The Supreme Court didn’t rule that racial profiling is permissible, they ruled that the possibility of it cannot in itself invalidate enforcement. I’m as appalled as anyone by the memeification of immigration and crime policy, but that distinction and perspective matters!!
It's right there in the second paragraph of the NYT story that Shadi linked: "The ruling is not the final word in the case, which stems from the Trump administration’s attempt to carry out mass deportations. But the court’s Republican-appointed majority will allow the government to continue using aggressive — and unconstitutional, in the eyes of its critics — tactics in immigration sweeps as the litigation slowly plays out."
That is not "[making] something patently unconstitutional constitutional."
I'm not particularly sympathetic to the Administration’s aggressive approach to deportation, BUT my view is that to a certain extent the Biden Administration is culpable insofar as it countenanced an unprecedented flood of questionable asylum seekers, possibly for electoral advantage in Congressional apportionment.
As to the “profiling” question, I too would prefer a more rigorous process before apprehensions. I would particularly prefer a focus on violent criminals almost to the exclusion of all else. Unfortunately, that would be plenty to keep ICE busy. Even from a green eyeshade perspective, I don't see a very favorable cost-benefit calculus for deporting hard-working, law-abiding citizens with deep roots in the US.
However, that would be more practical if state and local authorities cooperated with DHS rather than actively resisting and inciting popular resistance to exploit the situation for perceived political gain.
In that regard, I believe their hypothesis is flawed. The people of color they hope to pander to are in many cases not nearly as supportive of illegal immigration and questionable asylum status as the progressive stereotype assumes.
Do you think the progress was temporary, Shadi? Reading Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson makes me realise both how entrenched the opposition to civil rights was in the South and also how recent it was. It took almost 90 years for any civil rights legislation post-Reconstruction to pass, and that legislation had to be watered down to the point of irrelevance for it to pass. Have you considered that perhaps the progress made between 1957-2011 was the temporary state of affairs and America is now lapsing back into what it was?
It's not a pleasant idea to think about, and I know it goes against your vision, but it does make me wonder.
I generally agree with one of the other comments that said the pendulum swinging has always been the nature of things in this country, but--and I'm certainly willing to chalk this up to me living through the moment rather than reading about it--this feels like a bigger swing than (most of) those in the past. I'm almost 40; we haven't experienced anything like this swing toward authoritarian posturing (or practice, depending on who you ask) in my lifetime. It's incredibly disconcerting to put it lightly.
You write: “I suspect we may have to acclimate ourselves to a new order, one in which “progress” is no longer an upward if uneven curve but more like a pendulum.” But there’s nothing new about that! The story of civil rights is usually told this way. Slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, then that long period before the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, followed by something of a conservative backlash in the 80s… there are always shifting currents.
Likewise with feminism, where the comparative liberation of the 20s (after women took on a broader range of roles during the First World War) was followed by the tight repression of the 50s (enforcing a gendered order for the returning veterans, this time around), followed by liberation of various types in the 60s and 70s, followed by the rise of evangelical anti-feminism in the 80s, followed by third/fourth wave feminism spreading from blogs into pop culture, followed by, uh, Trump. Back and forth and back and forth.
If anything, the pendulum sounds sort of comforting; it would seem like a guarantee of sorts that the pendulum will eventually swing back. But I genuinely don’t know what will happen in the years to come; I think this is one of those ways of understanding that only works backwards.
Echoing some of the previous commenters who wrote about the pendulum swing: I recall an interview in 2017 with the late anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins. He was asked if he was surprised by the ascendancy of Trump. He replied that he was not, because what the left does not understand is that the rights revolutions of the 60s onward really have been revolutions - and after a revolution there is ALWAYS (his italics) a counter-revolution. Having done some reading about this since then, I think he was right - unless the revolutionaries are in position to murder tens of millions of people (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot). I share Shadi's fear about our current state and the fact that we have no idea how it will turn out, but I try to remember that the course of (whig) history never did run smooth.
"America, for all its faults, is considerably more equal and richer on a per capita basis than it was in the 1950s"
Come on, Shadi, it's not even close:
"Income inequality has fluctuated considerably in the United States since measurements began around 1915, moving in an arc between peaks in the 1920s and 2000s, with a lower level of inequality from approximately 1950-1980 (a period named the Great Compression), followed by increasing inequality, in what has been coined as the great divergence."
Do you really not know that the US attained maximum economic equality during the New Deal/Great Society period and has steadily become more unequal since 1980, thanks to Republican policies? It's practically a truism among political economists.
Shadi, what you said was "more equal and richer on a per capita basis." Not only does this sound like economic equality, but "per capita" makes no sense whatever as applied to race and gender. If I misunderstood you, I respectfully suggest that you may be partly to blame.
Does everyone have their driver's license, or will we be needing more robust papers on our person?
I find it funny that conservative flailing about progressive overreach, especially on issues of sexuality and gender sounds a lot like this piece: "This isn't how it should be! We had it right and now you're undoing it!"
“What happens when a country’s top constitutional court decides to make something patently unconstitutional constitutional?“ Clearly you’re not of the John Marshall persuasion. So riddle me this: What in your “persuasion” makes something “patently unconstitutional”?
The Supreme Court didn’t rule that racial profiling is permissible, they ruled that the possibility of it cannot in itself invalidate enforcement. I’m as appalled as anyone by the memeification of immigration and crime policy, but that distinction and perspective matters!!
It's right there in the second paragraph of the NYT story that Shadi linked: "The ruling is not the final word in the case, which stems from the Trump administration’s attempt to carry out mass deportations. But the court’s Republican-appointed majority will allow the government to continue using aggressive — and unconstitutional, in the eyes of its critics — tactics in immigration sweeps as the litigation slowly plays out."
That is not "[making] something patently unconstitutional constitutional."
I'm not particularly sympathetic to the Administration’s aggressive approach to deportation, BUT my view is that to a certain extent the Biden Administration is culpable insofar as it countenanced an unprecedented flood of questionable asylum seekers, possibly for electoral advantage in Congressional apportionment.
As to the “profiling” question, I too would prefer a more rigorous process before apprehensions. I would particularly prefer a focus on violent criminals almost to the exclusion of all else. Unfortunately, that would be plenty to keep ICE busy. Even from a green eyeshade perspective, I don't see a very favorable cost-benefit calculus for deporting hard-working, law-abiding citizens with deep roots in the US.
However, that would be more practical if state and local authorities cooperated with DHS rather than actively resisting and inciting popular resistance to exploit the situation for perceived political gain.
In that regard, I believe their hypothesis is flawed. The people of color they hope to pander to are in many cases not nearly as supportive of illegal immigration and questionable asylum status as the progressive stereotype assumes.
Do you think the progress was temporary, Shadi? Reading Robert Caro's biography of Lyndon Johnson makes me realise both how entrenched the opposition to civil rights was in the South and also how recent it was. It took almost 90 years for any civil rights legislation post-Reconstruction to pass, and that legislation had to be watered down to the point of irrelevance for it to pass. Have you considered that perhaps the progress made between 1957-2011 was the temporary state of affairs and America is now lapsing back into what it was?
It's not a pleasant idea to think about, and I know it goes against your vision, but it does make me wonder.
I generally agree with one of the other comments that said the pendulum swinging has always been the nature of things in this country, but--and I'm certainly willing to chalk this up to me living through the moment rather than reading about it--this feels like a bigger swing than (most of) those in the past. I'm almost 40; we haven't experienced anything like this swing toward authoritarian posturing (or practice, depending on who you ask) in my lifetime. It's incredibly disconcerting to put it lightly.
You write: “I suspect we may have to acclimate ourselves to a new order, one in which “progress” is no longer an upward if uneven curve but more like a pendulum.” But there’s nothing new about that! The story of civil rights is usually told this way. Slavery, emancipation, Reconstruction, then that long period before the civil rights movement of the 50s and 60s, followed by something of a conservative backlash in the 80s… there are always shifting currents.
Likewise with feminism, where the comparative liberation of the 20s (after women took on a broader range of roles during the First World War) was followed by the tight repression of the 50s (enforcing a gendered order for the returning veterans, this time around), followed by liberation of various types in the 60s and 70s, followed by the rise of evangelical anti-feminism in the 80s, followed by third/fourth wave feminism spreading from blogs into pop culture, followed by, uh, Trump. Back and forth and back and forth.
If anything, the pendulum sounds sort of comforting; it would seem like a guarantee of sorts that the pendulum will eventually swing back. But I genuinely don’t know what will happen in the years to come; I think this is one of those ways of understanding that only works backwards.
Echoing some of the previous commenters who wrote about the pendulum swing: I recall an interview in 2017 with the late anthropologist, Marshall Sahlins. He was asked if he was surprised by the ascendancy of Trump. He replied that he was not, because what the left does not understand is that the rights revolutions of the 60s onward really have been revolutions - and after a revolution there is ALWAYS (his italics) a counter-revolution. Having done some reading about this since then, I think he was right - unless the revolutionaries are in position to murder tens of millions of people (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot). I share Shadi's fear about our current state and the fact that we have no idea how it will turn out, but I try to remember that the course of (whig) history never did run smooth.
"America, for all its faults, is considerably more equal and richer on a per capita basis than it was in the 1950s"
Come on, Shadi, it's not even close:
"Income inequality has fluctuated considerably in the United States since measurements began around 1915, moving in an arc between peaks in the 1920s and 2000s, with a lower level of inequality from approximately 1950-1980 (a period named the Great Compression), followed by increasing inequality, in what has been coined as the great divergence."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States
Do you really not know that the US attained maximum economic equality during the New Deal/Great Society period and has steadily become more unequal since 1980, thanks to Republican policies? It's practically a truism among political economists.
I specifically said "on race and gender"
Shadi, what you said was "more equal and richer on a per capita basis." Not only does this sound like economic equality, but "per capita" makes no sense whatever as applied to race and gender. If I misunderstood you, I respectfully suggest that you may be partly to blame.
Does everyone have their driver's license, or will we be needing more robust papers on our person?
I find it funny that conservative flailing about progressive overreach, especially on issues of sexuality and gender sounds a lot like this piece: "This isn't how it should be! We had it right and now you're undoing it!"
This probably deserves the same response...
“What happens when a country’s top constitutional court decides to make something patently unconstitutional constitutional?“ Clearly you’re not of the John Marshall persuasion. So riddle me this: What in your “persuasion” makes something “patently unconstitutional”?
It's an opinion piece so presumably it's my opinion