Other academics and authors have voiced opinions on white anxiety and immigration that complement the prior post on this subject. Other sources advocate for reduced immigration.
Acacemic Examination of Immigration Opinions
According to Diana C. Mutz of the University of Pennsylvania, many white voters in the 2016 presidential election who voted for Donald Trump did so because “they felt threatened by increasing numbers of minorities and the sense that the [U.S.] was losing its global dominance” or “status shock” for short.[1]
Professor Mutz and her colleague Edward D. Mansfield suggest that racial mistrust is a critical determinant of people’s feelings about globalization. According to their work, whites prejudiced against other ethnic groups tend to believe that the United States is superior to other countries and that it should refrain from engagement in world affairs.
Mutz says, “For white Americans, the political consequences of racial and global status threat seem to point in similar directions with respect to issue positions: opposition to immigration, rejection of international trade relationships and perceptions of China as a threat to American well-being.”
Over the long-term, diversity may increase the political support for globalization. Demographic change does not threaten minorities as it does white Americans. They never held whites’ position of power. For Hispanics and Asian-Americans, specifically, demographic change translates as more clout. Research by Ms. Mutz finds that minorities view trade and international outsourcing much more favorably than white Americans do.
Andrew J. Cherlin, a sociologist at Johns Hopkins University, suggests that demographic change will most likely relax racial and ethnic divisions. Not only is intermarriage rising, but current racial definitions are also unlikely to hold. The question is what is going to happen between now and then.
A Cornell University sociologist, Daniel T. Lichter, suggests that if the demographic profile of poverty remains constant, by 2050 over 70 percent of America’s poor will be from today’s minority groups.
One lesson of the 2016 election is that it is easy to exploit racial mistrust, xenophobia and ethnic hostility for political gain.
A friend and practicing immigration attorney has suggested the following additional resources on white anxiety and immigration policy:
- Arlie Hochschild, Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning ion the American Right (The New Press 2018);
- Nancy Isenberg, White Trash. The 400-Year Untold History of Class in America (Viking Press 2017);
- Justin Gest, The New Minority,White Working Class Politics in an Age of Immigration and Inequality (Oxford Univ. Press 2016);
- Amy Chua, Political Tribes, Group Instinct and the Fate of Nations (Penguin Press 2018).
Advocates for Reduced Immigration
This friend also points out that a favorable perspective on the White American theme (often characterized as “Western European” roots) can be found in Peter Brimelow, Alien Nation: Common Sense About America’s Immigration Disaster (Random House 1995) and in the publications of Federation of Americans for Immigration Reform (FAIR), NumbersUSA for Lower Immigration Levels and Center for Immigration Studies (CIS) even though these three groups often are cited as authoritative voices for reduced immigration and for Trump Administration policies.[2]
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[1] Eduardo Porter, Whites’ Unease Shadows the Politics of a More Diverse America, N.Y. Times (May 22, 2018).
[2] See Tess Owen, A Radical Anti-Immigration Group Infiltrated the GOP. Now It’s in the White House, Vice (May 3, 2017, 9:17 AM)(emphasizing the close ties between FAIR and influential advisers to President Trump, including Julie Kirchner, Jeff Sessions, Kris Kobach, Kellyanne Conway, Stephen Miller, and Lou Barletta); Heidi Beirich, Hate Groups Like Center for Immigration Studies Want You to Believe They’re Mainstream, S. Poverty Law Ctr.(Mar. 23, 2017).