Two recent New York Times editorials provide deeply contradictory takes on the role played by immigration in the 2016 election and beyond. While the perspectives they raise may be irreconcilable, together they nonetheless point to key questions progressives need to be asking about an issue that Donald Trump clearly sees as key to his re-election strategy.
“What if Trump’s Nativism Actually Hurts Him?”, written by a pair of University of Minnesota political scientists, explores the possibility raised by its title: that Donald Trump has miscalculated the role that his anti-immigration message played in his election, and that it was actually Hillary Clinton who benefitted the most from the foregrounding of immigration in the 2016 election. Their case rests on evidence that anti-immigration voters were already in Trump’s camp anyway, while people more moderate on immigration voted for Hillary Clinton in far higher numbers than they did for Barack Obama in 2012. They also cite figures that immigration did not result in getting more Trump voters to the polls than Clinton supporters.
Based on this analysis, the authors speculate that playing up racism and xenophobia may no longer work as a political strategy for Republicans. The possible reasons include the fact that most anti-immigrant white voters are already in the Republican camp, and that further highlighting of the issue will send more centrist voters to the Democratic Party. They also point out that Donald Trump’s embrace of a bullhorn rather than a traditional Republican dog whistle on issues of immigration may continue to provoke a supercharged reaction on the left.
A year and a half into the Trump presidency, and months after his child separation policy put immigration more front-and-center than ever in the public eye, it seems undeniable that immigration issues are indeed driving an enormous amount of activism and electoral excitement on the left, even as polls show high support for Trump’s cruel policies among his base voters. As the “Nativism” article suggests, though, whether this energy on both sides will ultimately tilt in Trump’s favor depends on how middle-of-the-road voters respond.
Unfortunately for those hoping for a bit of quick good news in these dark times (though fortunately for those who thrive on complex and ambiguous situations!), Washington Post columnist Thomas Edsall has written a piece that counsels a great deal of caution in interpreting the data and considering the politics around immigration. Surveying recent research on American attitudes around immigration and racism, Edsall makes a case that the left’s response to Trump’s anti-immigrant incitement requires careful sifting of the full dynamics at play.
The first layer of caution concerns the reliability of the social science research that yielded optimistic results like the ones we saw in the “Nativism” article. Edsall highlights recent studies showing that traditional polling may have failed to keep up with shifts in actual public sentiment around immigration. Some respondents may be hesitant about defying social expectations around this issue, suggesting that the data relied on in the “Nativism” article should be taken with a grain of salt (an attitude that also seems in order when a study confirms exactly what you want to hear).
Edsall has steadily preached a policy of never underestimating Donald Trump, and his exploration of recent research on shifting views in the ties between immigration and perceptions of racism backs up this cautious attitude. After reminding us that part of Trump’s immigration strategy is to invite a backlash in which progressives accuse him and his supporters of racism, Edsall runs through recent studies showing a fundamental divide on whether American voters view immigration restrictions as racist. While 73% of Clinton voters said it was racist to reduce immigration in order to maintain the white share of the population, only 11% of Trump supporters said this was the case. In other words, in the context of immigration, “the very definition of racism is deeply contested.”
Such findings become still more fraught in light of other recent research on the self-perception of whites around accusations of racism. First, increasing numbers of whites hold views that, while empirically racist (such as believing that the white proportion of the U.S. population should be mantained as is) are not believed to be racist by the holders of that view. This intersects with a second observation: accusations of racism appear to be creating a backlash in white Americans who do not consider themselves racist; as one researcher quoted in the article puts it:
[S]uch accusations are now tantamount to ‘crying wolf’ and have the opposite of their intended effect — whites are subsequently more likely to express racially conservative policy preferences or to condone the target of the accusation [. . .] when they’re accused of being “racist,” some whites either see the accusation as disingenuous, or they see it as a personal, unfounded attack, and they become defensive.”
You don’t need to accept this research uncritically to see the underlying truth of the psychological dynamics it suggests. When a person is accused of something that they don’t want to admit about themselves, it’s common for the person to double-down on their denial about that characteristic. That this behavior would obtain around something as socially and morally problematic as racism should not be surprising. It also seems clear that the question of how to address racism at both an individual and societal level becomes more complicated when a central cultural model for addressing racism — calling it out directly — begins to encounter white resentment that, as it becomes more widespread and commonly accepted, also begins to mutually reinforce this resentment.
These observations have profound implications both for how to counter Donald Trump, and, more generally, for addressing what is either a resurgence of racist attitudes in the United States or, at a minimum, an easing of taboos around expression of such attitudes. On the second topic, some research indicates that fighting racism in a way that people are “freely choosing to be non-prejudiced” can be effective, while simply urging people to comply with social norms around non-prejudice can actually backfire by stoking reflexive or defensive reactions. This is highly abstract social science research, yet the general ideas behind it offer important clues to how to respond to the clear “white backlash” (a term used in a couple of the articles cited in the Edsall piece) we are experiencing.
Given all this, it seems worth asking the question of whether calling out Donald Trump’s racism on the immigration front is helping or hurting the cause of protecting undocumented immigrants from ICE-inflicted cruelties, as well as aiding in the larger cause of allowing legal immigration into the United States. This is not to say that the president shouldn’t be held to account for his racism; but we need to assess, in a dispassionate way, whether the ground has essentially shifted beneath our feet, so that white Americans are less susceptible to direct social pressure as a way to check racist thinking, and may even be encouraged in their mindset by such a direct critique. As Edsall suggests, that the president thinks he has a winning strategy should provoke his opponents to careful consideration of what might be the most effective response.
Obviously, those who oppose Trump’s policies on immigration aren’t standing in front of cameras or sitting down at keyboards, and simply shouting and typing “Donald Trump and his supporters are racist!” in a manner akin to Jack Nicholson holed up in the Overlook Hotel. Yet it does seem as if the issue of how we treat undocumented immigrants, and what our attitude should be toward immigration more generally, has been framed by the president as a combined referendum on race, culture, and economics in a way that has set the terms of the debate. This framing is, needless to say, highly unfavorable to Democrats and progressives. It is a framing in which the racial, cultural, and economic slurs against undocumented immigrants, and by extension, against all immigrants, each reinforce and give cover to each other. For instance, if undocumented workers are stealing American jobs, then it helps justify racist sentiment against them; and if a white American has racist sentiment towards Latinos, it make them more susceptible to the idea that they’re stealing American jobs.
Donald Trump’s racism is evil, but there is a difference between highlighting an evil and a successful election strategy. Progressives must always remember that when they make undocumented immigration a key battleground for challenging the president’s reign, they’re fighting him on terrain friendly to the president. They risk reinforcing accusations that they care more about foreigners than American citizens; they risk seeming not to care about American job losses; they risk criticism that they do not care about enforcing American laws. As I’ve noted before, the president has forced this battle on progressives, as no progressivism worth its salt would allow such human rights abuses to be carried out in our collective name; yet there is no reason for progressives to fight the battle on terms set by the president.
If we have no choice but to engage on immigration, then we must do so in a way that maximizes the political benefit to us and maximizes the political damage to Donald Trump. The president seeks to conflate legal and undocumented immigrants to help propagate a false narrative about the role of immigration in America's economic challenges. While defending undocumented immigrants from the cruelty of family separation policies, progressives need to keep the economic benefits of legal immigration front and center in any response. This argument has the benefit of being true, and of appealing to the self-interest of all Americans — who wouldn’t want our country to get richer through the hard work of newcomers?
In an age of economic anxiety, immigrants are an easy scapegoat for Trump and the Republican right. Making the case that Trump's overall economic policies will only weaken the economy and exacerbate insecurity, and presenting an alternative vision for an economically healthy America, will put the battle over immigration in its proper context. Trump would have us blame immigrants for our economic woes; it's time to put the spotlight back on Trump's role in exacerbating our real economic problems, like massive inequality, monopolies that strangle the economy, and laws that deprive workers of their right to organize.
Progressives also need to fully internalize the contradiction between liberal ideals and a population of millions of undocumented immigrants who are both vulnerable to economic exploitation and not fully protected by our legal system. Even if they are performing jobs American citizens don’t want, this doesn’t mean that they should have to work in dangerous or otherwise exploitative conditions: this violates our most basic understanding of human rights and decency. Any defense of undocumented immigrants from the depredations of ICE needs to be paired with a realistic vision of how immigrants’ rights should be protected. The progressive vision on immigration needs to be coherent, humane, and just. It makes little sense to fight against family separation policies, but then not rise to the challenge of protecting workers from exploitation.
Demonizing immigrants and stoking the fires of racism are of extreme importance to Donald Trump, an empty soul who must provide cover fire for his larger project of the looting of this country by his family and others of already-obscene wealth. Given the role immigration will have in the survival or failure of his presidency, progressives must counter with a strategy that defeats him on his own turf. Acknowledging shifts in attitudes towards immigration and race doesn't mean accepting them, but making better arguments for winning Americans over to our side. The point of politics is not to tell people that they're bad; the point of politics is to persuade sufficient numbers of people to join your cause.
