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One thing that keeps getting ignored in the discussion about mexican immigrants is the teeny tiny fact that, when all is said and done, at the end of the day, hispanic people are white. They speak a freaking romantic language and share genetics and a cultural background with european colonialists ffs.

Seriously, I think both the guys in this picture might be hispanic (though I first have to accept physiometric stereotypes to make such a declaration), but the guy on the right has a lighter skin tone that I have right now (dutch/french/anglo heritage), and the only reason he’s any different from the guy on the left is because the guy on the left has a tan.

Of course that’s the really neat thing about being white, whiteyness is a completly abstract concept, us white folk are in fact so detirmined to make a complete mockery of the idea of ethnicity that we often change the very shade of our skin itself depending on the season and latitude we live in. But of course, White Pride means never having to remember that we considered our irish neighbours to be niggers less than 50 years ago.

Which gets to the nub of it all really, as the underlying problem white people have with hispanic immigrants is that they are just the current holders of “The Invading Other” title, previously held by the polish, the irish, the italians and the jews, all groups who are, at skin level at least, nominally white. Hispanics are in short, an entirely artificial brown horde that is neither brown nor any more horde like than the other incredibly ivory colored hordes of the past, who are now considered “white” by the establishment.

Now the Invading Other is a neccesary aspect of reactionary politics, that exists as a miniturized version of the Forever War concept, which they trundle out whenever the main Forever War starts to wane in popularity, and the Faux-Rasse-mythos which makes up the concept of the Invading Other is made up of several key points that are always used over and over again in rightwing retoric;

Point 1: They are all vastly inferior to Us Ubermensch
Point 2: They are all bad, druggies/drunks who do nothing but rut like animals and wish to fuck our children also
Point 3: It is an invasion, They are all plotting to destroy Us, but We are too good hearted to believe that
Point 4: The Left is secretly collaborating with Them to destroy Us because The Left hates {Insert random good concept e.g. Freedom, Liberty or Kittens}
Point 5: We cannot let Our good natures get in the way of doing What Must Be Done, as they are sociopathic monsters who see kindness as a sign of weakness
Point 6: They are invading Our institutions and schools, and wish to force Us to become like them and weaken Us, therefore we must force Them to be like Us and weaken Them first
Point 7: Due to some arbitrary rules We just made up, and using the power of statistics, it becomes obvious that They are unable become anything more than a pale immitation of Us, and will never shed their barbaric and society destroying ways
Point 8: Therefore they must be frozen out of Our Great Society of Justice and Equality, until such a time as a final solution to the problem can be arranged.

Now the “final solution” part there is of course, usually, a hollow and meaningless ploy (as opposed to a Godwin violation) because the sort of people who go through all 8 points tend to either directly benefit from the exploitation of the Invading Other and their status as somewhat outside normal society, or are paid by, and work for, people who do, and therefore the last thing they actually want to do is to implement a final solution, which is part of the reason why the mass deportation bill failed, aside from the mass protest and inherent impracticality.

the important bit of point 8 as far as the right wing it concerned is of course, not the final solution part (which is generally empty retoric because if you actually succeed in wiping them out then who will work in the forced labor camps?) but the freezing out from mainstream society part, which creates the helots that the corporatists can work to the point of docility for fuck all money and huge profits.

Of course the direct creation of helots is only part of the reason why the corporatists use the Invading Other routine, the other reason is because it creates a neat pecking order which places the Invading Other as subs to the authority approved whites’ dom.

Which in a patriarchal society is so effective because all relationships, even those between classes, are sexualized and therefore two different social entities, such a “whites” and “hispanics” must fall into clear submissive/dominator lines, one group must inherently be superior and better off than the other (or so the patriarchal dialogue goes) who in turn must be inferior and downpressed by the other.

And in a patriarchal society, such dialogue is so ingrained and automatic, that only justifications for these sort of abusive relationships are required on the part of the rightwing to create the dichotomy between two almost identical groups.

Now the reason why I’ve used the term “patriarchal” three times in the last two paragraphs is because, and those of you who’ve tangled with anti-fems more than once may be ahead of me already, all of those 8 points I mention up post are routinely used by anti-fems to downpress women in general and liberated women, especially feminists, in particular.
And when you think about it, helotry is precisely the place women maintain within patriarchal society, a patriachally appoved woman is ideally being defined by their roles and jobs rather than as people, they are mothers, wives, maids, teachers, never people, which is precisely what helotry does, when someone says “slaves” do you think of people kicking back and winding down after a hard day’s work in the fields under the overseer’s oppressive eye, or do you think of people working and slaving away in the cotton fields?

Of course you think of the slave as someone who is eternally working, because the word “slave” is as much verb as it is noun, which is perfect for the oppression of helots as someone who is defined by their work is a robot, something, rather than someone, and a something is not something who’s emotional well being and personality matter, they are something that is defined, not merely by their actions, but by solely by their Job, The Immigrant picks lettuce, The Slave picks cotton, The Woman picks up after her husband and children.

This is why the “Personal Is Political” tactic, exemplarized in feminist circles by the Vagina Monologues, is so important in the class struggle as much it is in the feminist struggle (which are not seperate entities by a long shot, the hydra has many faces, and they’re all just different enough to confuse), things like the novels of Maya Angelou, or the recent Dkos post by Stay The Course (via Bellatrys) are important, every single civil rights struggle has been, first and foremost, about the reclaiming of a group’s stolen humanity from those who live off of society like bloated ticks, and the refusal of those who fight for a better society to allow another group to be dehumanized. And the key to that, is to first of all show what life, not just the job, is like for the helots of current system, and what it was like for the helots of past systems, so that people can see the common humanity of all downpressed people, and to do something about it all and then say afterwards, as a single unified group: Never Again.

Civil Rights is about rejecting the Dom/Sub dichotomy of the patriarchy as irrelevent to the workings of society, and not just rejecting it in the bedroom* but in every facet of life that can be rejected, and to do that, you must first educate people, hence the right wing’s hatred and atttempts to destroy or render useless the public school system.

*actual BDSMers use only the illusion of the Dom/Sub dichotomy, the sub should always have power over the dom to stop it whenever they want, because the dom is in turn a slave to the sub’s love

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 20th, 2006 at 12:35 pm and is filed under Bodily Autonomy, Imperialism for Dummies, Racism. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.