history lecture, Peter?
Because the above emotional reactions are at the core of our immigration policies. And people with rural traditional values, who simply like stuff the way it is with as few complications as possible, the most likely to question strangers and change. Labor is focused on growing and extracting natural resources. Live in a huge city? Strangers are everywhere, the division of labor is extreme and needed to coordinate the complexity of daily life… the only constant is change as jobs and business are predicated at developing, building and selling the “new” to the world. Attitudes on immigration are a mix of “all of the above.”
So we’ve been beating ourselves up here in the states over immigration policies and social welfare for minorities. Racism? Fear of change? Battles for limited governmental budgets and dwindling resources? Oh yeah, but these features are hardly feelings and reactions that are unique to us. For example, think the civilized citizens in Northern Ireland have evolved beyond those Catholic/Protestant conflicts? And how do the Northern Irish react to other races and tiny minority religions? “On average, almost three racial hate crimes a day are reported to the police. Between 2013 and 2014 there was a 43 percent increase in racially motivated offenses, 70 percent of them in Belfast. Immigrant groups assert — and the police concede — that the real figure is much higher, with many attacks going unrecorded because of fear of reprisals or a lack of faith in the justice system.
“According to a recent report by the Northern Ireland Commission for Ethnic Minorities, just 12 of 14,000 race-related crimes reported over the past five years ended in a successful prosecution… The police say paramilitary groups are cynically manipulating xenophobia to gain support in their communities by targeting migrants. In April, a senior police officer, Assistant Chief Constable Will Kerr, said the rise in the number and severity of racial hate crimes in Protestant loyalist areas left ‘the unpleasant taste of a bit of ethnic cleansing.’
“But Patrick Yu, the executive director of the Northern Ireland Commission for Ethnic Minorities, said it is simplistic to brand certain communities intrinsically racist… ‘Most of the available housing stock for private rental just happens to be in loyalist areas where there is already a wariness of outsiders and a feeling of being left behind by Catholics who they believe have benefited disproportionately from the Good Friday Agreement [the 1998 settlement of the sectarian violence],’ he said. ‘There is still huge deprivation in these areas, and I believe sectarianism and racism are two sides of the same coin — both need to be tackled.’” New York Times, November 28th.
Ethnically diverse England is also at the center of immigration concern. The European Union’s open borders – allowing free transit and migration from one EU nation to another – is driving too many Brits, including PM David Cameron, crazy. It seems that residents of poorer EU nations are wending their way to places like Manchester or London to find work, or lacking success in that endeavor, to receive the generous social benefits accorded to UK citizens. Cameron wants to cut off those attractive benefits, at least for the initial years of the change in residency, which totally requires a modification of the most basic requirements of EU membership. But there is a conservative backlash in England, a movement that could extract Britain from the EU entirely.
“In a speech delivered in a factory in Staffordshire, in the English Midlands, Mr. Cameron said that if re-elected, he would move to stop immigrants from the European Union from claiming welfare assistance, including social housing and child benefits, in their first four years in Britain… In trying to sound tough on immigration, Mr. Cameron hoped to blunt intense criticism from within his own Conservative Party and from the anti-Europe, anti-immigration U.K. Independence Party, which has threatened his chances of remaining prime minister in the election set for May 7.” NY Times. While Cameron backed off championing an immigration quota, anti-immigrant policies are rampant and rising all across the UK.
Anger at rich immigrants – who have decimated housing affordability in central London to the exclusion of most locals by paying some of the most absurd prices for houses ever witnessed anywhere on earth – is now joined by immigrants at the other end of the social order who are seen as sucking down social benefits paid for by high taxes charged to the incumbents. “[C]ritics seized on government figures released [in the last week of November] showing that net immigration over the year from June 2013 was 260,000, up from 182,000 over the same period the year before, despite pledges from Mr. Cameron to get it down to ‘tens of thousands’ a year…
“Mr. Cameron [added that] they should not be allowed to take advantage of government help for low-wage workers. He pledged to prevent immigrants from receiving child benefit payments if their children live outside Britain… Before they arrive, he said, they should have firm job offers, and if they do not find work within six months, they should leave… Citizens of any new member state of the European Union, he said, should not be allowed to work in Britain until the economies of their countries grow to become more similar to those of other members.
“Such measures would have to be negotiated with the [EU] bloc, however, and if Britain enacted such changes unilaterally, the rules would most likely be challenged in the European Court of Justice… Critics in the Conservative Party and the U.K. Independence Party argue that the best way to control immigration from Europe is for Britain to leave the bloc altogether, which Mr. Cameron says he does not want.” NY Times.
People all over the world are torn between failing states and newly unproductive agricultural land and those in more affluent nations who are circling their wagons. Logical and understandable from both sides, but an ugly mix that emboldens racists and fear-mongers with statistics that can be used to bolster their malevolent motives. There is no way to live in a globally dependent and integrated universe and avoid these issues. Circling the wagons is a Band-Aid that circumvents the bigger, pan-global challenges of economic polarization and unstable political systems. But until there is greater economic stability in developed countries, you can expect only more racism, more polarization and more wagon circling.
I’m Peter Dekom, hoping that people understand the “why” of these polarizing trends and move to counter the uglier sides of exclusionary politics.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment