Book post: The Browning of the New South

Explicit Racism’s Silver Lining

On July 14, President Trump fired off a series of tweets intended to undermine the growing clout of four Freshmen Representatives, all women of color. Rather than emphasize his disagreement with their policies, he admonished the four women, who are Puerto Rican, Palestinian-American, African-American, and Somali-American, to “go back” to the countries they came from. Putting aside that only one of these women was born outside of the country, Trump’s racism was clear, intended to remind his base of the truth behind his campaign slogan, which, as Nancy Pelosi put it, “has always been about making America white again.”

This naked attempt to draw a line between whites and non-whites has been rightfully decried in the press as fanning the flames of white nationalism and designed to appeal to white resentment. However, these efforts to split the country in two may also have unintended positive effects for the left.

In my book The Browning of the New South, I examine the impact of doubling down on exclusionary policies and attitudes on a single city—Winston-Salem, North Carolina. From 2008 to 2009, I lived, worked, and participated in community life as I conducted 86 interviews with immigrants and community members. I supplemented this extensive field work with an analysis of 20 years of black, mainstream, and Spanish-language press coverage regarding immigration issues in the area to triangulate my understanding of the Winston-Salem community over time.

A decade ago, at the time of my study, North Carolina’s Republican leadership was engaged in a similar kind of attack. In an attempt to turn out Republican voters and tamp down growing interest in Obama’s populism, would-be state legislators competed to express the most explicitly hateful and racist views, proposing exclusionary policies aimed primarily at harming immigrants, but that would also, in many cases, have detrimental effects on its native-born minority communities. Comments like that of Sherriff Bizzell, who claimed that all that Mexicans do is “rape, rob, and murder American citizens,” were common examples of this discourse.

In North Carolina, these efforts had a two-pronged effect. Certainly, they laid the groundwork for punitive policies, rolling back efforts to integrate immigrants, as well as undermining civil rights gains made by its long-standing African-American community. But it also shifted how nonwhites perceived and related to one another.

In The Browning of the New South, I show that such shifts can result in what I call “minority linked fate.” Linked fate has long been understood in the social sciences as a measure of politicized race-consciousness. It’s not just a measure of whether or not a person identifies with a racial group, but whether they see their prospects as connected to the treatment, and success, of their racial group. Articulated by Michael Dawson in his 1994 book, Behind the Mule, in which Dawson finds robust agreement with the statement, “Do you believe what happens to black people generally in this country will have something to do with what happens in your life,” scholars and pundits alike have drawn on this framework to understand voting patterns, protest, and political attitudes among nonwhites.

By and large, however, this analysis has pertained to a single racial group, examining linked fate among African Americans, Latinxs, and Asian Americans. By contrast, interracial coalitions, particularly among African-Americans and Latinxs, have largely been framed as temporary and unsustainable, suggesting the absence of linked fate. Yet, in Winston-Salem and in various cities and counties around North Carolina, I found that Latinx residents were increasingly articulating a sense of Minority Linked Fate—where they would identify not just with Latinxs but also with African Americans– precisely because of the kinds of racialized discrimination they faced in everyday life.

Ramón, one of my respondents who was undocumented, had lived in the U.S. for 13 years, and grew up in Mexico City put it best: “I get along with black people, yes, because they’ve gone through what we are going through. You know the problems that they’ve had for years, from slavery and all that…The Americans have treated black people badly to this day. They have the same problem that we have: racism. And because of this, we get along better. At least, that’s true for me. Because we know how we are treated.”

From the perspective of the Latinx residents of Winston-Salem, African-Americans understood what they were going through. They too had been unfairly targeted and criminalized by politicians, bureaucrats, and neighbors, and they too had found it difficult to survive, let alone be upwardly mobile, under these conditions. Even more importantly, African-American leaders in the community participated in and supported this narrative, inviting Latinx community members to take part in town hall meetings and conversations, to advocate for better funding for their shared schools and hospitals, to speak out against over policing in their neighborhoods, as well as punitive immigration policies. For example, at a community forum on black-Latino relations attended by community organizations, churchgoers, and youth activists, A Latino Reverend recounted:

As a result, many Latinx respondents also responded affirmatively to the question, do you think what happens to black people generally in this country will have something to do with what happens in your life. In other words, right-wing activists, policymakers and community members made it clear to them that as minorities, their fates were linked.

As a result, beyond these affirmative statements of a shared political outlook and agenda, organizations were being formed and political agendas were being outlined, I argue as a result of this Minority Linked Fate. Longstanding civil rights organizations, such as the NAACP, for example, added immigration to its broader policy agenda, suggesting that such coalition building was hardly temporary.

Today, just as the anti-immigrant, blatantly racist agenda has become mainstream, we also see a robust and growing coalition of multiracial activists, such as the youth organizers for Stacey Abrams, who ranged from Black Lives Matter activists to DACA recipients, to the four congresswomen that Trump targeted in his tweets–all united in an effort to elect candidates who see these policing issues as linked.

In many ways, this shift represents a major opportunity for the Democratic party. The unfolding of minority linked fate may shore up a core base of minority voters and their allies that can aggressively push back against a regressive, racist agenda. My research suggests that just as Republicans built on the success of a kind of Southern Strategy 2.0 to win at the national level, so too can Democrats leverage increasing minority linked fate. Indeed, as Jamelle Bouie writes, “Trump voters are not the only voters”. Afterall, while Trump’s approval rating has improved among Republicans, it is abysmally low among independents and Democrats, particularly nonwhites (18%). Democrats can build a new coalition. They just need to look at the facts on the ground to do it.

About the author

Jennifer A. Jones is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Specializing in race and ethnicity, immigration, political sociology, and Latin America and the Caribbean, Jones’ work can be found in such journals as Contexts, Ethnic and Racial Studies, International Migration Review, Latino Studies, and Sociology of Race and Ethnicity. She is also the author of The Browning of the New South, and co-editor of Afro-Latin@s in Movement: Critical Approaches to Blackness and Transnationalism in the Americas (with Petra Rivera-Rideau and Tianna Paschel). Her current research (in collaboration with Hana Brown) examines the role of organizations and racial ideologies in shaping state-level immigration policy.