You are watching booktv on cspan2 with top nonfiction books and authors at the weekend. Tv, television for serious readers. She teaches American History at university is the wishes a professor, a Mcknight University professor, the rudolph chair in immigration history and the director of the immigration History Research center. Lee is the author of three awardwinning books in u. S. Immigration, americas gates, chinese immigration during the exclusionary era, 18821943, and angel island, gateway to america in the making of asian america, a history. At the immigration History Research center she has helped to merge immigration history with the digital humanities. She launched and oversees the National Endowment for the humanities funded immigration story project which works with recent immigrants and refugees to collect, preserve and share their experiences. Her book america for americans a history of xenophobia in the United States is the subject of tonight talk. Please welcome erika lee. [applause] hi, seattle. Im so glad to be a good im glad to be back here at town hall. I was last here in 2010 before it was renovated so im really happy to be back. And im very glad that we begin this evening with a land acknowledgment. I would like to repeat that land acknowledgment. As i will discuss later, xenophobia and settler colonialism are tightly interconnected. Native americans along with africanamericans were made into this countries first others, and the racism and discrimination that continues to impact native americans has also been a driving force in xenophobia. So im glad that we started the evening that way. I am going to begin by reading from the book, and going to take us back, its wintertime here, its even worse in minneapolis but im going to take us back to a gorgeous summer day in july and im in new jersey. Its a beautiful midsummer day in jersey city, new jersey. And im on a boat heading to the statue of liberty and Ellis Island National museum of immigration. The mood is cheerful. A father explains to his children had their great, great grandfather came to the United States a century ago from austria. An africanamerican family records of video. Everyone excited to see the statue of liberty . The mother asks. The kids jump up and down and yelled yes. Im trying to share in this patriotic celebration of ellis island, a place that serves as a symbol of americas welcome to immigrants here but i keep thinking about another message i heard that day, the 2016 Republican National convention has just ended and that gop platform put forward by donald trump was one of pure xenophobia. Ever since launching his president ial campaign, trump has pledged to beef up border security, and muslim immigrants, the port 11 million undocumented People Living in the United States, and build a massive wall along the countries southern border with mexico. Not that he was the official republican president ial nominee, his extreme views were being repeated by a growing number of voters and politicians, ripping on the conventions opening scene, make america safe again, speaker after speaker painted a terrifying portrait of america under seized by immigrant criminals, terrorists and gang members. Most of the statements made by trump and other Convention Speakers were either patently false or grossly misleading. But none of the seem to matter. The crowd inside the quicken loans arena was crazy for trumps message. During his 75 minute speech in which she identified immigration as one of the greatest threats to the United States and promised to restore americas immigration security, he was repeatedly interrupted by cheers, applause and chance of bill the wall. I cant forget these angry tones and raised this as i ride the ellis island and walked through the museum exhibits. There we learn about earlier chapters in the antiimmigrant history, but were meant to understand them as just that, history that is over and done with. By the time visitors get to the museum gift shop, we are encouraged to banish this ugly pass from our minds and celebrate our immigrant roots instead. In true American Fashion we do this by buying something. There are team italy and team poland tshirt. There are no team china tshirts by the way. There are snow globes of the statue of liberty and of the Leaning Tower of pisa. In the ellis islands cafe, however, they take a different inspiration offering menu items like the all american angus cheeseburger, and the freedom burger. I was trying to figure what the difference is between the the freedom burger comes with two patties and angus berg with just one. If you really love your freedom you must also love your beef. Between the gift shop i ordered that vegan quinoa salad so clearly not american. Between the gift shop and the cafe it seems that we can both, we can buy both immigrant and all american identities that happily coexist. But a know it is not that simple. Im struggling to figure out how these two americas fit together. I didnt know it then but that visit to ellis island marked one of the moments i began to write this book. Another one was the morning after the 2016 president ial election. I was teaching a class in immigration history at the university of minnesota, and after a night of not so much sleeping, i threw out my lesson plans and i hunkered down with my students, many of whom are firstgeneration refugees and immigrants. They shared with me their fears of being deported, of being separated from their families, of being victims of hate crimes. They had many questions for me. One was, i think one that many of us were asking, how could this happen . How could voters elect and explicitly racist xenophobic president ial candidate who openly called mexicans criminals and rapists and he would call for complete and total shutdown of muslims to the United States . Another one was, how could this be happening in the United States, a socalled nation of immigrants . And in 2016 after the Civil Rights Movement, after two terms of our first africanamerican president . I had no answers for them. But i resolved myself to figure it out. I started writing this book. So like any good scholar, i went back to my office and went to the library. I started pulling them books on my shelf and making big piles and started reading and rereading them. There are common themes in the history longer fee of xenophobia in the United States. One is that historians have consistently explained that at the immigrant sentiment rises and falls with economic, political and social crises, with rapid demographic change, war. They say that when americans feel confident, we are welcoming, and when we are anxious, we are not. They are also treated xenophobia as an exception to americas immigrant tradition. We are told that at the immigrant campaigns have been unfortunate episodes promoted by a paranoid extremist and an otherwise welcoming nation. Theres a consensus that xenophobia peaked in the 1920s. This is is when we passed discriminatory National Origins quotas that close the door to immigration, to mostly southern and Eastern European immigrants, close it all the way to immigrants from asia. This lasted for 40 years. Yet with the Civil Rights Movement many scholars have explain xenophobia waned. When did has resurfaced its been a momentary blip or an aberration in americas inevitable march towards immigrant inclusion and racial equality. This is what i taught my own students. I have written many books on immigration. Ive made a point of unearthing these dark and violent chapters in our immigration history but ive always ended on a positive note. Ive always marked the progress that we have made. And i realized that this progress narrative that summary of the books that ive read, that i teach and that i have in turn talk to my students no longer held up. I knew that i needed to write a new history, so i started writing this book. So this is what i found. This idea that the United States is a nation of immigrants, we recognize this in these very wellknown illustrations of immigrants on ships looking towards the statue of liberty, looking towards a new beginning. And we know that most of our immigrant history focuses on how those immigrants did able to succeed, were welcome, were integrated. This idea that the United States is a nation of immigrants, a country that has welcomed immigrants remains true. In the last 200 years, more than than 80 Million People have been admitted into the country. The United States remains the World Largest immigrant receiving nation, even today. But the United States is also a nation of xenophobia, meaning that is has been ruled by an irrational fear and hatred of immigrants so that even as we have welcomed millions to our shores, weve also reported more immigrants, upwards of 55 million, since 1882, than any other country. We have been wary of almost every group of foreigners who has come to the United States, from german immigrants in the 18th century, irish and chinese in the 19th, mexicans, japanese, italians in the 20th 20th, and muslims today. Across the centuries americans have argued that immigrants are threatening because they are poor, because the practice of different faith, because they bring crime and disease, because they take away jobs from deserving White Americans, because there are simply too many of them and that they dont assimilate. We have defined immigration not as a Natural Movement of people that has been happening since the beginning of humans history, that rather as a crisis, likening the movement of peoples to an invasion of Hostile Forces that requires a military like response. So this cartoon published in 1903, its title is the high tide of immigration and national menace. The danger here is the socalled riffraff immigration from southern and Eastern Europe. We can tell the illustrated talk about southern and Eastern Europeans because he helpfully labels on their hats things like mafia or anarchist or criminal. We also know that this illustrated is also referring to mexicans because the label there is outlaw. And theres helpfully a chinese figure in there in the sober nn as someone with a coolie hat. But these immigrants pose a threat to the United States as an unending wave or flood, and invasion double take over the United States, displaced its nativeborn and destroy american values, like liberty and its institutions. So the u. S. Has passed discriminatory Immigration Laws and detained, incarcerated and expelled immigrants. It has exploited and segregated the foreignborn allowing them to be in the United States but not fully welcomed as equal americans. So why and how did this come to be . One of the answers is that xenophobia is an american tradition. It dates back to our founding and has endured across the centuries. It is not an aberration. It does not rise and fall. It is deeply embedded in our society, our politics and our economy. It is actively promoted a special interest in pursuit of political power. Even as americans have recognized that the threats allegedly posed by immigrants were, in hindsight, unjustifi, they have allowed xenophobia to endure. It has changed and adapted with our times targeting one threat after another, succeeding to repetition and justified as a necessary defense of our nation. So lets go back to these roots, and to do that we start with one of our founding fathers. In 1755, Benjamin Franklin was writing many, many letters to his friends and colleagues, and in a series of them he warned that socalled swarthy immigrants were coming to the colonies, that they were the most ignorant stupid sort of their own nation. They herded together and was quote, soon so outnumber us that our language and even our government would become precarious. Why should pennsylvania, he asked, colony of aliens . German immigrants, he insisted, needed to be regulated. So through the fears of one of our founding fathers, america xenophobia became a tradition. Hes at the immigrant views by another great american, samuel morse, otherwise known as the inventor of the telegraph. He warned the catholic immigrants were an insidious invasion and an enemy to american democracy in 1841. New Technology Like his telegraph helped to spread anticatholic views across the country. This was not just simple prejudice. This led to violence and bloodshed, hitting a a peak in louisville, kentucky, on election day in 1855 when 500 members of the at the immigrant and at the catholic Political Party, a new Political Party known as the American Party, also known as the know nothings, tour through the city attacking foreigners. By nighttime the city skies glowed red with the flames of burning buildings and the city streets were stained with blood. From 22200 people, mostly irish irish and german catholic immigrants died and what is been remembered as bloody monday. Xenophobia in the mid19th century was not just about anticatholicism, a tradition that is is deeply rooted in the United States as racism, it was also about political power, this new Political Party i just mentioned, the america hardy, spearheaded a new Look Movement using xenophobia to secure votes, elect at the immigrant lawmakers and make at the immigrant policy. Its goal was to shift the balance of power, of political power in the United States. So this is another reason why xenophobia indoors. It is part of our american politics and part of our american democracy. The know Nothing Party argued in this cartoon from 1850 shows that dangers foreigners were unfit for u. S. Citizenship. That they were drunk criminals hurt you can see the stereotypes of irish and german cheer. Chair. Irish whiskey and german beer and that they were literally stealing the ballot box and rigging elections. This is where this idea of immigrants voting fraudulently comes from, deeply rooted in our political history. At its height the American Party reported 1 million members. Remember i started the talk about, talking about the importance of colonialism and xenophobia. The roots of this date back to this movement as well. This party, the American Party, started calling themselves natives, native americans. This was a strategy, a rhetorical strategy to not only distance themselves and distinguish themselves from the foreigners, it also to distinguish themselves and to rhetorically take away native roots or from real native americans. So this term, native america, also the other thing they did is they would use symbols of what they believe to be native American Culture and terms of native American Culture in their own organizing processes and labels. So this term, i would like us to think about this, the next time you hear this term use native american, i hope that you will remember both the xenophobic roots of that term as well as the ways in which it was used to continue the dispossession of native americans. The American Party was shortlived, but its local policies including the dismissal of i wish more state workers in massachusetts, calling on the federal government to extend the residency requirement of naturalization and five to 25 years, limiting Public Office to only usborn citizens, or the native americans, and forcing deportation in states like massachusetts helped to make xenophobia and enduring part of American Democratic politics. So the other part of using this label native american is not just to denigrate others but also to claim specific rights and privileges, for example, that only nativeborn citizens can hold Public Office. These early examples reveal the deep and early roots of americas xenophobic tradition in religious bigotry and in american politics. But another reason why xenophobia has endured, why it has become so central in the United States, is because it is a form of racism. This has function alongside slavery, seller colonialism, conquest, segregation and White Supremacy. Africanamericans and native americans remain as this Country First others and whenever we have debated immigration, the immigrant group in question has always been measured in relationship to africanamericans and native americans. So this is how it works. Xenophobia defines certain populations as racial and religious others who are inferior or dangerous, or both here and then it demonizes them as groups, not as individuals but as a group based on these presumptions. Again, xenophobia is not just a matter of prejudice or bigotry. It has played a central role in americas changing definitions of race, of citizenship, of what it means to be an american. It inspires and justifies discriminati