Racial politics in Brazil

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(Redirected from Racial whitening)

Racial whitening, or "whitening" (branqueamento), is an ideology that was widely accepted in Brazil between 1889 and 1914, as the solution to the "Negro problem". Whitening in Brazil is a sociological term to explain the change in perception of one's race, from darker to lighter identifiers, as a person rises in the class structure of Brazil. Racial mixing in Brazilian society entailed that minority races ought to adopt the characteristics of the white race, with the goal of creating a singular Brazilian race that emulates the white race, striving to create a society best emulating that of Europe.

Racial whitening became a social concept that was developed through governmental policy. Similar to that of the United States, Brazil experienced colonization by Europeans and importation of African slaves in the 18th and 19th century.

As a way of making Brazil seem like a modernized country comparable with European nations, Brazil encouraged the immigration of white Europeans with the goal of racial whitening through miscegenation. Once they arrived, European immigrants dominated high-skilled jobs, and libertos (freed slaves) were relegated to service or seasonal jobs. Additionally, whitening led to the formulation of the Brazilian idea of "racial democracy," the idea that Brazil lacks racial prejudice and discrimination, allowing equal opportunities for blacks and whites alike, effectively creating a race-blind society.

The myth of racial democracy arose from the lack of a strict segregationist culture and the frequency of interracial marriage. Thus, it was argued that Brazil was not bound by racial lines, but issues caused by racism festered under the surface. This inattention to race implied that all Brazilians had an equal opportunity to attain social mobility.

However, this masked the true goal of whitening as a means to nullify the identities of black and indigenous identities. In Brazil, race is considered a spectrum upon which one’s identity is subject to change based on a variety of factors, such as social class and educational attainment. Governmental policies like affirmative action seek to mediate identity problems associated with racial democracy.

Initial racial policies

Prior to the abolition of slavery, plantation owners feared a post-emancipatory society of freed slaves who had, "deficiencies such as indolence and immorality" that needed to be wiped out. Brazil’s export based economy was largely reliant on slave labor, and slaveholders felt the freedmen would hinder the country’s development because of their inferior characteristics. After the emancipation of slaves, Brazilians theorized about the ideal phenotypic and genotypic characteristics of future laborers. Initially, Brazil saw the success of Chinese immigrants in the U.S and other nations, but the risk of introducing another purportedly degenerate race like the Africans was too high. Arthur de Gobineau, a French diplomat sent to Brazil by Napoleon, felt introducing the Europeans was a perfect solution because it would purify elements of Brazil’s inferior race through interbreeding. This solution would return the white race to their superior place. Brazilian writers and politicians blamed Portuguese colonials for importing a large slave population.

Apart from its racial justification, Brazilian farmers argued that the post-emancipation labor market in Brazil would be controlled by supply and demand. Thus, incentivization of foreign immigrants would create a situation where laborers searched for employers at cheap prices instead of employers looking for a small pool of laborers at a high wage. This governmental stance is based upon three principles, which scholar Marcus Eugenio Oliveira Lima describes as "institutional relations towards ‘national eugenics;’ social perceptions and inter-group relations; and self-perception and interpersonal relations."

Working with the São Paulo province, Brazil officially started incentivizing European immigration in 1884 when it created the semi-private Society for the Promotion of Immigration. The program was, "responsible for informing European workers of employment opportunities available in São Paulo, paying their passage, overseeing their arrival in Brazil, and dispatching them to the coffee groves". By 1895, the State Department of Agriculture had fully taken control of the operation because São Paulo province was officially transformed into a state. Until the abolition of slavery in 1888, Europeans were hesitant to emigrate away from their home countries because they believed that Brazilian farmers would treat them like slaves. After slavery’s abolishment in 1888, Brazil was flooded with European immigrants. Statistics demonstrate that, "compared to 195,000 immigrants who arrived in Brazil between 1870 and 1889, immigration between 1890 and 1909 totaled 1,100,000". There was a constant decline in the Afro-Brazilian population between the censuses of 1872 and 1990, decreasing from 19.2% to under 5%, although the rate recovered to 6.2% at the 2000 census. Once the European immigrants arrived in the late 19th century, most São Paulo immigrants worked as colonos (tenant farmers) which "received a fixed monetary income for maintaining a certain number of coffee trees plus a variable payment depending on the volume of the harvest". Apart from São Paulo, there was no subsidized immigration program in Brazil. In these areas, the libertos’ experience varied: in Sergipe, vagrancy laws were implemented to force the free black population back onto the plantation, but some libertos stayed with their former employers or emigrated elsewhere. However, Afro-Brazilians’ status improved with labor laws enacted during the great depression that required two thirds of businesses’ new hires to be Brazilian-born.

The arrival of European immigrants created a two-tiered labor market where immigrants dominated factory, commerce, industrial, and artisanal jobs whereas Afro-Brazilians were relegated to seasonal or service jobs. Freed slaves lacked the skill to compete with European immigrants in the technical jobs and preferred the variety of the service jobs. However, other historians like Florestan Fernandes attribute these labor market differences to a pre-emancipation mentality that avoided work during slavery and a lack of marketable skills to offer when the slaves were freed. For employed Afro-Brazilians, they demanded better working conditions after emancipation, but European immigrants, especially Italians, accepted lower pay and harsher treatment to secure a higher social position. Apart from their willingness, the source of the immigrants’ vulnerabilities in the labor force was two fold: Brazil was populated with low-skilled immigrants who didn’t have bargaining power with their employers, and most immigrants valued their spouse or child over joining a labor union that could get them fired. In one area of Brazil, "Eighty percent of the people who passed through the immigrant hostel in São Paulo city came as families". In São Paulo, child-labor was common because of the little pay that their parents received.

Contemporary Politics of Brazil

As a result of the whitening-induced interracial marriage in the late 19th century and a lack of segregation laws, race in modern Brazil is defined by the concept of "racial democracy." This inattention to race implies that all Brazilians have an equal opportunity to attain social mobility.

Such identity problems and inequities caused by racial democracy led Afro-Brazilians to take measures to identify closer to the white race in order to place them on a level playing field. In a 1995 national survey, Brazilian citizens were asked to consistently classify race on an overall and contextual basis. This study found that persons of lighter color tended to be consistently classified, while those of a darker skin tone tended to be classified more ambiguously. Factors that impacted consistency by 20% to 100% included education, age, sex, and local racial composition, trending in the direction of either "whitening" or "darkening." To combat this, the Campanha Censo of 1990 sought to combat the trend of self-whitening, the false identification of oneself as white, in Brazil.

Furthermore, there is a widespread difficulty in admitting that racism exists in Brazil. Because many don’t consciously identify as black, many instances of prejudice are not recognized as racism, which becomes a cycle, and racism continues to exist in Brazil. Moreover, Brazil almost prides itself as having somehow moved past racial discrimination because it was built on the mixing of Amerindian, African and European ethnic groups. However, racism in Brazil exists and can take on a variety of forms of prejudices and stereotypes. In fact, a 2022 study on Racial Democracy and Black Victimization in Brazil finds that disparities in employment, income, education, access to justice, and vulnerability to violent death are heavily influenced by race, and in fact found that blacks are more exposed to homicides and physical assaults than whites, and 40% of this difference is evidence of racial discrimination.

Employment disparities found in this study are supported by inadequate incentives for minority-owned businesses in Brazil, creating an every-man-for-himself survivalist environment for black business people. This is consistent with the increase in workplace discrimination indicated by the Brazilian censuses of the 1960s and 70s, despite the passage of federal non-discrimination legislation in 1953.

While black workers maintain sizeable numbers in the workforce, especially in small and midsize retailers and restaurants, they still struggle to break into high-paying corporate landscapes such as the accounting and tech industries. Based on a recent survey, 94% of top executives in Brazil’s top corporations are white, which translates into minuscule opportunities for black Brazilians to gain the experience of going into business independently. In fact, non-whites make up 45.3% of the Brazilian population, yet they make up only 17.8% of all registered entrepreneurs. Much of this has to deal with the educational and economic roots of many black businesspeople in the country. While black business leaders are younger, they have spent less time in the classroom than whites, with nearly half of all black leaders dropping out of school by the eighth grade and only 15.8% completing twelve years of schooling. This is in contrast to the 35.8% of white leaders who have completed twelve years of schooling. Further evidence of the arduous path to black success in the private sector is the statistic that more than a third of black business leaders hail from poor rural or blue-collar urban families, compared to just a quarter of white business leaders. Such hardships within the business landscape for black Brazilians has led them to take measures to identify closer to the white race in order to place them on a level playing field.

An aspect that influences the upward mobility of individuals is education. The education deficit between black and white entrepreneurs is better explained by a much higher illiteracy rate. In 1980, the number of illiterate black Brazilians was double that of whites, with blacks also being seven times less likely to graduate college.

The Role of Affirmative Action

See also: Race and ethnicity in Brazil, Demographics of Brazil, and Immigration to Brazil

Several political, cultural, and social groups have emerged in Brazil in an attempt to gain equal rights and a positive Afro-Brazilian image for and among black Brazilians. This trend identifies blackness as a separate and significant identity, in contrast to it being traditionally erased. These initiatives have been implemented in the twenty-first century thanks to the adoption of affirmative action policies by a number of educational institutions and the federal government, which are meant to assist Afro-Brazilian students in obtaining a higher education and pursuing better opportunities similar to those available to Brazilians who are not black.

A Redenção de Cam (Ham's Redemption), by Galician painter Modesto Brocos, 1895, Museu Nacional de Belas Artes. The painting depicts a black grandmother, mulata mother, white father and their quadroon child, hence three generations of racial hypergamy though whitening.

The University of Brasilia (UnB), the first university in Brazil to implement a racial quota in 2004, served as the "guinea pig" for such initiatives. After the quota was implemented, UnB's white population fell by 4.3%, while mixed and black both grew by 1.4% and 3% respectively. Therefore, a panel of Brazilian reviewers were employed for the semester both before and after the quota was put into effect. They were told to grade the subjects' skin tones on a scale of 1 (lightest) to 7 (darkest). The data indicates that after just one year of affirmative action at UnB, there is a noticeable increase in the number of black students or students who are generally of darker skin tone. In fact, a significant increase in the average skin tone indicates that the policy was successful in attracting more brown and black students to the university, particularly in the first semester following its introduction. The university's experiences with the policy and its consequences on the students, however, provide important information for the broader study of racial disparity in institutional settings for higher education and the workplace.

Although there is a blueprint, it is already evident that affirmative action has proven to be an uncomfortable fit for Brazil as a strategy for racial equality. Burnt white, brown, dark nut, light nut, black, and copper are just a few of the 136 categories the census department discovered Brazilians use for self-identification according to a 1976 research. Almost 50 years later, today, Brazilians still regard themselves as falling across a spectrum of skin hues with a range of names. The realization that a person's appearance matters, particularly in terms of social mobility and job opportunities, is what ties these categories together. To address inequalities in higher education, the federal government established the Law of Social Quotas in 2012. Regardless of color, the legislation guarantees public high school graduates half of all openings at institutions receiving federal funding. (Public universities, unlike high schools, are more prestigious in Brazil than private ones.) Half of those reserved seats go to students whose families make less than 1.5 minimum wage, or $443 per month, on average. According to the proportion of white to non-white residents in each state, a share of the openings in both categories are therefore reserved for black, brown, and indigenous students. Despite the fact that this is trying to address certain racial challenges, it is actually causing brand-new ones. In 2014, a statute was passed by the federal government allocating 20% of public sector positions to people of color. Where individuals don't cleanly fit into black-and-white classifications, it becomes difficult to label those eligible for affirmative action. "If you look at a photograph of the incoming medical class of 2015, only one of the students looks black," said Georgina Lima, a professor and head of UFPel’s Center for Affirmative Action and Diversity, "[a]nd he’s not even Brazilian. He’s from Africa.” After it became obvious that the law allowed for fraud, the government instructed all departments to set up verification committees in August 2016. However, it did not offer any guidance to the agencies. Verification committees attempt to fulfill this mandate mostly through checklists on physical appearance. Does the job applicant have a short, wide, and flat nose? How thick are their lips? Are their gums a deep enough purple color?  Does their jaw protrude forward? Questions like these set up precise criteria. Some critics argued that these "desired" traits were too reminiscent of the slave trade, in which buyers would spin slaves around to look for specific traits. Others believed that these moves were regrettably essential to achieve true equity in Brazil. But according to Rogerio Reis, chair of the committee at UFPel, people attempted to improve their chances at eligibility by presenting as blacker through, for example, style or tanning. Tactics like these exemplify how the system is being taken advantage of. While racial whitening was pursued to create a unified Brazilian identity, the policy led to contemporary socioeconomic and political divides through racial democracy.

People who have made reference to whitening in Brazil

João Batista de Lacerda: Director of the Museu Nacional, wrote a paper named "Half-Breeds of Brazil". In it he describes the differences in the different races. He also predicted that by the third generation of mixed breeding there are predominantly white characteristics.

Theodore Roosevelt: After visiting Brazil in 1913 he wrote an article in Outlook magazine. In his article he talks about how the Brazilian Negro is disappearing.

Thomas Skidmore: Wrote the book Black into White which covers many of the aspects dealing with Whitening. Also gives his own theories and insights.

Samuel Alexson: Wrote a pamphlet in New York explaining whitening to the common man.

Separate but equal

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Separate_but_equal

 

Separate but equal was a legal doctrine in United States constitutional law, according to which racial segregation did not necessarily violate the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which nominally guaranteed "equal protection" under the law to all people. Under the doctrine, as long as the facilities provided to each race were equal, state and local governments could require that services, facilities, public accommodations, housing, medical care, education, employment, and transportation be segregated by race, which was already the case throughout the states of the former Confederacy. The phrase was derived from a Louisiana law of 1890, although the law actually used the phrase "equal but separate".

The doctrine was confirmed in the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision of 1896, which allowed state-sponsored segregation. Though segregation laws existed before that case, the decision emboldened segregation states during the Jim Crow era, which had commenced in 1876, and supplanted the Black Codes, which restricted the civil rights and civil liberties of African Americans during the Reconstruction era.

In practice, the separate facilities provided to African Americans were rarely equal; usually they were not even close to equal, or they did not exist at all. For example, in the 1930 census, black people were 42% of Florida's population. Yet according to the 1934–1936 report of the Florida Superintendent of Public Instruction, the value of "white school property" in the state was $70,543,000, while the value of African American school property was $4,900,000. The report says that "in a few south Florida counties and in most north Florida counties many Negro schools are housed in churches, shacks, and lodges, and have no toilets, water supply, desks, blackboards, etc. Counties use these schools as a means to get State funds and yet these counties invest little or nothing in them." At that time, high school education for African Americans was provided in only 28 of Florida's 67 counties. In 1939–1940, the average salary of a white teacher in Florida was $1,148, whereas for a black teacher it was $585.

During the era of segregation, the myth was that the races were separated but were provided equal facilities. No one believed it. Almost without exception, black students were given inferior buildings and instructional materials. Black educators were generally paid less than were their white counterparts and had more students in their classrooms.... In 1938, Pompano white schools collectively had one teacher for every 25 students, while the Pompano Colored School had one teacher for every 54 students. At the Hammondville School, the single teacher employed there had 67 students.

Because new research showed that segregating students by race was harmful to them, even if facilities were equal, "separate but equal" facilities were found to be unconstitutional in a series of Supreme Court decisions under Chief Justice Earl Warren, starting with Brown v. Board of Education of 1954. However, the subsequent overturning of segregation laws and practices was a long process that lasted through much of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, involving federal legislation (especially the Civil Rights Act of 1964), and many court cases.

Background

The American Civil War brought slavery in the United States to an end with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment in 1865. Following the war, the Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection under the law to all people and Congress established the Freedmen's Bureau to assist the integration of former slaves into Southern society. The Reconstruction Era brought new freedoms and laws promoting racial equality to the South. However, after the Compromise of 1877 ended Reconstruction and withdrew federal troops from all Southern states, many former slaveholders and Confederates were elected to office. The Fourteenth Amendment guaranteed equal protection to all people but Southern states contended that the requirement of equality could be met in a way that kept the races separate. Furthermore, the state and federal courts tended to reject the pleas by African Americans that their Fourteenth Amendment rights were violated, arguing that the Fourteenth Amendment applied only to federal, not state, citizenship. This rejection is evident in the Slaughter-House Cases and Civil Rights Cases.

After the end of Reconstruction, the federal government adopted a general policy of leaving racial segregation up to the individual states. One example of this policy was the second Morrill Act (Morrill Act of 1890). Before the end of the war, the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act (Morrill Act of 1862) had provided federal funding for higher education by each state with the details left to the state legislatures. The 1890 Act implicitly accepted the legal concept of "separate but equal" for the 17 states that had institutionalized segregation.

Provided, That no money shall be paid out under this act to any State or Territory for the support and maintenance of a college where a distinction of race or color is made in the admission of students, but the establishment and maintenance of such colleges separately for white and colored students shall be held to be a compliance with the provisions of this act if the funds received in such State or Territory be equitably divided as hereinafter set forth.

In New York, courts repealed the local "separate but equal" statute in 1938 and the last school for African-American children in New York was shut down in 1944.

Early legal support

Laws

In the late 1800s, many states of the former Confederacy adopted laws, collectively known as Jim Crow laws, that mandated separation of whites and African Americans. The Florida Constitution of 1885 and that of West Virginia mandated separate educational systems. In Texas, laws required separate water fountains, restrooms, and waiting rooms in railroad stations. In Georgia, restaurants and taverns could not serve white and "colored" patrons in the same room; separate parks for each race were required, as were separate cemeteries. These are just examples from a large number of similar laws.

Prior to the Second Morrill Act, 17 states excluded blacks from access to the land-grant colleges without providing similar educational opportunities. In response to the Second Morrill Act, 17 states established separate land-grant colleges for blacks which are now referred to as public historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). In fact, some states adopted laws prohibiting schools from educating blacks and whites together, even if a school was willing to do so. The constitutionality of such laws was upheld in Berea College v. Kentucky (1908) 211 U.S. 45.

Plessy v. Ferguson

Main article: Plessy v. Ferguson

The legitimacy of such laws under the Fourteenth amendment was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1896 case of Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U.S. 537 (1896). The Plessy doctrine was extended to the public schools in Cumming v. Richmond County Board of Education, 175 U.S. 528 (1899).

"We cater to white trade only". A restaurant in Lancaster, Ohio, in 1938.

A "colored" drinking fountain in Oklahoma City, 1939.

In 1892, Homer Plessy, who was of mixed ancestry and appeared to be white, boarded an all-white railroad car between New Orleans and Covington, Louisiana. The conductor of the train collected passenger tickets at their seats. When Plessy told the conductor he was 7⁄8 white and 1⁄8 black, he was informed that he had to move to a coloreds-only car. Plessy said he resented sitting in a coloreds-only car and was arrested immediately.

One month after his arrest, Plessy appeared in court before Judge John Howard Ferguson. Plessy's lawyer, Albion Tourgee, claimed Plessy's 13th and 14th amendment rights were violated. The Thirteenth Amendment abolished slavery, and the 14th amendment gave equal protection to all under the law.

The Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson formalized the legal principle of "separate but equal". The ruling required "railway companies carrying passengers in their coaches in that State to provide equal, but separate, accommodations for the white and colored races". Accommodations provided on each railroad car were required to be the same as those provided on the others. Separate railroad cars could be provided. The railroad could refuse service to passengers who refused to comply, and the Supreme Court ruled this did not infringe upon the 13th and 14th amendments.

The "separate but equal" doctrine applied in theory to all public facilities: not only railroad cars but schools, medical facilities, theaters, restaurants, restrooms, and drinking fountains. However, neither state nor Congress put "separate but equal" into the statute books, meaning the provision of equal services to non-whites could not be legally enforced. The only possible remedy was through federal court, but costly legal fees and expenses meant that this was out of the question for individuals; it took an organization with resources, the NAACP, to file and pursue Brown v. Board of Education.

1904 caricature of "White" and "Jim Crow" rail cars by John T. McCutcheon.

Equal facilities were unusual. The facilities and social services offered to African Americans were almost always of a lower quality than those offered to white Americans, if they existed at all. Most African-American schools had less public funding per student than nearby white schools; they had old textbooks, discarded by the white schools, used equipment, and poorly paid, prepared, or taught and trained teachers. In addition, according to a study conducted by the American Psychological Association, black students are emotionally impaired when segregated at a young age. In Texas, the state established a state-funded law school for white students but none for black students. As previously mentioned, the majority of counties in Florida during the 1930s had no high school for African-American students. African Americans had to pay state and local taxes that were used for the benefit of whites only. (See Florida A&M Hospital for an example.)

Although the "Separate but Equal" doctrine was eventually overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court in Brown v. Board of Education (1954), the implementation of the changes this decision required was long, contentious, and sometimes violent (see massive resistance and Southern Manifesto). While modern legal doctrine interprets the 14th amendment to prohibit explicit segregation on the basis of race, societal issues surrounding racial discrimination still remain topical (see racial profiling).

Legal rejection

Before Warren Court

The repeal of such restrictive laws, generally known as Jim Crow laws, was a key focus of the Civil Rights Movement prior to 1954. In Sweatt v. Painter, the Supreme Court addressed a legal challenge to the doctrine when a Texan black student, Heman Marion Sweatt, was seeking admission into the state-supported School of Law of the University of Texas. Since Texas did not have a law school for black students, the lower court continued the case for six months so that a state-funded law school for black students (now known as Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University) could be created. When further appeals to the Texas Supreme Court failed, Sweatt, along with the NAACP, took the case to the federal courts, before it eventually reached the Supreme Court of the United States. Here, the original decision was reversed and Sweatt was admitted into the University of Texas School of Law. This decision was based on the grounds that the separate school failed to qualify as being "equal", because of both quantitative differences, such as its facilities, and intangible factors, such as its isolation from most of the future lawyers with whom its graduates would interact. The court held that, when considering graduate education, intangible factors must be considered as part of "substantive equality". The same day, the Supreme Court in McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents ruled that segregation laws in Oklahoma, which had required an African-American graduate student working on a Doctor of Education degree to sit in the hallway outside the classroom door, did not qualify as "separate but equal". These cases ended the "separate but equal" doctrine in graduate and professional education.

The Warren Court

In 1953, Earl Warren became the 14th Chief Justice of the United States, and the Warren Court started a liberal constitutional revolution which outlawed racial segregation and "separate but equal" throughout the United States in a series of landmark rulings.

In Brown v. Board of Education (1954) 347 U.S. 483 , attorneys for the NAACP referred to the phrase "equal but separate" used in Plessy v. Ferguson as a custom de jure racial segregation enacted into law. The NAACP, led by Thurgood Marshall (who became the first black Supreme Court Justice in 1967), was successful in challenging the constitutional viability of the "separate but equal" doctrine. The Warren Court voted to overturn sixty years of law that had developed under Plessy. The Warren Court outlawed segregated public education facilities for blacks and whites at the state level. The companion case of Bolling v. Sharpe, 347 U.S. 497 outlawed such practices at the Federal level in the District of Columbia. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote in the court opinion:

We conclude that, in the field of public education, the doctrine of "separate but equal" has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal. Therefore, we hold that the plaintiffs and others similarly situated for whom the actions have been brought are, by reason of the segregation complained of, deprived of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.

Although Brown overturned the doctrine of "separate but equal" in institutions of public education, it would be almost ten more years before the Civil Rights Act of 1964 would prohibit racial discrimination in facilities that were deemed public accommodations (transportation, hotels, etc.).

Additionally, in 1967, under Loving v. Virginia, the Warren Court declared Virginia's anti-miscegenation statute, the Racial Integrity Act of 1924, unconstitutional, thus invalidating all anti-miscegenation laws in the United States. Chief Justice Earl Warren wrote the court majority opinion:

After Warren Court

In 1975, Jake Ayers Sr. filed a lawsuit against Mississippi, stating that they gave more financial support to the predominantly white public colleges. The state settled the lawsuit in 2002, directing $503 million to three historically black colleges over 17 years.

Post-racial America

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-racial_America 

Post-racial United States is a theoretical environment in which the United States is free from racial preference, discrimination, and prejudice.

Origins of the term

One of the earliest uses of the term "post-racial" to describe the United States was in an October 5, 1971, article in The New York Times titled "Compact Set Up for 'Post-Racial' South". The article reported the establishment of a "Southern Growth Policies Board" in Durham, North Carolina, "by some 70 politicians and professors who believe their region of 60 million citizens has entered an era in which race relations are soon to be replaced as a major concern by population increase, industrial development, and economic fluctuations".

2008 presidential election

President Barack Obama

Some Americans saw the presidential candidacy of Barack Obama, and his election in 2008 as the first black president of the United States, as a sign that the nation had, in fact, become post-racial. The conservative radio host Lou Dobbs, for example, said in November 2009, "We are now in a 21st-century post-partisan, post-racial society." Two months later, Chris Matthews, an MSNBC host, said of President Obama, "He is post-racial by all appearances. You know, I forgot he was black tonight for an hour."

However, public opinion on whether the United States is post-racial is itself divided starkly by race. In a Washington Post/ABC News poll conducted in December 2014, about 50% of white respondents said they believed that the justice system treats Americans of all races equally, but only 10% of African-Americans said the same. In the spring of 2015, according to a Gallup poll, 13% of black Americans surveyed identified race relations as the most important problem the United States faces, compared with 4% of white Americans.

Arguments that the United States is not post-racial frequently emphasize the treatment of African-Americans and other racial minorities in the criminal justice system and in interactions with the police. Killings of unarmed African-Americans, often by police officers, have been widely publicized. In 2015, according to a study by The Guardian, police officers in the United States killed 7.13 black Americans per million, compared with 2.91 white Americans per million. Additionally:

Young black men were nine times more likely than other Americans to be killed by police officers in 2015, according to the findings of a Guardian study that recorded a final tally of 1,134 deaths at the hands of law enforcement officers this year. Despite making up only 2% of the total US population, African American males between the ages of 15 and 34 comprised more than 15% of all deaths logged this year by an ongoing investigation into the use of deadly force by police. Their rate of police-involved deaths was five times higher than for white men of the same age.

Such killings had a marked effect on public perceptions of race relations in America. The 13 percent of black Americans who called race relations the most pressing problem in the United States in the spring 2015 Gallup poll dwarfed the 3 percent that Gallup reported at the beginning of 2014. And the percentage of white Americans who said race relations were the most important issue rose to 4 percent in 2015 from 1 percent in 2014.

In response to high-profile incidents such as the fatal shootings of Michael Brown, Aiyana Jones, Trayvon Martin, Laquan McDonald, Tamir Rice, and Walter Scott, and the death of Freddie Gray from a spinal-cord injury sustained in police custody, academics and journalists have denounced claims that America is post-racial. Ta-Nehisi Coates wrote in The Atlantic in 2015 that the phrase "post-racial" was "usually employed by talk-show hosts and news anchors looking to measure progress in the Obama era." And Anna Holmes wrote in The New York Times, "Chattel slavery and the legacies it left behind continue to shape American society. Sometimes it seems as if the desire for a 'post-racial' America is an attempt by white people to liberate themselves from the burden of having to deal with that legacy."

Black Lives Matter protester

However, others argue that post-racial politics champions aggressive action to deliver economic opportunity and weed out police misconduct, without the divisive framing of racial identity. The divide in public opinion on the status of race in America was reflected in reactions to the Black Lives Matter movement. In response to the "black lives matter" rallying cry, some people, including politicians, began using the phrase "all lives matter". In August 2015, after a sheriff's deputy in Harris County, Texas, was fatally shot while pumping gas, Sheriff Ron Hickman claimed that the rhetoric of Black Lives Matter activists had contributed to the killing and said, "We've heard 'black lives matter'. All lives matter. Well, cops' lives matter, too. So why don't we just drop the qualifier and just say 'lives matter', and take that to the bank.'

Detroit, Michigan (2000): Caucasians in red, African-Americans in blue, Hispanics in orange, and Asians in green. A dot represents 25 people.

Supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement criticized the "all lives matter" phrase, arguing that it minimized the systemic threats faced by African-Americans. President Obama said in October, "There is a specific problem that is happening in the African-American community that's not happening in other communities." Andrew Rosenthal wrote, similarly, in The New York Times, "The point of 'Black Lives Matter' is that the lives of African-Americans have come under special and deadly threat since before the birth of this country."

Evidence of continued racial divisions in the United States can also be found in demographics. For instance, African-Americans account for less than 15 percent of the total population of Michigan, but more than 82 percent of the population of the state's largest city, Detroit — and Detroit, like many cities whose residents are predominantly black, has "resegregated schools, dwindling tax bases and decaying public services".

There is a similar dynamic in Louisiana; the state was about 64 percent white as of the 2010 Census, but its largest city, New Orleans, is 60 percent black. Further segregation can be found within New Orleans: the Lower Ninth Ward, for example, is 97 percent black. This was the neighborhood that experienced the most catastrophic flooding after Hurricane Katrina, and the government's response to the disaster has been cited as evidence of the continued presence of racism in the United States. Most of the victims were black and poor, and class was a major factor in who survived: Those who lived in areas better protected from flooding, and those who were able to evacuate before the storm, tended to be wealthier. At the time, President George W. Bush acknowledged that this poverty had "roots in the history of racial discrimination, which cut off generations from the opportunities of America".

Political implications

The idea that America is post-racial, or close to it, has played a role in at least one United States Supreme Court decision. In Shelby County v. Holder in 2013, the court invalidated a section of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 that had required nine states with particularly severe histories of racial discrimination to obtain federal approval for any change to their election laws. The ruling, written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr., said in part, "Our country has changed." It added that in the decades since the Voting Rights Act was passed, "voting tests were abolished, disparities in voter registration and turnout due to race were erased, and African-Americans attained political office in record numbers. And yet the coverage formula that Congress reauthorized in 2006 ignores these developments, keeping the focus on decades-old data relevant to decades-old problems, rather than current data reflecting current needs." Similar issues are involved in Fisher v. University of Texas, a challenge to affirmative action policies on which the court ruled in 2016, upholding the race-based admissions policy of the University of Texas.

Opponents of post-racialism argue that it ignores racial issues that are perceived as prevalent today. Harvard scholar Lawrence D. Bobo asserted that racism is still prevalent in subtle ways.

Racial color blindness

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Racial_color_blindness 

Racial color blindness refers to the belief that a person's race or ethnicity should not influence their legal or social treatment in society.

The multicultural psychology field generates four beliefs that constitute the racial color-blindness approach. The four beliefs are as follows: (1) skin color is superficial and irrelevant to the quality of a person's character, ability or worthiness, (2) in a merit-based society, skin color is irrelevant to merit judgments and calculation of fairness, (3) as a corollary, in a merit-based society, merit and fairness are flawed if skin color is taken into the calculation, (4) ignoring skin color when interacting with people is the best way to avoid racial discrimination.

The term metaphorically references the medical phenomenon of color blindness. Psychologists and sociologists also study racial color blindness. This is further divided into two dimensions, color evasion and power evasion. Color evasion is the belief that people should not be treated differently on the basis of their color. Power evasion posits that systemic advantage based on color should have no influence on what people can accomplish, and accomplishments are instead based solely on one's own work performance.

At various times in Western history, this term has been used to signal a desired or allegedly achieved state of freedom from racial prejudice or a desire that policies and laws should not consider race. Proponents of racial color blindness often assert that policies that differentiate by racial classification could tend to create, perpetuate or exacerbate racial divisiveness. Critics often believe it fails to address systemic discrimination.

It has been used by justices of the United States Supreme Court in several opinions relating to racial equality and social equity, particularly in public education.

In U.S. Supreme Court opinions

In his dissenting opinion to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), Justice John Marshall Harlan wrote that "Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved." His opinion could thus be interpreted as saying that laws should not differentiate between people of different races. His opinion was not the majority-supported decision, which at the time was that laws requiring racial segregation were allowable, establishing the idea that "separate but equal" treatment was constitutionally acceptable.

More recently, the term color blind has appeared in United States Supreme Court opinions involving affirmative action, in opinions that support consideration of race when evaluating laws and their effects:

• In a concurring opinion of Regents v. Bakke (1978), Justices William J. Brennan Jr., Byron White, Thurgood Marshall, and Harry Blackmun objected to the color blind term, writing that "we cannot ... let color blindness become myopia which masks the reality that many 'created equal' have been treated within our lifetimes as inferior both by the law and by their fellow citizens."
• In her dissenting opinion to Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg quoted from a 1966 5th Circuit decision: "'The Constitution is both color blind and color conscious. To avoid conflict with the equal protection clause, a classification that denies a benefit, causes harm, or imposes a burden must not be based on race. In that sense, the Constitution is color blind. But the Constitution is color conscious to prevent discrimination being perpetuated and to undo the effects of past discrimination.'"
• In his concurring opinion to PICS v. Seattle (2007), Justice Clarence Thomas wrote that "the color-blind Constitution does not bar the government from taking measures to remedy past state-sponsored discrimination – indeed, it requires that such measures be taken in certain circumstances."

Outline

A color-blind society, in sociology, is one in which racial classification does not affect a person's socially created opportunities. A racially color blind society is or would be free from differential legal or social treatment based on race or color. A color-blind society would have race-neutral governmental policies and would reject all racial discrimination.

Racial color blindness reflects a societal ideal that skin color is insignificant. The ideal was most articulated "along with the emergence of the Civil Rights Movement in the US and anti-racist movements abroad". Color-blind ideology is based on tenets of non-discrimination, due process of law, equal protection under the law, and equal opportunities regardless of race, ideas which have strongly influenced Western liberalism in the post-World War II period.

Proponents of "color-blind" practices largely believe that treating people equally as individuals leads to a more equal society or that racism and race privilege no longer exercise the power they once did, rendering the need for policies such as race-based affirmative action obsolete.

Support

Professor William Julius Wilson of Harvard University has argued that "class was becoming more important than race" in determining life prospects within the black community. Wilson has published several works including The Declining Significance of Race (1978) and The Truly Dis-advantaged (1987) explaining his views on black poverty and racial inequality. He believes that affirmative action primarily benefits the most privileged individuals within the black community. This is because strictly race-based programs disregard a candidate's socioeconomic background and therefore fail to help the poorer portion of the black community that actually needs the assistance. He claims that in a society where millions of black people live in the middle and upper classes and millions of white people live in poverty, race is no longer an accurate indication of privilege. Recognizing someone's social class is more important than recognizing someone's race, indicating that society should be class-conscious, not race-conscious, Wilson argues.

In his famous 1963 speech "I Have a Dream", Martin Luther King Jr. proclaimed, "I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character." This statement was widely interpreted as an endorsement of color-blind racial ideology. Roger Clegg, the President of the Center for Equal Opportunity, felt that this quotation supported the idea that race-conscious and equal opportunity should not exist, as he believes people should not be treated differently based on the color of their skin. However, not all agreed with this interpretation. American author Michael Eric Dyson felt that Dr. King only believed in the possibility of a color-blind society under the condition that racism and oppression were ultimately destroyed.

Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has supported color-blind policies. He believes the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment forbids consideration of race, such as race-based affirmative action or preferential treatment. He believes that race-oriented programs create "a cult of victimization" and imply black people require "special treatment in order to succeed".

When defending new voting rights bills in 2020, Republican Texas legislators claimed that since the process they wanted to establish for voter registration did not involve different processes for people of different races and did not involve collecting information about race or ethnicity, their new requirements for eligibility to vote were "color blind" and should not be considered racially discriminatory.

Some argue that the existence of majority-majority and majority-minority areas are not the result of racial discrimination and that this viewpoint ignores the possibility of other factors underlying residential segregation such as the attitude of realtors, bankers, and sellers.

While the field of whiteness studies often discusses alleged failures of racial color blindness, it has been criticized for its focus on reprimanding the white population, whereas similar fields such as black studies, women's studies, and Chicano studies celebrate the contributions of the eponymous group.

Among conservative presidents, color blindness as an idea has increased in the late 20th century as well as in the 21st century.

Where racial disparities were once explained in terms of biology, they are now being discussed in terms of culture. "Culture" in this framework is seen as something fixed and hard to change. One example form of rhetoric used in this framework is the argument, "if Irish, Jews (or other ethnic groups) have 'made it', how come black people have not?"

Some supporters of racial color blindness argue racial inequality can be supported by relying on cultural, rather than biological, explanations such as "this race has too many babies". Some no longer view racism as a problem under this belief and see government programs targeting race as no longer necessary due to the avoidance of racism. Bonilla-Silva describes naturalization as a frame that portrays racism as a natural outcome of individuals' choices, and "just the way things are". While Bonna-Silva himself disagrees with these as "minimization of racism", these are views common among supporters of racial color blindness.

In response to the global Black Lives Matter movement, the phrase All Lives Matter came into being as a term for racial color blindness. Several notable individuals have supported All Lives Matter, such as NFL cornerback Richard Sherman who said, "I stand by what I said that All Lives Matter and that we are human beings." A 2015 telephone poll in the US found that 78% of respondents said that "all lives matter" was closest to their own personal views. Despite this, the term was criticized by professor David Theo Goldberg as reflecting a view of "racial dismissal, ignoring, and denial."

Criticism

In 1997, Leslie G. Carr published Color-Blind Racism which reviewed the history of racist ideologies in America. He saw "color-blindness" as an ideology that undercuts the legal and political foundation of racial integration and affirmative action.

Stephanie M. Wildman's Privilege Revealed: How Invisible Preference Undermines America, writes that advocates of a meritocratic, race-free worldview do not acknowledge the systems of privilege which benefit them, such as social and financial inheritance. She argues that this inheritance privileges "whiteness", "maleness", and heterosexuality while disadvantaging descendants of slaves.

Sociologist Eduardo Bonilla-Silva writes that majority groups use color-blindness to avoid discussing racism and discrimination. Color-blindness can be seen as a way to undermine minority hardships, as it used to argue that the United States is a meritocracy, in which people succeed only because they work hard and not their privilege. John R. Logan has disagreed with this notion of meritocracy, as the average black or Hispanic household earning more than $75,000 still live in a less affluent neighborhood than a white household earning less than $40,000 and poverty rates are higher for minorities.

Amy Ansell of Bard College argues that color-blindness operates under the assumption that we are living in a world that is "post-race", where race no longer matters. She argues this is not true and if it was that race would not be taken into consideration even when trying to address inequality or remedy past wrongs.

Abstract liberalism utilizes themes from political and economic liberalism, such as meritocracy and the free market, to argue against the strong presence of racism. Some suggest it results in people being for equality in principle but against government action to implement equality, described by some sociologists as laissez-faire racism.

Robert D. Reason and Nancy J. Evans outline a similar description of color-blindness, which is based on four beliefs: 1. Privilege is based on merit. 2. Most do not care about a person's race. 3. Social inequality is due to "cultural deficits" of individual people. 4. Given the previous three beliefs, there is no need to pay "systematic attention" to any current inequities. They argue the prevalence of color-blindness is attributed to lack of knowledge or lack of exposure. They argue that due to racial separation in housing and education many Americans lack direct contact with present racism.

In Social Inequality and Social Stratification in US Society, Christopher Doob argues that racial color blindness's proponents "assert...that they are living in a world where racial privilege no longer exists, but their behavior 'supports' racialized structures and practices".

Eduardo Bonilla-Silva has argued racial color blindness is insufficient to address racial inequality. He argues it involves egalitarianism while opposing concrete proposals to reduce inequality. He has argued it ignores the under-representation of minorities in prestigious institutions, along with institutional practices that encourage segregation.

Eberhardt, Davies, Purdie-Vaughns, and Johnson studied implicit racial biases, suggesting people react differently to faces of members of their race compared to members of other races. They found a correlation between race and judicial outcomes and suggest a color blind approach may not actually be possible.

Research

Fryer et al. argued that color-blind affirmative action is about as efficient as race-conscious affirmative action in the short run but is less profitable in the long term.

In 2010, Apfelbaum et al. exposed elementary school students to color-blind ideology and found that those students were less likely to detect or report overt racial discrimination. The authors argued racial color blindness allows overt racism to persist."

Amy Ansell, a sociologist at Bard College, has compared and contrasted the development of the color-blindness in the United States and South Africa. Given that white people are a minority population in South Africa and a majority population in the United States, Ansell expected to see a significant difference in the manifestation of color-blindness in both countries. The thirty-year time difference between the departure from Jim Crow and cessation of apartheid and differences in racial stratification and levels of poverty also led Ansell to expect a clear difference between the colorblindness ideology in the United States and South Africa. However, she concludes contemporary color-blindness in the two countries is nearly identical.

Vorauer, Gagnon, and Sasaki examined the effect that messages with a color-blind ideology had on white Canadians entering one-on-one interactions with Aboriginal Canadians. White Canadians who heard messages emphasizing color-blind ideology were much more likely to be concerned with ensuring the subsequent interaction did not go badly and were more likely hostile, uncomfortable, and uncertain. White participants who heard messages emphasizing multicultural ideology, or the valuing of people's differences, asked more positive questions focused on the other person more relaxedly.

Alternatives

Researchers also offer alternatives to the color-blindness discourse. Reason and Evans call for people to become "racially cognizant" and continuously acknowledge the role that race plays in their lives. They argue it is important to balance personal identity and a person's race.

Researcher Jennifer Simpson argued that "in setting aside color blindness, White [people] must learn to see, accept...the possibility that some of the good, ease, or rewards they have experienced have not been solely the result of hard work" but from "a system biased in their favor." This conscious exploration of whiteness as a racial and social identity and the acknowledgment of the role of whiteness is connected to modern whiteness studies.

In a recent publication of the academic journal Communication Theory, Jennifer Simpson proposed a "more productive dialogue about race". New dialogue must take a more complex look at race, openly looking at different perspectives on race. Simpson argues white people must engage with other races in discussing the ongoing effects of racism, requiring white people to participate in "communicative behavior that may threaten simultaneously their sense of self and their material power in the social order".

In education

A multisite case study of Atlantic State University, a primarily white institution, and Mid-Atlantic State University, a historically black college, explored color-blind ideologies among the institutions’ white faculty members at the undergraduate and graduate level. In interviews with white faculty members at both institutions, researchers found the faculty often engaged with students from a color-blind perspective, avoiding racial terms but implying them allowed white faculty to label minority students "as academically inferior, less prepared, and less interested in pursuing research and graduate studies while potentially ignoring structural causes" of inequity. The study concludes that color-blind ideology held by school faculty can reduce a student of color's perception of their academic abilities and potential to achieve success in STEM disciplines and in graduate school.

A case study of a suburban, mixed-race high school examined the trend toward color-blind ideology in schools among white faculty. It argued white schoolteachers's color-blind ideology often masks their fears of being accused of racism and prevents a deeper examination of race.

Case studies of three large school districts, (Boston, Massachusetts; Wake County, North Carolina; and Jefferson County, Louisville) found that the districts’ race-neutral, or color-blind, policies to combat school segregation may disadvantage minorities and "reframe privilege as common sense" while ignoring structural inequalities.

Illegal immigration to the United States and crime

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_immigration_to_the_United_States_and_crime 

The issue of crimes committed by illegal immigrants to the United States is a topic that is often asserted and debated in politics and the media when discussing Immigration policy in the United States.

There is scholarly consensus that illegal immigrants commit less crime than natives. Sanctuary cities—which adopt policies designed to avoid prosecuting people solely for being in the country illegally—have no statistically meaningful impact on crime, and may reduce the crime rate. Research suggests that immigration enforcement has no impact on crime rates.

Research

Relationship between immigration status and crime

Further information: Immigration and crime

Entering the US without documented permission from the US government is a crime. According to some empirical evidence that disregarded illegal immigration as a crime, immigrants (including illegal immigrants) were otherwise less likely to commit crimes than native-born citizens in the United States.

A 2018 study found that undocumented immigration to the United States did not increase violent crime rates. A 2017 study found that "Increased undocumented immigration was significantly associated with reductions in drug arrests, drug overdose deaths, and DUI arrests, net of other factors." A 2017 study found that California's extension of driving licenses to unauthorized immigrants "did not increase the total number of accidents or the occurrence of fatal accidents, but it did reduce the likelihood of hit and run accidents, thereby improving traffic safety and reducing costs for California drivers ... providing unauthorized immigrants with access to driver's licenses can create positive externalities for the communities in which they live."

A 2018 study in the American Economic Journal: Economic Policy found that by restricting the employment opportunities for unauthorized immigrants, the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 (IRCA) likely caused an increase in crime rates. A 2018 PLOS One study estimated that the undocumented immigrant population in the United States was 22 million, approximately twice as large as the estimate derived from the United States Census Bureau's figures. An author of the study notes that this has implications for the relationship between undocumented immigration and crime, suggesting that the crime rate among undocumented immigrants is significantly lower than previously estimated: "You have the same number of crimes but now spread over twice as many people as was believed before, which right away means that the crime rate among undocumented immigrants is essentially half whatever was previously believed."

According to analysis of the 2010 United States Census, "immigrants to the United States are significantly less likely than native-born citizens to be incarcerated. The authors found that 1.6 percent of immigrant males age 18-39 are incarcerated, compared to 3.3 percent of the native-born... The divide was even sharper when the authors examined the incarceration rate among immigrant men the authors believe likely to be undocumented — specifically less-educated men from El Salvador and Guatemala between age 18-29. ... According to the analysis, these likely undocumented immigrants had an incarceration rate of 1.7 percent, compared with 10.7 percent for native-born men without a high school diploma".

A 2018 study found no evidence that apprehensions of undocumented immigrants in districts in the United States reduced crime rates.

A 2020 study found that native-born US citizens are incarcerated at higher rates for homicide in Texas than undocumented immigrants.

According to immigration analyst Alex Nowrasteh, and criminologist Barry Latzer, Texas is the only state that tracks illegal immigrants by the specific crime committed. Homicide data are regarded as more accurate than data on other crimes because "a much higher proportion of murders are solved." The Texas data for 2016 showed that the rate of murder convictions in 2016 was 3.2 per 100,000 native-born Americans, 0.9 for every 100,000 legal immigrants and 1.8 per 100,000 illegal immigrants.

Others

A 2016 study of an effort to reduce crime in North Carolina by identifying and deporting illegal immigrants showed no correlation between increased deportation enforcement and local crime rates.

Procedures

Individuals who are in the United States illegally and who have been convicted of crimes are eligible to be deported under federal law. Research suggests that immigration enforcement has no impact on crime rates.

Sanctuary cities

Crimes committed by illegal immigrants who had previously been arrested or convicted of crimes have been a focus of particular attention. Sanctuary cities—which adopt policies designed to avoid prosecuting people solely for being in the country illegally—have no statistically meaningful impact on crime, and may reduce the crime rate.

Discussion has been particularly intense when an illegal alien has been arrested for a minor offense and is known to be in the country illegally is released because the jurisdiction where he was arrested is a sanctuary city that limits police cooperation with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE,) and goes on to commit a new crime. Examples include the 2018 Tulare County shootings, where the suspect had previously served time in American prisons and been deported twice before being arrested on a misdemeanor and released under California Sanctuary Law SB54 the day before he killed two and wounded seven in a spree shooting.

Laws and regulations

Special Order 40 (1979)

Special Order 40 is a directive issued jointly by the Los Angeles City Council and the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) under Chief Daryl Gates and the Los Angeles City Council in 1979 prohibiting officers of the LAPD officers from questioning individuals for the sole purpose of whether they were in the United States legally. The Special Order was the center of controversy following the 2008 Murder of Jamiel Shaw II by a perpetrator who was a member of the 18th Street gang and an illegal immigrant to the United States. An effort to put a repeal measure on the ballot in 2009 failed. Police Commissioner William Bratton successfully opposed rescinding the Special Order.

Arizona SB 1070 (2010)

The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act (Arizona SB 1070,) was enacted by the Arizona legislature in 2010 as a response to broad public dislike of illegal immigration among Arizona voters, and by a widespread belief that a great deal of crime was being committed by illegal immigrants that persisted despite a scholarly consensus that illegal immigrants commit proportionately fewer crimes than American citizens. Public support for the bill was driven by the March 2010 murder of Arizona rancher Robert Krentz.

Texas Senate Bill 4 (2017)

Texas Senate Bill 4 was enacted in 2017 to block municipalities in Texas from becoming sanctuary cities, that is, to prevent local authorities from refusing to cooperate with federal authorities in enforcing immigration laws by directing police and court officials not to question persons accused of crimes about their immigration status and to ignore requests by federal authorities to hold individuals who are in the country illegally and have been arrested for minor crimes for deportation. Texas Senate Bill 4 also allows police officers to check the immigration status of those they detain if they choose.

Political debate

“Trump Hypothesis” and 2016 Presidential election

During his presidential campaign Donald Trump asserted that the immigrants are responsible for higher levels of violent and drug-related crime in the United States. A 2016 study was undertaken to test this hypothesis, specifically with regard to immigrants from Mexico. According to the study, "Results largely contradict the Trump Hypothesis: no evidence links Mexican or undocumented Mexican immigrants specifically to violent or drug-related crime."

In July 2015, Donald Trump invited what he terms Angel Families, families who have had a member killed by an illegal immigrant to meet with him. Some had lost relatives in road accidents, others were shot or stabbed, but all had family members who died due to actions taken by what Trump describes as people who never should have been in the U.S. in the first place. The Remembrance Project, a nonprofit that works to draw attention to the victims of crimes committed by illegal immigrants, helped the campaign locate families of victims.

During the 2016 Republican Party presidential primaries, a political advertisement showing mugshots of illegal immigrants who committed violent crimes in the U.S. alternate with footage of candidate Jeb Bush saying, "Yeah, they broke the law, but it's not a felony.... It's an act of love," is regarded as having played a role in Bush's withdrawal from the race. At a May 2016 campaign rally, Trump told an audience that illegal immigrants “Raped, sodomized and killed" Americans.

Jamiel Shaw, Sr., the father of a high school student murdered by an illegal immigrant in 2008, became a spokesman for the Trump campaign.

Presidency

During his presidency, Donald Trump had repeatedly asserted that crimes committed by illegal immigrants to the United States make the construction of a wall along the U.S.-Mexico border an urgent necessity. Trump's assertions about crimes committed by illegal immigrants were regularly shown to be inaccurate.

2018 midterm election

"One Nation," a political nonprofit supporting Republican candidates, produced an ad showing a masked, knife-wielding man with a voice saying, “We need tough immigration enforcement to keep dangerous criminals out.” Other ads criticized sanctuary cities, something Matt Gorman, spokesman for the National Republican Congressional Committee, said that many Americans oppose.