This article extends the metaphor at the heart of The Sum of Us - the decline of the public swimming pool in the U.S. - to discuss the political landscape of the US-Mexico border. The author argues that anti-immigrant whites residing on the border are so invested in white supremacy that they subscribe to an anti-immigrant politic that does not serve them. The article calls attention to society’s collective investment in white supremacy by highlighting the cost of this investment on migrants at the U.S.-Mexico border

Negrón-Gonzales, Genevieve

English

University of San Francisco

The Border is Their Public Swimming PoolGenevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Ph.D.School of Education, University of San FranciscoIn The Sum of Us, McGhee argues that the majority of white Americans have becomeinvested in a set of policy priorities that only benefit a small minority of white people,and that the cost of this is borne by all of us.Several years ago, I spent a Saturday afternoon in a dusty church rec room sittingthrough a presentation by white Arizonans who I disagreed with on every point.  Theseranchers, whose properties lie on the border, represent a vocal and organized force intheir small town.  They argue that they are the ones who pay the price for “illegal”immigration because undocumented people stumble through their properties, leavegarbage, making them feel unsafe, and sometimes – quite inconveniently – die on theirproperties.  “I find garbage all the time!” they complain, showing pictures of the blackwater jugs sold in Mexico specifically for migrants crossing the border because the darkcolor won’t glint in the sun the way a transparent water bottle does.  “You can’timagine how awful it is to find a body on your property” they say, standing next to aposterboard of photos they have snapped of the remnants left behind by thesemigrants.  Prayer cards and pictures and talismans once-tightly-clutched and then lost,symbols of their hope for protection.  They are tiny glimpses of who the migrants areand where they come from. The ranchers share their opinion with anyone who willlisten, hoping to persuade local and federal authorities to do more. They call for stricterborder patrols, harsher border enforcement, more money for the increasedmilitarization of the border, and harsher penalties for migrants caught crossing theborder.  I am a scholar of education and immigration. I grew up on the border and havespent more than half of my life advocating for immigrant rights.  I know the dailyviolence faced by migrants who risk everything, even their lives, to escape poverty andviolence.  And that afternoon, to my surprise, in that dusty church rec room, I actuallyfound that those ranchers and I have some common ground.The conversation was part of an educational trip for M.A students of Migration Studiesfor which I served as the faculty chaperone. This was the “educational exposure”component of the trip for us – listening to people who had very different opinions andapproaches to border issues than we did as migration scholars and students ofMigration Studies. The presentation was painful to sit through.  The ranchers spoutedevery anti-immigrant talking point heard on the Fox evening news. They talked abouthow terrible it was to live on the border with these migrants disturbing their otherwisepeaceful ranch lands.  They positioned themselves as the victims, powerless in thecontext of a government that had abandoned them by not doing enough to protecttheir land, and thus by extension, them.The session concluded and as we were packing up our items to leave, one of the mostvocal ranchers said to me, in an off-handed way, “I’ve lived here long enough toremember what it was like when you could freely cross the border. People didn’t needto try to cross in the darkness at night, they could cross freely during the day, work, andthen go back to Mexico by dinner time.  It’s a shame we can’t get back to those days.”Wait. What?!It turns out, I learned, that there is a sizable section of conservative, anti-immigrantranchers on the border who feel this way.  They call for increased penalties and stricterenforcement, but at the heart of their calls is an affinity for a simpler time at the borderwhen none of that was necessary.  They do not come to that opinion from ahumanitarian lens but from a pragmatic one. And though their policy prescriptions callfor the opposite, just underneath the surface, it becomes clear that they know that thecurrent constellation of policies that has turned the border into a killing field hurts all ofus.McGhee helps us understand how this happens.  In short,  white people are invested inwhiteness even when it does not work for them.  This is clear in the way that many ofthese ranchers are calling for closed borders, voting Republican, arguing againsthumane immigration policy, while all the while knowing that life was better when theborder was more porous, when people could cross freely, when people were not at riskof dying on their properties because the border was not one big open grave of thepoor.The metaphor at the center of The Sum of Us is the decline of the public swimmingpool.  McGhee explains how the US government invested in the mass construction ofgrand, “resort-style” public swimming pools in this country in the 20s, 30s and 40s.These were, in many places, de facto “whites only” spaces.  The desegregation ofpublic spaces broadly emerged as a policy priority, and Black communities and othercommunities of color began to call for the desegregation of the public pools whichtheir tax dollars helped to build and maintain but from which they were barred entry.McGhee explains that when faced with integration orders, many white towns decidedto drain their public pools rather than allow Black families to swim.  The wealthy, inturn, built private clubs or constructed backyard pools, and it was the poor and workingclass – of all races – who were left without access to the public pool.McGhee’s intervention is fundamentally about trying to figure out how the majority ofwhite people in the United States became staunchly opposed to the kind of policyagenda that helped to create the white middle class.  This is a policy agenda thatincludes a social welfare state, big government spending, high taxes and an investmentin the commons. The draining of the public pools is one historical representation of atime in which white America acted against its own interests in the spirit of upholdingracism and white supremacy.  There are many others.I often think of those ranchers.  The border is their public swimming pool.  They areinvested in the maintenance and militarization of the border but when you scratch thesurface, the contradiction is exposed: this border does not serve them.  They are wistfulfor the time when it was easy to cross the border, when someone who lived in Nogalescould come over, work for the day, and go home to their families.  Families in Nogales,struggling under the weight of poverty, are also wistful for those times1.  Yet theseranchers, bolstered by white supremacy and conservative politics, lobby theircongresspeople for policy that does the exact opposite. And while it is undeniably truethat the people who pay the highest price for the enactment of these policies aremigrants, the reality is that the entire border region is negatively impacted by theborder policy the ranchers clamor for.There is a way we can read McGhee’s work as a “racism hurts all of us” banner that isbig enough for everyone.  I am uninterested in wrapping myself in this banner becausesolidarity is not sloppy.  I don’t want you to be against racism because it hurts you as awhite person, I want you to be against racism even when it benefits you as a whiteperson.  That is true solidarity.  But what McGhee is offering is not a simple diversitybanner that we can all hide behind.  What this book offers, fundamentally, is a claimthat there is collective investment in white supremacy, an articulation of what thatmeans for white people, and a reminder of what it costs us all. The migrants on theborder certainly understand that cost.Genevieve Negrón-Gonzales, Ph.D. is Associate Professor in the School of Education atthe University of San Francisco.  Her work lies at the intersection of education andimmigration.  Her co-edited book We Are Not Dreamers: Undocumented ScholarsTheorize Undocumented Life in the United States (Duke University Press, 2020) won theInternational Latino Book Award, multi-author non-fiction category.  Her co-authoredbook, The Latinx Guide to Graduate School (Duke University Press), is due out in 2023.1 To be clear, I am not advocating for a guest worker program.  I think nothing short of comprehensive immigrationreform and a reimagination of the border is necessary.

The Border is Their Public Swimming Pool

https://repository.usfca.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1055&context=jips

The Border is Their Public Swimming Pool

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