Poor Whites: Then and Now

The function of current Latino labor policies directly mimics the function of Jim Crow laws in terms of dividing labor parite with similar interests in order to help reinforce status quo capitalist systems.

When individuals cross the border without documentation, they are branded with the label “Illegal”; this is deeply ironic because these undocumented workers are systematically given this branding so that they can serve the interest of the nations whose law they are in “violation” of. As was discussed in Migra!, Diaz attempted to modernize Mexico by accepting an excess of foreign investment and expansionist projects; these projects had the consequences of destroying local agricultural business and spiraling Mexico into an ultra-rigid class system, where the 10 richest families in Mexico control more wealth than the median 95% combined. Widespread poverty and lack of employment, particularly in rural and marginalized regions such as Chiapas, led to the perceived need to immigrate to the United States in order to take on available work. This, and a wartime job shortage, led to the creation of the Bracero program which was unique in how far (geographically speaking) it took Mexican migrant workers and for the widespread abuses that were perpetuated against Mexican workers. During this time, the larger narrative of Mexican workers was that they were “docile”, “hardworking” and “unlikely to organize”; this hearkens back to the time of slavery and during the civil war, when white plantation owners used the exact same language to describe black slaves and why they were integral to the construction of southern society. In exactly the same way, society became used to a pliable workforce that required minimal pay, no respect and who had no real protections from their employers/owners.

However, when both groups (Slaves and Migrant Workers) began to pose a threat, this dynamic changed. In the reconstruction south, newly free slaves represented a threat to the very core of southern society, at least in the eyes of the planter class, since their ability to produce crops at very little cost was now endangered by the potential legal rights that these black workers now had. This led to the production of white-supremacist propaganda, like The Birth of Nation, which in turn spurred Jim Crow legislation and the rise of groups like the KKK, which hugely restricted the rights of black Americans and made it impossible for them to live their lives. In addition to a new social schema which reinforced white supremacy, and the created inability of black Americans to effect the political process directly, many minor offenses were criminalized during Jim Crow so that police could sentence black workers to indentured servitude on farms (thereby recreating the slave labor needed to fuel southern plantations).

This process parallels the current construction of the Latino Threat. After the “docile” workers of the Bracero program became less attractive (workers came back from war and so the demand for labor went down), the nation began to change its narrative about Latino workers. Instead of viewing these people as doing a job no one wished to do, facing significant oppression and abuse while doing so, we constructed the idea that a huge influx of Latino Americans would change and undermine our distinctly American culture, that they were criminal and dangerous, and that they were freeloading off the “plenty” we had given them. This was amplified particularly after 9/11, when as Chavez discussed in The Latino Threat, when the state was able to tie the huge national focus on national security to the problem of border security. An open or unregulated border, which would let undocumented workers in, represented a threat that would allow “terrorists” or other vague criminals and enemies in – and so we associated those crossed the border without documentation, or those who look like they may have crossed the border, with criminality and wrongness. Just as Jim Crow criminalized blackness to create a workforce to fuel modern slave labor, modern immigration policy and culture has so stigmatized undocumented workers as “illegal” that they can only find under the table work, with no rights or protections against abuse, and should they cause any problems, they can be reported to INS and deported – always placing them in the existential crisis of needing to maintain their current way of living. The brand of “illegal” is the only way that American corporate interests are able to maintain their ability to produce at low cost and so even though there is a huge emphasis on closing the borders, we are secretly encouraging and depend on that open border to provide us with a cheap workforce.

By creating social and legal norms that criminalized blackness, the white powers that be created a world that made it impossible for white and blacks to associate, which in addition to the obvious and numerous harms to blacks, actually worked to the detriment of poor southern whites. Poor southern whites viewed black workers as threats to their livelihood and as encroaching on the social position which caused them to be among the most cruel and fervent in their enforcement of Jim Crow laws and social norms. Today, poor whites are among the most ardent crusaders to close the borders and deport “illegals”, as they view the competition of Latino workers as infringing on their place in society and preventing them from being on the bottom rung of society. This stance, then and today, is ultimately harmful to this class as a unified workforce would be able to come together to make demands on the state and employers in a way that divided workforces simply cannot due to the harm of strikebreaking and discord between races. This process, reconstituted with each racial other, is one that upon which the whole of society depends – absent a workforce able to produce at practically no cost, civil society and its neoliberal foundations would crumble under the weight of the promises and ideals that they had only been giving to the most fortunate in society.