Immigration, white genocide

It’s rare that we can congratulate the Indiana state government for anything outside of staving off our ever-imminent descent to anarchy, but thanks to Indiana Attorney General Greg Zoeller, congratulations are finally in order.

Zoeller has refused to appeal District Court Judge Sarah Evans Barker’s decision to strike down two provisions of a 2011 immigration bill. Because of their actions, it is not a crime to use consular-issued cards as IDs, nor can someone be arrested for having a “questionable” immigration status.  

Such questionable status included receiving a notice of action from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services, even if that notice was informing the recipient that they had achieved lawful alien status.

We’re proud of you, Indiana — except state senators Mike Delph, R-Indianapolis, Brent Steele, R-Bedford, and Phil Boots, R-Crawfordsville, who requested an appeal.  

Thanks for getting your nose out of foreign policy matters. Stick with deer hunting laws. It’s what you’re good at and what the U.S. Constitution actually lets you do.

Unfortunately, this decision came the same week as the #WhiteGenocide debacle on campus. It seems like there is some sort of equilibrium the universe must achieve when it comes to Hoosier xenophobia.

Both the 2011 immigration law and the #WhiteGenocide chalkings seem to be expressions of increased discomfort at the fact that by 2043, whites will no longer be the majority in the United States.

This will happen, not because they are being systematically exterminated in any way, but because other Americans — who currently make up 36.3 percent of the population — are having more babies. 2012 was the first year that fewer than 50 percent of babies born were white.  

This is a totally normal demographic shift. It does not mean that whites are under attack by anyone or that anything is being taken away from white Americans.   

Perhaps this data will push white Americans to finally recognize the fact that they are not the only kind of Americans. The word “American” can refer to a spectrum of races.

Interestingly enough, the immigration of Latinos into our country has spurred much of this concern, despite the fact that many Latinos consider themselves white.

Notions of what is “white” in this country have constantly been shifting. Early in our history, Jews and Italians weren’t Anglo-Saxon Protestant enough to be white. Arab Americans petitioned to be classified as white a century ago.

With such unclear definitions of white, systematic extermination of the white population seems overly complicated and cumbersome.

It is heartening to see that Indiana’s government is getting over its issue with immigrants one step at a time. If only that could be said for all Hoosiers.