Conditional Citizens - Laila Lalami

Despite being a story of love and country, “Certain facts regularly stand in the way, facts that make of me a conditional citizen. By this I mean that my relationship to the state, observed through exposure to its policies or encounters with its representatives, is affected in all sorts of ways by my being an immigrant, a woman, an Arab, and a Muslim.”

Conditional citizens are people whose rights the state finds expendable in the pursuit of white supremacy.

Policed & punished more harshly, not guaranteed same electoral representation as others, more likely to be expatriated or denaturalized, surveilled more closely
“In short, conditional citizens are Americans who cannot enjoy the full rights, liberties, and protections of citizenship because of arbitrary markers of identity. Their race, ethnicity, gender, and national origin—that is to say, features over which they have no control—largely determine whether they will be able to vote, have freedom of movement, or remain safe from unreasonable searches.”

First Muslims to come to Americas actually during slave trade, but record of their crossings/culture hard to find
“Conditional citizenship is characterized by the burden of having to educate white Americans about all the ways in which one is different from them.”

Customs & Border Control is able to monitor anywhere (via checkpoint, for example) up to 100 km from a border to question vehicle owners re: citizenship
- Increased from 25 km threshold
- This region accounts for over two-thirds of population
- SCOTUS case basically allowing for racial profiling of Mexicans in these areas
Rule of global migration: the tougher the policy, the more resourceful the immigrants
Recent surge of wall-building by western countries— an Iron Curtain based on identity of immigrants (Europe as well as US)
- Characterized by dehumanization of migrants
- “Drawing clear, concrete boundaries will keep us safe from them… As governments around the world continue to erect more border walls, this is another message worth apprehending: walls do not simply keep others out; they also keep us in.”

Contradictory historical relationship of America with immigrants: seen as a source of strength & hope, but also treated with fear, legally restricted
Assimilation = about power (consider the difference between expectations of an expat and a migrant)
Cost of assimilation: loss of identity, culture, language

““White” is seen as the default, the absence of race.”
- Increasing anxiety among whites people that they are becoming the minority, but don’t have the “lexicon” to speak about their identity.
White privilege: Peggy McIntosh → “a range of systemic unearned advantages that benefit white people”
White fragility: Robin DiAngelo → “…many white people believed themselves to be individually free of racism and resented having to hear about their profiting from its systemic aspects—”
“Race is a seductive fiction. It ensnares both the dominant and non-dominant groups into a narrative that they can scarcely escape, reinforced as it is by the culture, a narrative that teaches them that their success or failure is due exclusively to their individual efforts and that history plays no part in it.”

In America, poverty is treated as a mater of choice rather than chance
Perhaps we should consider a new language of citizenship that includes things like minimum wage, healthcare, education, housing

Sociologist Soumaya Naamane Guessous: “people should evaluate traditions individually, rather than pass them on to their children wholesale, and that some traditions deserved to be set aside.”

Inscribed on the Jefferson Memorial: “Laws and institutions must go hand in hand with the progress of the human mind. As that becomes more developed, more enlightened, as new discoveries are made, new truths discovered and manners and opinions change, with the change of circumstances, institutions must advance also to keep pace with the times.”
→ “So we must amend his words. All people are created equal—and we must work to make sure that so they remain.”

On Belonging in America