Moral And Immoral Whiteness In Immigration Politics

Immigration has been at the heart of U.S. politics for centuries. This book examines the inherent moral, value-based, nature of the attitudes driving white Americans' immigration attitudes. The author tests her theory about the centrality of morality with a series of empirical models that take advantage of public opinion survey data as well as the roll call votes of elected officials. Ultimately, Matos argues that white Americans' immigration attitudes are at bottom moral choices. The moral choice that whiteness affords, that not all racial groups have, is the choice to continue to produce and reproduce a system structured on white supremacy or to repudiate it. In this project, the author asks, under what conditions do whites choose to lean towards reproducing whiteness and/or repudiating it and what role does whites' socialization play in the moral choices whites make about immigration. The notable contribution of this book to the field of immigration is that it uniquely argues that not only does whiteness structure immigration but that immigration attitudes are inherently moral choices. Choices that are learned through the socialization of group norms and artisanship and whiteness dictate group norms. White identity, identification, and whiteness undergird these moral narratives in varying ways. The immigration choices made by whites either move towards reproducing whiteness or repudiating it within the continuum of white supremacy. In this current climate, as immigration continues to be weaponized to divide, it is important to understand the roots of immigration attitudes in the United States--

• | Author: Yalidy Matos
• | Publisher: Oxford University Press
• | Publication Date: May 23, 2023
• | Number of Pages: 256 pages
• | Language: English
• | Binding: Paperback
• | ISBN-10: 0197656269
• | ISBN-13: 9780197656266