You guys are doing it wrong

Racists and other types of idiots are having a quite a time in Arizona. Over at The Corner*, Mark Krikorian approvingly brings us the following news.

As a protest against Arizona’s controversial immigration law, the chambers of commerce from Nuevo Laredo to Matamoros have agreed to set May 25 as a “Day Without Mexicans” on the South Texas border.

Business leaders are calling on all Mexican nationals to avoid crossing the international bridges into the United States for any reason, but particularly for shopping, on that day.

Yes, of the people crossing the border, afternoon shoppers bringing money into the U.S. are clearly the worst.

I've been somewhat dismissive of the whole "Arizona's gone crazy" kerfuffle as a temporary and misguided reaction to legitimate problems with international drug violence. But Josh Marshall points to some uglier stuff going on, and says it is basically overt ethnic strife:

It's still not clear just what the effect of this law will be. But I think it's being underreported nationally. I think this takes the situation in Arizona in a significantly new, uglier direction. We all know that the crackdown on illegal immigration in the state is filled with xenophobia and ethnic politics. It's not just about enforcement immigration laws in some narrow sense. Even so, it's pitched that way and many middle-of-the-road voters do see it that way. And we need to remember that violence spun off by the drug trade (as opposed to illegal immigration per se) is a genuine issue in the state.

But this isn't about law and order or undocumented status. But this is much more clearly a law ... to put it right out there, about white folks in Arizona who want the people in the Latino community to stop complaining so much. I mean, that's was this is about. And there's not even much of a veneer of anything else. It's about stopping local school districts with large Hispanic populations from teaching their history the way they want to in their local schools. The whole push gets you much more into the realm of explicit ethnic or even racial conflict. |TPM|

It might be time for Public Enemy to go back to Arizona.


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* The Corner: Racists or other types of idiots? Discuss.