Race, partisanship, and self-interest

If Bobby Jindal's mom was pregnant before she came from India to the United States, does that make him an "anchor baby" in the GOP's eyes?

A local bloggger and Democratic activist (Braisted) asked that question yesterday. I challenged it by opining that the immigration debate did not break cleanly along partisan lines. The blogger insisted that his take was accurate. Another blogger and Dem activist challenged echoed the first...

The GOP can throw all of the brown faces out there it wants. That doesn’t change the fact that there’s a huge racist faction within the Republican Party. Until they acknowledge it and deal with it, it won’t be going away.

This is bizarre.

If the GOP has a large racist faction that they want to appease why would they "throw a brown face out?" Put another way, couldn't "throwing Jindal's brown face out" be interpreted as trying to attract more minorities? Is the elevation of Michael Steele a signal that the Republican party is not dealing with "a huge racist faction?"

And what of immigration and race considerations?

"Every hour sees the black man elbowed out of employment by some newly arrived emigrant."

That's Frederick Douglass. What about Booker T. Washington?

"The continual stream of well-trained European laborers flowing into the West," warned educator Booker T. Washington in an 1882 speech, "leaves Negroes no foothold."

Marcus Garvey in 1920 speaking in favor of tighter immigration...

"We will be out of jobs, and we will be starving."

My suspicion is that the districts who voted most heavily for Obama are also the districts most in favor of immigration restrictions. But the more important point is that it is often not about race but economic self-interest.