This is my country: the use of blackness in discourses of racial nativism towards latino immigrants

2011-09-06This is My Country: The Use of Blackness in Discourses of Racial Nativism Towards Latino Immigrants interrogates the use of blackness in anti-immigrant discourses in Los Angeles, California. Through content analysis of various media (including newspapers, television news, radio shows, blogs, and more) this dissertation examines three different Los Angeles Black public figures to illustrate how blackness is used within arguments about how Latino immigration allegedly negatively impacts Blacks. In these arguments I trace how particular emotions are attached to different claims about immigration which consequently create an increased gap between the emotional response (towards immigration) and the reality behind the arguments made about the impact of immigration (on Blacks and America). The goal of the project is to illustrate how blackness and emotion work together to widen the gap between fiction and reality regarding the impact of Latino immigration. In this dissertation I argue that the political move– in which blackness is/becomes an important component in anti-Latino discourses and agendas— is 1) on the one hand an extension of a white hegemonic order in which racialized others are argued to be the cause of social problems while 2) at the same time a new creative turn in whiteness where blackness becomes an important visible instrument in promoting racial nativism. In addition, I argue that emotion plays a central role in promoting racialized nativism