Thread by @Noahpinion

1/The latest book in my "immigration and diversity" reading series was "The New Americans?: Immigration, Protest, and the Politics of Latino Identity", by Heather Silber @HeatherSilberMo.

amazon.com/New-Americans-…

2/This is not a book for a general audience. It's full of regression tables, formalized political science language, and summaries and previews of results.

3/The main idea of the book is that the protests of 2006, against the restrictive bill HR 4437, led to an increase in Latinos' sense of American identity and inclusion.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Border_Pr…

4/In contrast to earlier Latino protests against strict immigration control measures, the 2006 protests featured lots of American flags.

Hispanic DJs and organizers urged protesters to display American flags in stead of Mexican ones, and the theme was "We are all Americans".

5/The author looks at surveys of Latinos before and after the protests, and finds a significant increase in feelings of American identity.

6/This is an interesting result, because political scientists have long theorized that political battles like this would make a minority group feel less connected to the country, more isolated, and more likely to retreat into a defensive ethnic identification.

7/Instead, the protests of 2006 made Latinos, especially Mexican Americans and Dominican Americans, feel more American.

That's a hopeful sign. It means that fighting for equal rights can make people feel more a part of America, instead of less.

8/The author doesn't mention it (the book was published in 2016), but it seems possible that resistance to the Trump administration could have a similar effect - a "founding struggle" that reassures immigrants, Latinos, and other minorities that they belong in this country.

9/Of course, it's difficult to generalize from this one episode. And the author theorizes that framing effects are important - that the flag-waving patriotism of the 2006 protests was the reason they made Latinos feel more American.

10/Will the backlash against Trump, and Trump's callow appropriation of the American flag, put a permanent taint on the kind of patriotism that infused the successful 2006 protests? Will "America" become a dirty word in America?

I hope not. But it might.

11/"The New Americans" is a small story of success - of Hispanic Americans rallying to exercise their democratic power and defeat an exclusionary bill, and feeling closer to their country as a result of that victory.

I hope that kind of thing can be repeated.

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