Democrats Should Speak to the Cultural Aspect of Immigration
Starting with me
Tuesday’s debate was probably the first in American history in which one candidate accused the other of being complicit in the abduction and consumption of house pets. For those of you who don’t know why a presidential candidate was talking about barbecued dogs: 1) He’s a weird, weird dude, and 2) There’s an online rumor about Haitian immigrants in Ohio eating people’s pets. The rumor is bullshit — there is no credible evidence that that is happening. But because Trump’s mantra seems to be “be the toxicity you want to see in the world”, he repeated the rumor on national television (and so did JD Vance).
This is, of course, old-fashioned hate mongering. It’s meant to portray Haitians as lawless savages, and to be used as a pretext for keeping them and other immigrants out. And yet, it’s possible to imagine complaints about culture clashes that are valid and…ya know…true. Democrats don’t like to talk about these things, because we don’t like to be anywhere near anything that might be considered racist by anyone living now or at any point in the future. But I’m starting to think that our choice to not talk about the cultural component of immigration is a mistake. People’s concerns are valid, and the left can speak to those concerns in a way that’s consistent with our values and — as an added bonus — true.
I’m guilty of omitting culture from the immigration dialogue: This year, I wrote a four part series arguing for higher levels of legal immigration, and I didn’t mention culture once. That’s because I don’t like how these discussions always seem to devolve into a debate about whether a culture is “good” or “bad”. The Haitian dog-eating thing, of course, is a right-wing attempt to portray Haitian culture as bad, and to me, arguing “this group is bad” seems like the dictionary definition of racism. Of course, we on the left often respond to this type of argument by saying that the culture in question is good, and that their traditions are vibrant and beautiful and we spent a week there in college and it was an out-of-body experience. Of course, this is naive, condescending, and always somehow ends with us making excuses for female genital mutilation. Personally, I don’t think that any culture is good or bad; I think that every culture is a mix, and I also think that people are individuals, so whatever traits might be associated with whatever group a person belongs to is irrelevant. I don’t like where the debate about culture often goes, so I skipped it in my writing.