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| Cristina Beltran, Ph.D. |
Anti-immigrant sentiments fueled by the widening political divide have become more vitriolic during the Trump era. However, hate and violence against non-European immigrants have a long history and legacy in white supremacy, in propping up and perpetuating racial hierarchies. Cristina Beltrán’s analysis and exposition of historical and political contexts of racism and xenophobia through Cruelty as Citizenship: How Migrant Suffering Sustains White Democracy, is a compelling and necessary read.
The longstanding “project of whiteness” has kept both Black and indigenous people from full participation in democracy. Racial domination is the common thread that weaves through slavery of Black Americans and the genocide of American Indians. In contemporary times, the “cross-class alliance” of rich and poor whites is in full display, through recent assaults on migrants and demonization of Mexicans and Central Americans to uphold white supremacist values. Beltran succeeds in making well-documented and researched arguments deconstruct the dynamics of white supremacy and equates it with white democracy.
Forget the drawn-out tropes of white Americans’ fear and anxieties about losing ground in an increasingly diverse and multicultural world. Beltrán contends that “whiteness as a political project” demands the performative cruelty of ice raids, deportation and detentions, the bloodlust for treating immigrants as less-than-human. Violence, homophobia, racism and misogyny of border patrol agents represent institutionalized and state-authorized oppression. It’s not fear that’s driving anti-immigrant sentiments; it’s the need to continue subjugation and exclusion of non-white others from fully benefiting from the promise and potential of democracy.
About the Author
Cristina Beltrán is associate professor in New York University’s Department of Social and Cultural Analysis. She is author of The Trouble with Unity: Latino Politics and the Creation of Identity.
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