NO. 13
Nativism
* * *
Most ideological and cultural beliefs can be divided roughly along political lines.
Homophobia? For the conservatives, mostly.
Demonization of wealth? For the liberals, mostly.
And so it goes. Nativism, though, is one of those weird constructs that thrives on both sides of the spectrum—it just takes different forms.
I saw a short-form video recently of an American woman who had immigrated to Belgium. The video showed the woman walking down the narrow, Christmas-outfitted streets of her new hometown. The text on the screen read:
“How I’m minimizing my impact on the locals as an immigrant to Belgium”
The top comment read:
“Wrong. It’s people like you that are forcing the locals out of the city. You’re ruining our country.”
This was interesting, because it pretty clear that the person commenting on the video was progressive; angry at the rich foreigners forcing the working-class locals out of their own city.
I empathize with people who feel this way. It can’t be a good feeling to think that you can’t afford an apartment where you’d like to live because a foreigner, with opportunities you never had, is living there instead.1
You may, however, notice that this rhetoric is the same kind of thing you’d hear from a stereotypical octogenerian, red-blooded conservative near the border in Texas, who might say:
“All these Hispanics, these Mexicans, are coming in and taking our jobs.”
This hypothetical man is on nearly the opposite side of the political spectrum as the real-life woman commenting on the Belgium post—yet their anti-immigratnt rhetoric sounds almost exactly the same.
There are differences between these two: one is demonizing higher-income immigrants and one is demonizing lower-income immigrants. And, in my view at least, both of them are quite misguided (and a deep dive into the objective data would do well to prove them wrong).
The question I’m more interested in, though, is:
“Why do they both think this way?”
The answer is nativism. The common denominator here is that both the woman in Belgium and the Texan man believe that, because of where they were born, they have an inherent right to live in a particular place. They believe they deserve it, in a way that people not born in that place do not.
Nativism is a disease many of us contract at childhood. It starts with the smallest of things: an article on the news about an immigrant who received a DUI; a statistic about housing prices shown on the news next to a statistic about immigration; as a kid, an immigrant at the playground who got better Christmas gifts than you. It quickly spirals into a dangerous and illogical construct.2
I just wish that people who hold deeply nativist views would ask themselves:
“Why do I deserve to be here?”
If more people asked this question (and came to the conclusion that believing they have a distinct moral right to residency based on on uncontrollable factors like birthplace and ethnicity is, well, silly) we would be slightly more empathetic to the cause of immigrants—of all kinds.
* * *
1 I get it, but I also think that, in most cases where people blame rich immigrants for the rise of the cost of living, the people who think this are wrong—and that immigrants are not even close to the primary reason for this. Short-term rentals can, however, pose definite problems depending on regulations, implementation, and context.
2 There is obvious practicality to granting citizenship to people who were born in your country. I am not arguing that everyone should “earn” their citizenship. I am simply arguing that people who believe they deserve to live somewhere—more than others—because of their place of birth should recognize that birthright citizenship is just that: a useful practicality. Not a moral high ground.
* * *
Most ideological and cultural beliefs can be divided roughly along political lines.
Homophobia? For the conservatives, mostly.
Demonization of wealth? For the liberals, mostly.
And so it goes. Nativism, though, is one of those weird constructs that thrives on both sides of the spectrum—it just takes different forms.
I saw a short-form video recently of an American woman who had immigrated to Belgium. The video showed the woman walking down the narrow, Christmas-outfitted streets of her new hometown. The text on the screen read:
“How I’m minimizing my impact on the locals as an immigrant to Belgium”
The top comment read:
“Wrong. It’s people like you that are forcing the locals out of the city. You’re ruining our country.”
This was interesting, because it pretty clear that the person commenting on the video was progressive; angry at the rich foreigners forcing the working-class locals out of their own city.
I empathize with people who feel this way. It can’t be a good feeling to think that you can’t afford an apartment where you’d like to live because a foreigner, with opportunities you never had, is living there instead.1
You may, however, notice that this rhetoric is the same kind of thing you’d hear from a stereotypical octogenerian, red-blooded conservative near the border in Texas, who might say:
“All these Hispanics, these Mexicans, are coming in and taking our jobs.”
This hypothetical man is on nearly the opposite side of the political spectrum as the real-life woman commenting on the Belgium post—yet their anti-immigratnt rhetoric sounds almost exactly the same.
There are differences between these two: one is demonizing higher-income immigrants and one is demonizing lower-income immigrants. And, in my view at least, both of them are quite misguided (and a deep dive into the objective data would do well to prove them wrong).
The question I’m more interested in, though, is:
“Why do they both think this way?”
The answer is nativism. The common denominator here is that both the woman in Belgium and the Texan man believe that, because of where they were born, they have an inherent right to live in a particular place. They believe they deserve it, in a way that people not born in that place do not.
Nativism is a disease many of us contract at childhood. It starts with the smallest of things: an article on the news about an immigrant who received a DUI; a statistic about housing prices shown on the news next to a statistic about immigration; as a kid, an immigrant at the playground who got better Christmas gifts than you. It quickly spirals into a dangerous and illogical construct.2
I just wish that people who hold deeply nativist views would ask themselves:
“Why do I deserve to be here?”
If more people asked this question (and came to the conclusion that believing they have a distinct moral right to residency based on on uncontrollable factors like birthplace and ethnicity is, well, silly) we would be slightly more empathetic to the cause of immigrants—of all kinds.
* * *
1 I get it, but I also think that, in most cases where people blame rich immigrants for the rise of the cost of living, the people who think this are wrong—and that immigrants are not even close to the primary reason for this. Short-term rentals can, however, pose definite problems depending on regulations, implementation, and context.
2 There is obvious practicality to granting citizenship to people who were born in your country. I am not arguing that everyone should “earn” their citizenship. I am simply arguing that people who believe they deserve to live somewhere—more than others—because of their place of birth should recognize that birthright citizenship is just that: a useful practicality. Not a moral high ground.