We are not as cruel as we are made out to be
Again and again, our desire for a bigger table is misinterpreted as a cry for a higher wall
Top notes: Last week, I made the pitch for why you should (a). support this newsletter with a paid subscription, especially while I’ve got a sale going and (b). sign up for a fall Barnraisers Project organizing class. Thanks so much to all of you who heeded both invitations. For those of you who didn’t, I still think that they’re compelling pitches!, Thanks in advance for considering. The subscription sale ends on Friday and, while you have longer than that to register for a Barnraisers class, time flies, you know?
Every few months, a new American municipality takes its turn in the conservative media spotlight. The story is always the same. A place where red-blooded Americans live has been overtaken by immigrants, and damnit if the People Who Deserve To Be Here aren’t fed up. Anecdotes and statistics are juggled liberally to paint a clean narrative. The immigrants are up to some sort of filthy, antisocial nonsense, and the rest of us hate them for it and want them gone.
You may have heard a particularly nasty version of this story in the past couple days, this one centered on Springfield, Ohio, a town of 60,000 where they used to build tractors. While rumors of Springfield’s migrant crisis have been circulating for months, they’ve escalated recently thanks to the rhetoric of Vice Presidential candidate and self-proclaimed Voice Of The Forgotten American, J.D. Vance. This video, from conservative demagoga-tainer Matt Walsh (who I’ll be returning to later this week, as he has a film coming out that’s relevant to my interests)1 offers a fairly representative sample of how the Springfield story is being spun within the conservative media echo chamber.
Full disclosure, it’s a pretty awful video, both on a rhetorical and moral level, so it’s OK if you skip it. In brief, here are Walsh’s primary points, in chronological order:
-Springfield, Ohio— a downtrodden community full of hard working Americans— is currently being overrun by Haitian immigrants.
-Even “Democrat-aligned” news outlets like NPR have highlighted the chaos being sown by these migrants, as well as the anger and resentment that Salt Of The Earth Springfieldians feel being on the receiving end of the “invasion.”
-Want proof that the migrants have destroyed Springfield? Walsh has a graph of crime rates going up starting in 2020.
-If Walsh’s chart isn’t compelling by itself, he’s happy to chase it with a legitimately sad story of a child killed as the result of an individual migrant’s recklessness (in this case, a driver who collided with a school bus). Walsh will insinuate, without evidence, that this tragedy is just one among several.
-For further proof that everyone in Springfield has taken up the pitchforks, Walsh will occasionally cut to testimony from two individuals at a city council meeting.
-All this leads up to the salacious kicker: Unfounded accusations of household pets and city ducks being killed by migrants for food. You don’t need me to tell you what pre-existing myths about Haitians and “the kind of stuff they do” are being leaned upon here. Gross, right? That’s the point.
As you might expect, it’s easy to debunk the various logical fallacies, cherry-picked anecdotes and plain-old lies that Walsh deploys as he feigns concern for the good people of Springfield. Of course the most racist rumors (the ones about eating animals) are unfounded. You knew that already. And yes, crime went up in 2020 in Springfield, just as it went up in every single American community during the peak years of the Covid-19 pandemic, but Walsh provides no proof that Springfield’s surge was uniquely caused by migrants (in fact, Springfield’s police department adamantly denies that allegation). And of course, it is unbelievably sad that a child in Springfield was killed in a car crash, but it is notable that the conservative commentariat cares more about that incident then other recent high-profile traffic accidents in Springfield that didn’t involve migrant drivers (to say nothing of the lack of concern that crew shows for children killed in school shootings, which Vance recently tut tutted away as “a fact of life”).
I’m not primarily interested in debunking Walsh and Vance, though. Others have already done the Lord’s work on that front. What I’m more concerned about is the lesson that even those of us who reject this brand of vitriol are left with long after stories like this are debunked. The lingering taste in our mouth is one of mass xenophobia, of another in a long line of American places that absolutely hates migrants and wants an air-tight border, mass deportations and law and order, damnit. And the more we believe that narrative, the more we limit our collective political imagination. It’s why we condone both political parties racing to the far right on immigration. It’s why we resign ourselves to a lowest common denominator politics where somebody is always thrown under the bus. It’s why we parrot the lie that a massive swath of our neighbors are primarily driven by a desire for cruelty and vengeance, when there is actually no empirical evidence of that being the case. You’ve heard the great Trump-era liberal mantra, no doubt. The cruelty is the point, a narcotizing talisman designed to compliment its presumably non-cruel intoner by comparison. It’s a comforting line, one so seductive that we never ask how much it actually helps us build a better world.
To be clear, there are some very real xenophobic voices in Springfield right now. There really have been neo-Nazis marching around town, and terrible rumors being spread like viruses. The stories about Haitians beheading ducks? Vance and Walsh didn’t invent them. Home grown Springfield opportunists did. But if you look more closely at dispatches from that community, you’ll notice a trend. The overwhelming majority of voices aren’t actually complaining about the migrants. In fact, a wide range of Springfield residents— including conservative business owners and workers— are adamant that their Haitian neighbors have enriched both civic and economic life. The loudest calls aren’t for a closed door, but for more resources in order to serve everybody in their changing city. That NPR report that formed the backbone of Walsh’s “city under siege” narrative? It was actually chock full of with quotes from public health professionals, educators and even law enforcement officials who want more money to hire translators and offer a more robust array of social services. They’re not clamoring for deportation.
If this story— of a town that we’re told is “fed up” with migrants, but is actually calling for deeper social democratic intervention— sounds familiar, it’s because it is the exact same trend we see every time a community’s relationship to new arrivals is put in the spotlight. You can see it in stories behind the headlines about New York or Chicago’s response to its recent waves of bused migrants. You can see it in the recent manufactured hysteria around Venezuelan gangs supposedly taking over an apartment complex in Aurora, Colorado (the real story there was about a malicious slumlord). And you can see it every time we’re asked to shed a tear for small cities in the heartland, be they Springfield, Ohio or Whitewater, Wisconsin (whose near identical turn in the Fox News spotlight I covered earlier this year).
In every case, it’s not that there has been no backlash, but it is never as simple as the hateful opportunists would have us believe. Time and again, the vast majority of voices on the ground are either (a). asking for more resources to welcome their new neighbors effectively and/or (b). noting the various humanitarian crises (lack of affordable housing, access to medical care, and well-resourced schools) facing long-term residents. While some of those requests are tinged with an understandable sense of scarcity (not surprising given the way we’ve become socialized by years of austerity), it’s still striking: Across the country, people are asking for more rather than less government intervention to take care of basic needs.
You’ll see this same trend in non-localized discourse around immigration. At the core of the argument that “immigrants are taking working class American jobs” is a conceit that has nothing to do with immigrants whatsoever: the truth that Americans across the political spectrum desperately want and deserve a well-compensated, dignified job that doesn’t treat them like crap. That’s not, at its heart, a conservative argument. It’s a call back to a time when unions were strong and the U.S. government came close to signing a full employment guarantee.
Look beyond the headlines, and you’ll see the truth that the majority of Americans aren’t actually asking for a country that hates and punishes more readily. We’re asking for social democracy. How else would you make sense of the overwhelming popularity of universal healthcare, organized labor, and direct government aid to families? What other explanation is there for the overwhelming success of Medicaid expansion referenda in deeply conservative states, or the fact that one of the most cited explanations for Trump’s growing support in working class communities of color are the lasting popularity of Covid-era government stimulus checks, the closest thing to a universal basic income experiment most Americans ever received? Want more evidence? Do you know what mailers the Trump campaign is disproportionally deploying in swing states? They aren’t about the border. They’re about how he’ll be a more stalwart defender of Social Security and Medicare than Harris. That promise is a lie, of course, but it’s a telling one. In America, in 2024, one of the Republican candidate’s most salient pitches to voters is that he’ll be more of a Social Democrat than his opponent.
Once again, I’m not claiming that nobody in America is xenophobic, nor that nativism and scapegoating isn’t core to the MAGA movement. Goodness knows, we are not a nation free of bigotry. Ours is a country whose hateful hierarchies still shape every aspect of our shared life. And I have no doubt that everybody reading this essay can point to scores of hurtful actors who’ve made all of our lives worse. But that doesn’t mean that we’re a country where most of us aspire to that fate. The truth is, in so many ways, the majority of us are clamoring for something other than bigotry. We want help. And if we feel like our government is able to help us, we’re less likely to care about whether it’s helping other people as well. The cruelty isn’t the point. The lack of care is the point. And while it would be naive to underestimate the ways that American politics has always incentivized inhumanity, it would be equally dangerous to shackle our big-hearted imaginations and revert back to the mean.
The thing is, there will aways be J.D. Vances and Matt Walshes in our midst. There will always be those who claim, for the sake of their careers, that the rest of us are craven and small-minded. Just as they will always be with us, so too will they always be immensely easy to fact check and critique. The point isn’t just to disprove their lies, though. It’s to offer something better, not just because our neighbors deserve it, but because we crave it. It’s to see their appeal to our shadows and instead see our light. Yes we can sometimes be so fearful, and so tiny. But even when that’s the single story that the fear-mongers try to tell about us, the truth keeps slipping out. Our hearts are so much bigger than we’ve been told they are. We want help. We need help. We want to be cared for, and to care.
End notes:
-Did you like that line in my subheading about higher walls and bigger tables? Well, then credit due to the brilliant artist I most associate with that framing, my pal of Radici Studios. Look at that beautiful design! Or better yet, buy that beautiful design!
-Speaking of friends who inspire me to be a better neighbor, as I wrote this piece I couldn’t help but think of another story about a town like Springfield (in this case Middletown, Ohio, where J.D. Vance grew up) crafting a more complicated, tender narrative than the one we’ve been told about it. This is, not surprisingly, a joint. Is there anybody better at finding and telling stories about the hard, complicated work that grows hearts a bit bigger? I don’t think so.
-Ready for a song of the week? In case you needed more evidence that Southwestern Ohio contains multitudes, including many big, soft hearts, try this track (by the pride of Dayton, Guided by Voices) on for size. It’s “Smothered In Hugs” time, friends.
“But I believed you/No need for further questioning…”
The full song of the week playlist (now updated! finally!) is available on Apple Music and Spotify.
The Matt Walsh film in question is called “Am I Racist?” and it comes out on Thursday. He promises that it will be an incendiary takedown of the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion industry. Yes, I know the joke you want to make about the title. More likely than not, I’ll have a review up on Friday.
I think there's also something going on here about the transitioning of local identities and how we come together in small to mid-size communities to manage that. There have been multiple instances in recent years of pockets of immigrants moving into smaller, semi-rural communities because the cost of living tends to be lower and they may historically come from an agriculture-heavy culture, making a more rural lifestyle more familiar. This ends up revitalizing towns that have been depressed due to manufacturing moving out, the decline of small, family farms, and the general trend of migration to bigger cities, but it also often introduces racial/ethnic diversity into communities that have been historically very White.
There are inevitably folks in those communities that find the change threatening. But the issue isn't really the challenge to homogeneity. It's that these small to mid-size, semi-rural communities are suffering from decades of lack of economic development, and underinvestment by state and federal governments in services and infrastructure. At this moment there are rural communities less than 20 miles outside of my very liberal, comparatively well-resourced, college town where you can't get high speed internet AT ALL. Where there's nowhere to buy groceries but the Dollar Store. Where there's no access to public transportation of any kind.
People in those communities don't want to throw people out. But they are largely left behind by the powers-that-be, and they need folks in more well-resourced areas of the country to advocate for them rather than demonizing them or using their potential feelings of vulnerability under late-stage capitalism, as the right wing is doing.
Thanks for the shout out, my dear! This def feels like a great argument for more solutions journalism so we can see ourselves and our various responses to immigration reflected back accurately to us! Love it.