A lengthy report by
the Center for Immigration Studies released on March 18, 2010 is titled “Immigration and the SPLC: How the Southern
Poverty Law Center Invented a Smear, Served La Raza, Manipulated the Press, and
Duped its Donor.”
The report targets SPLC and the National
Council of La Raza (NCLR) for their role in an ongoing campaign to fight hate
against immigrants and Latinos. According to the new report, “The SPLC’s decision to smear FAIR [Federation for American Immigration
Reform] was the work of a kangaroo court, one convened to reach a
pre-determined verdict by inventing or distorting evidence. The ‘Stop the Hate’
campaign would more accurately be labeled as a campaign to ‘Stop the Debate.’”
Although highly critical of SPLC’s methodology and motives, the CIS
report doesn’t closely examine the details of SPLC’s charge that FAIR is hate
group and as such bears responsibility for hate crimes against Latinos. Nor
does the report examine the existence of hate groups and hate crimes in
relation to the escalation of the immigration debate in this country.
Instead, the CIS reports strikes back at two of the principals in the
campaign to delegitimize the immigration restrictionist institutes, including
CIS. The new report examines the integrity and credibility of SPLC and the National
Council of La Raza, the civil rights group that relies on SPLC research for its
“Stop the Hate” website.
According to the CIS report, “Rather than engage in a debate, La Raza
and its allies have waged a campaign to have the other side shunned by the
press, civil society, and elected officials. It is an effort to destroy the
reputations of its targets. It also seeks to intimidate and coerce others into
silence. It undermines basic principles of civil society and democratic
discussion.”
Written by former journalist
Jerry Kammer, currently a senior research fellow at CIS, the report is a must
read for those who closely follow the immigration debate.
While making little contribution to our
understanding of the virulence of anti-immigrant rhetoric in the public debate,
the CIS report offers fascinating observations about the role of John Tanton. The
current and historical links of FAIR, CIS, and NumbersUSA have formed the core
of the criticism of these restrictionist institutes by immigrant-rights groups.
The report notes these connections:
“John Tanton founded FAIR in 1979. Six years later he was one of
several individuals who were instrumental in starting the Center for
Immigration Studies. CIS operated under FAIR’s non-profit umbrella for about
six months, until its independent non-profit status was approved. In the late
1990s Tanton helped launch NumbersUSA. Because of the prominent role these
organizations have played in the national immigration debate, he can rightly be
described as the father of the modern movement to restrict immigration.”
According to Kammer, “[T] small-town
doctor from Northern Michigan combines relentless organizational energies with
a provincial temperament and a tin ear for the sensitivities of immigration. In
an arena that requires the ability to frame issues in a way that broadens consensus,
he sometimes speaks with a free-wheeling bluntness that can upset even those
who admire him. Some say that Tanton has shown a tendency to be unnecessarily
provocative, a tendency that some have seized upon to change the topic from
immigration to Tanton himself.”
An interview with Roger Conner, the first executive
director of FAIR, also touches on motivations and perceptions in the
immigration debate. Conner told Kammer, “Immigration touches so many
sensitivities and stirs so many passions that it requires careful handling by those
who seek to change policy. Talking about Tanton, Conner said, “It is not enough
to “be racially inclusive in your heart,” he said. “You have to avoid even the
appearance of bigotry.”
Kammer writes, “Conner has a blunt message to those
who complain of a double standard: ‘You’re right — it isn’t fair. Get over it.’”
“‘Motives matter on immigration,” said Conner, “The risk of a big-tent
philosophy was — and is — that if you don’t explicitly exclude the fringe
groups from your tent, you can ruin it for the majority of Americans — those of
us who are just as opposed to intolerance or racism as we are to excessive
immigration.”
SPLC and its allies in this campaign stand on their
strongest ground when they point to the highly objectionable activities and
rhetoric of many of the grassroots groups associated with FAIR.
FAIR’s publications and media statements generally stick
closely to the institute’s contentions about mass immigration and the “open
borders” goals of CIR advocates. But there is ample evidence that grassroots organizations
and activists allied with FAIR do indeed have white supremacist and nativist
agendas.
Does this make FAIR itself a “hate group,” which is
responsible for the words and actions of its grassroots allies? The CIS report
doesn’t weigh in directly on this issue, but the quoted observations of a
former FAIR executive director about risks of a big-tent organizing tactics are
clearly relevant to assessing FAIR’s own objectionable practices.
NCLR is a
pro-CIR civil rights group that restrictionist institutes and anti-immigrant
groups love to criticize because of its controversial name and its history of identity
politics. CIS associates itself with that sniping tradition in this report. The
report unprofessionally and routinely identifies NCLR not by its name or its
initials but simply as La Raza.
The inclusion of
the term “la raza” in NCLR’s name is explicable historically given NCLR’s
origins in 1968 as part of the Chicano self-awareness and civil -rights
movement. The members of that movement commonly used “la raza” as descriptor of
Mexican-American and Mexican identity and of their common bonds. The Spanish
word raza is variously defined to mean
race, breed, and family; and when in conjunction with the article la (the), raza is commonly used among Mexican American activists to mean “our
community” or “our people.”
NCLR has
considered changing its name to avoid the criticism that it is a supremacist or
racist group – “the race” – but instead has tried to avoid the criticism by
routinely referring to itself as NCLR.
NCLR also has a
special page on its website that “answers critics” and explains
its name. As NCLR notes, “the full term coined by [José]
Vasconcelos, ‘La Raza Cósmica,’ meaning the
“cosmic people,” was developed to reflect not purity but the mixture inherent
in the Hispanic people.”
By allying itself
with SPLC in this badly targeted campaign, NCLR has again opened itself up to
criticism about its name, politics, and motivations.
CIS moves into this
opening in a section of the report titled “If FAIR Played the Same Game,” which
begins with this observation: “If FAIR chose to adopt the tactics of the SPLC and its allies, it would
seek to divert attention from the substantive issues of immigration. It would
probe for suspect motivation and association. It would take out full-page ads
in Roll Call and Politico, taunting La Raza for controversial moments in its history.”
Coupled with this justifiable criticism of NCLR’s “Stop the Hate”
campaign are helpful observations about Tanton and Vasconcelos. Kammer writes,
for example, that “Vasconcelos was in some ways
an intellectual opposite of the scientifically and quantitatively oriented John
Tanton. But in a few fundamental respects, they were similar. Both became
highly cultured, accomplished men with an inclination toward moralizing and
intellectual arrogance. Both thought constantly of the meaning of national
identity and cultural unity.”
Seized as a tactic to delegitimize
their opponents, the smear campaign against the restrictionist
institutes has been, at best, a debilitating distraction in the struggle for immigration reform. The ongoing campaign highlights the all-too-common
willingness of those who are convinced of the righteousness of their cause to stoop to character assassination
and shoddy analysis and research. But worse still is that the effort to tar the restrictionist institutes with the "hate group" label has left us with no better understanding of the anti-immigrant backlash movement.
It’s time for NCLR, America’s
Voice, Center for American Progress, Center for New Community, and the foundations
that have supported this smear campaign to disassociate themselves from such
character-assassination tactics. The immigration debate has been ill served by
such tactics, and the reputation of the liberal immigration reform movement
needlessly damaged.
Photo: John Tanton
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