Thread by @Noahpinion

1/I found some interesting survey data about American racial stereotypes in "The Politics of Belonging", by Jane Junn and Natalie Masuoka. amazon.com/Politics-Belon…

2/They cited two surveys. The first was from the early 90s, the second was from 2006.

3/Here's some data from the early 90s surveys. Not many surprises here. This was also right after the L.A. riots, which might help explain some of the negative stereotypes the Black and Asian Americans reported about each other on this survey.

4/Now here's data from the 2006 survey. First thing to note is that majorities of ALL races held positive stereotypes about both Latinos and Asians.

Both were stereotyped as hard-working and having strong family values.

5/But now look at the negative stereotypes on the right.

62 percent (!!) of whites stereotyped Latinos as being "mostly illegal immigrants"! (Which of course is not even remotely close to the truth.)

6/The survey generally found that whites held more negative stereotypes about Latinos than did other races surveyed.

7/This suggests that racists, white supremacists, Republicans, nativists, and/or conservative media figures have successfully used "illegal immigrant" as a smear to stir up animosity toward Latinos among white Americans.

8/"Illegal" is being used similar to the way "wop" ("with out papers") was used to smear Italian-Americans in the early 20th century - as an illegitimate alien group. When Tucker Carlson or whoever says "illegals", it's a racial dog-whistle.

9/In fact, there were always much more legal than illegal immigration from Mexico, and kids of undocumented immigrants are U.S. citizens.

The "illegal" label is not really about the law. It's about race. It's a way to say Latinos aren't legitimate Americans.

10/In fact, this is one of the book's major points.

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