Scapegoating 101

The other day I was explaining the idea of scapegoating to my debate team. Avoiding responsibility by shifting blame onto something innocent and generally unable to defend itself. The term comes from a ceremony where people would literally place their hands on goats to transfer their sins onto the goat so it could be sacrificed to God and absolve them of their sins. I was reminded of this as I read an e-mail petition about MI House Bill 5300, a law recently passed by the Michigan legislature that makes it illegal to give scholarships and home loans to undocumented residents--whom they call "illegal."

It was ironic because I just had an argument with my father about immigration. He's a fairly typical middle aged white reactionary male. It's not surprising that "illegal" immigration gets under his skin, he's one of those baby boomers who believe that their entitlement to the American Dream hasn't been easy enough. They are the many whom look upon the social contract and say, "I played by the rules; I worked at a job for 30+ years. I didn't want to; I didn't even like my job, but I never cut corners, and I obeyed the law, why wasn't it easier for me?" Then they look at the "Welfare Moms" or the "Illegals" who seem to be the free-riders of the social contract and they blame. Who's to blame for my dad's lot in life? Those who abuse the system, not the system itself, never the system. Just like they ask who is to blame for poverty? Well, that's obvious, the poor. They're lazy and unmotivated; they could have made it if they had worked harder and played by the rules like "I" did. Who is to blame for the violence in our society? Violent super-predators like those from "Menace II Society," angry, young, male and black (sometimes brown--but mostly black). That's it, lock up the bad seeds. Don't question the core elements of American society and culture that lead to the high levels of violence, it's not our love affair with guns, our debasing lowest-common-denominator/whatever-sells/if-it-bleeds-it-leads media mentality, it's just some bad seeds, period.

It's not entirely the media, it's us too--all of us. Psychologists call it the fundamental attribution error. It's the tendency to over-emphasize personal traits to account for behaviors and to under-emphasize systemic causes.

The media has a lot to do with the issues surrounding immigration. They want to create drama, and there is drama in criminality, so they choose "illegal" as the accepted moniker. The thing that always angered me about that title is, well, a lot. First, it's so imprecise. It does nothing to truly describe. It simply labels. Second, it declares persons to be illegal, not their acts, but their persons. Third, of the 12 million or-so undocumented residents, only Latinos are ever declared "illegal" even though they make up only half of that 12 million. A good discussion of these ideas can be found in "No Human Being Is Illegal" by Mirta Ojito. Afterall, my father watches that anti-immigration populist blow-hard Lou Dobbs' "hour of hate" every single day, so who can blame him, all he hears is the "illegals are bad" argument and it reinforces his already existing stereotypes.

For example, my dad gave me the, "they don't pay taxes" argument. This is false, common, but still false. A third of Americans say their largest problem with immigration is that immigrants don't pay taxes but use services. This has been shown to be false. A report by the Mexican Migration Project has shown undocumented Mexican migrants pay taxes at high rates and use services at low rates. Of 2100 migrant laborers surveyed only 4 percent said they used food stamps while 60 percent said they had federal taxes withheld from their pay. Money that they never got back because they never filed income tax returns. Had they filed they almost certainly would be entitled to recieve most or all of that money back since they made such a small amount to begin with. In addition, the Mexican Migration Project survey also showed that only 11 percent of undocumented migrants sent their children to US public schools, and only 26 percent said they went to a hospital on their last trip. In fact, the rhetoric and reactionary attitude of white America has actually had a chilling effect among legal residents.

Another study by the Urban Institute shows that immigrants in Washington D.C. pay their fair share of the tax burden and have equal rates of payment compared to native-born citizens. The truth is, however, the effect of immigrants is not consistent, overall, credible studies seem to show that immigration has a net benefit, but this doesn't mean that in some communities or in some states immigration isn't a drain on their economy. However, this doesn't truly account for the virulent anti-immigration movement in the US.

People like my father have scapegoated immigrants and the only reason that even seems believable is that they can. Freire talks a lot about the internalization of oppression by the oppressed and the yearning of the oppressed to be the oppressor. This is what a heirarchical society produces, there is always someone else below you to oppress, that's why racism is such a useful tool for continued oppression, just as war is. As Orwell wrote in 1984, "It's not a matter of whether the war is not real, or if it is. Victory is not possible. The war is not meant to be won, it is meant to be continious. Heirarchical society is only possible on the basis of poverty and ignorance... In principle the war effort is always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation. The war is raged by the ruling group against its own subjects and its object is not the victory of either Eurasia or East Asia, but to keep the very structure of society intact."

My father, like so many middle income white men feel do not recognize their own privilege, but see men who look like themselves with so much more and feel brutalized by the limitations of their own entitlement. They turn on who they can, the powerless, and who is more powerless than those with no political rights whatsoever?