Mary Pat Brady,
"The Homoerotics of Immigration Control"
(page 5 of 7)
The anti-gay rights/anti-immigrant relay surfaced again during the
2004-2006 election cycle. In 2004 the Republicans used the threat of
gay marriage to draw people to the polls and then in 2006 launched new
anti-immigrant proposals in several states, notably in Arizona where it
found success. Similarly, Tom Tancredo raised money for his ill-fated
presidential campaign largely on an anti-immigrant platform. Yet if in
2008 anti-immigrant rhetoric may not drive electoral success, it has
nonetheless become all the more tightly tied to "family values" as part
in parcel of the "anti-gay agenda." As a 2006 report for the Southern
Poverty Law Center recently noted, a number of "family values"
organizations have publicly aligned themselves with the Nativist
anti-immigrant movement opposing Congressional efforts at immigration
"reform".[19]
The report's author, Alexander Zaitchik wonders, "When
did immigration assume a place next to abortion and traditional marriage
as a "family" issue for the religious right?" He sees the connection
as a swift and recent one, as does New York Times columnist Frank
Rich who facetiously calls "Hispanics" the "new gays" and argues that
Latinos are merely the latest in a long line of scapegoats.[20] What
Rich sees as a handy trend is really a connection reaching back to the
furor raised by Pete Wilson in 1991, and even further back, to the
feminization of Mexican men initiated by popular culture in the 19th
century.
Rich is right, of course, as is Calavita, that the scapegoat
mechanism does function by circulating a series of signifiers through
its machinery. And Zaitchik is correct to note the recently enhanced
visibility of "Family Values" crusaders in the anti-immigrant imaginary.
Indeed, Lou Sheldon, who originally led the protests against Wilson's
acquiescence to gay rights, is now a highly visible and crucial
supporter of the "Secure Borders Coalition"—a group that unites the
religious right with the anti-immigrant militia movement.[21] But what
Zatichik and Rich miss, and what has been set aside in much of the
analyses of Prop 187 and AB101, is the extent to which racialization and
sexualization are productive of each other; they are also constitutive
of criminality and legality; this aspect enables their allegorical
flexibility and capacity to stand in for one another (Hispanic as the
new gay) and indeed helps to trigger their respective forms of panic and
discrimination. Oddly enough, it is an anti-immigrant website that most
acutely points to this work. "Daylaborers.org" opens with a photo of a
group of Latinos standing on a street curb, one of whom grabs his crotch
in a threatening fashion and another of whom throws a finger in an
equally angry manner.[22]
Below the photo is a series of mug shots of
Latinos charged with crimes.
This website brings me back to that hiss. There is no reason to
presume that the heterosexual rape fantasy that my friend saw in any way
contradicts my sense that the images played with a homoerotic imaginary.
Obviously, depending on the audience, heterosexual rape fantasies can
be very homoerotic. More to the point, both of our comments highlight
the homosocial economy so crucial to the management of nationalism and
suggest the extent to which homophobia and anti-immigrant hysteria
dovetail into the regulation and promotion of the hetero-patriarchal,
white family structure.
The potentially homoerotic images of immigrants framed as illegal in
the popular press ignite a homophobic panic. This is not to say that
the immigrants are themselves queer, though undoubtedly some would
identify this way. Rather the portrayal of groups of men massed
together on street corners, peering into windows, apparently without
wives or children signals something. Similarly, the frequent
citation of large groups of men living together, again without the
presence of women, signals something. If it were not scary,
New York Times columnist David Brooks would not include this sort
of detail in an anti-immigrant screed:
He's no racist. Many of his favorite neighbors are kind,
neat and hard-working Latinos. But his neighborhood now has homes with
five cars rotting in the front yard and 12 single men living in one
house... He read in the local paper last week that Anglos are now a
minority in Texas and wonders if anybody is in charge of this social
experiment... What we can do is re-establish law and order, so immigrants
can bring their energy to this country without destroying the social
fabric while they're here.[23]
Why should 12 single men living together be a problem? How can 12 men
living together possibly "destroy the social fabric"? Why is such an
image coupled with an anxiety over declining white hegemony? Perhaps
they destroy it because they signal alternate organizations for
consumption and reproduction. In this manner they suggest an alternative
to the normative family. My conjecture here is that part of what
sustains this emphasis on illegality, and the continuing death of
immigrants, part of what maintains the U.S. anti-immigrant furor, is the
desire to police desire, to reinscribe it along racialized and
sexualized lines. That homophobia has preceded anti-immigrant
hysteria in the current moment is not simply a coincidence. In other
words, the seeming excess that homosexuality signals—its out of
boundedness—clearly also signals the seeming excess that the
racialized sexuality of non-whites has signaled for two centuries or
more.
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