More than a decade later, it is now clear that native-immigrant relations drive American politics more than white-black relations. Of course, African-Americans still encounter significant racism, but today’s fear-mongers don’t try to win elections with images of black men raping white women; they do it with images of Mexicans hopping the border, stealing jobs and committing crimes. Today’s closest equivalents to George Wallace and Strom Thurmond are J.D. Hayworth and Tom Tancredo…
“Arizona,” declared Jesse Jackson this week, “has become the Selma” of our age. Twenty years after 1965, when civil rights marchers crossed the Edmund Pettus Bridge, America was still grappling with the political aftershocks. I suspect that on the 20th anniversary of Arizona’s immigration law, we will still be grappling with its aftershocks as well.
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