Review: "There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration" by Ali Noorani

 

Ali Noorani is the President and Director of National Immigration Forum. He began writing There Goes the Neighborhood: How Communities Overcome Prejudice and Meet the Challenge of American Immigration in 2010, after Congress failed to pass The Dream Act, despite the Democratic Party majority in the House of Representatives and the Senate. Those advocating human rights for migrants were bitterly disappointed that, despite decades of advocacy and organizing, legislation which would have provided the most meager of relief for some undocumented immigrants failed. 

Ali Noorani identifies that cultural advocacy was the missing ingredient: "When Americans were looking for an answer to their questions of cultural identity, we gave them a political answer instead." [p. 30]

In the book, Ali describes how groups of Euro-Americans moderate their stances towards immigrants through the lens of their values: family and respect for rule of law. One example he provides is The Utah Compact. Some law enforcement officials  also respond to appeals to their core values (p. 130):

Even corporations can create a more positive culture towards immigrants (p. 174):

There are some excellent ideas in this book for advocacy. I think it goes well with the work Welcoming America does. I plan on sharing these ideas with advocates for immigrants' rights in my city.

Nevertheless, my gut reaction to this book is that this type of advocacy isn't for me.

The words anti-blackness or colonization or First Peoples or Native Americans don't appear in this book. And when I read about the "success" stories of Euro-American acceptance of immigrants, it seems to be predicated on an acceptance of the America as a settler-colonialist project and global imperialist enterprise. Am I supposed to be happy that Coca-Cola, which funded anti-labor death squads in Colombia, promotes ethnic diversity? When every organized body of police in the country consistently protects officers who steal, kill, falsely imprison and torture and resists attempts at community control, am I supposed pretend "their core humanity requires them to treat others with a basic level of fairness?" Am I supposed to cheer that America honors non-white participants in its endless foreign wars?

One of the first books I ever reviewed for this blog was Sherman Jackson's Islam and the Blackamerican. I wrote:

[M]any immigrant Muslims can cross the “southern” border of America’s color line into honorary whiteness.

Non-Blackamerican Muslims can choose to resist white supremacy, abandon false universals and meet Blackamerican Muslims in presumable unity at the other side.

Non-Blackamerican Muslims can choose to join white supremacy. Part of the initiation into whiteness is the denigration of blackness. This was certainly the route non-Blackamerican Muslims were on prior to September 11, 2001, and that event both strengthened and retarded that trend.

I don't want an "immigration" solution. I want a decolonization solution. I want a liberation solution. I want an abolitionist solution.

I remember the fist time I really thought about undocumented migrants was after the 2006 immigration rallies where nativists were upset that Mexican immigrants waved Mexican flags. I saw the huge crowds on TV, and I thought about the custodial staff I used to see every evening when I would leave the office building where I worked in Indianapolis, Indiana. I imagined them lifting a sheet off of their cleaning supply carts to reveal racks of cell phones and notebooks to set up in our empty offices at night so that they could organize their rallies. When I see people stand up for themselves, without any appeal to their utility to others as soldiers and tech, agricultural and medical care workers, I get totally fired up.

The other problem I had was how Ali Noorani seemed to advocate that we educate churches on how to appeal to non-whites. I feel no obligation to help white supremacist institutions like American Protestant Christianity save itself. In addition, I worry about their success. Will they turn brown and black congregants into homophobes, anti-choice zealots and war supporters?

I write this during the week when many people pay lip service to Martin Luther King, Jr. His opponents, then and now, don't realize that he and those with him saved this nation from itself. And, in a way, Ali Noorani's approach seeks to save the United States from itself. Is that the only way forward?

I hope there is a better way.

P.S. Rereading this, I realize this may come across as petty & overly critical. I'm just concerned that the atomization of issues prevents us from working towards a comprehensively more just future. I just subscribe to Ali Noorani's podcast on Spotify. Many episodes have interesting descriptions!