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In These Times
MAY 1, 2010
Upon signing Arizona’s new statute requiring police officers to demand citizenship papers from anyone they believe is in the country illegally, Republican Gov. Jan Brewer last week claimed the bill is not designed to “tolerate racial discrimination or racial profiling” of Latinos.
Responding to critics who say the legislation does just that, she, like many conservatives, insisted, “I don’t know what an illegal immigrant looks like”—the implication being that Republicans are colorblind.
It sounds reassuring, but methinks she doth protest too much, and I say that because one of the Republican Party’s leading law enforcement voices has already disclosed the true objective of precisely this kind of legislation.
That seminal admission came in November 2001, when the emotional aftermath of 9/11 momentarily removed politicians’ rhetorical filters. There on the floor of Congress, GOP Rep. Scott McInnis delivered an address about “the need for profiling for the national security of this country.”
Brandishing his past experience as a police officer, he implored lawmakers “to quit being politically correct” and let authorities make “ethnic background a legitimate component” of law enforcement investigations—just as Arizona’s new statute allows.
David Sirota is a senior editor at In These Times and author of the bestselling books The Uprising and Hostile Takeover. He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado and blogs at OpenLeft.com. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com.
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