An Ode to My Non-Native Latinx Mother

• In Event: Pluralism and Intersectional Politics

Abstract

In his 2016 Presidential campaign, Former President Donald J. Trump called for anchor babies’ birthright citizenship to be revoked. While the term ‘anchor babies’ has no explicit ethnic marking, in practice it is used only to denote children born of Latinx mothers. The term is a dehumanization of U.S. born children as it separates them from their citizenship status and relegates them as tools for the browning of America. The browning of America is a dangerous rhetoric used to depict the arrival of Latinx immigrants as a threat of the status quo society- a White America. However, it is not simply an attack on children but on their mothers. Thus, I posit that anchor babies are indicative of a larger core issue: non-white mothers are by default seen as non-native mothers whose ability to reproduce non-white children is a threat to the white mother and child. It is through this prescribed notion that they are a threat that the non-native non-white mother’s ability to bring life and maintain life is revoked.
The non-native mother that I have posed can only come to be if there is a native-mother, the white mother. That is, the image of one is only possible when set up in opposition to the other. I apply a racialized lens to settler colonialism to argue that the creation of the native and non-native mother is at its core the racialization of the non-native mother to become the non-white non-native mother. The image of the non-native mother is rooted in the political power of the white mother which is embodied through white maternalism. The non-native mother is denied personhood through a set norm established by the protection of white children and mothers. To further examine the active role of white maternalism, I look towards Huber et al’s theorizing of racist nativism. They convincingly argue that policies that target black, indigenous, and people of color are rooted inthe larger goal of racist nativism which is to maintain the superiority of the white native over the non-white natives. I claim that white maternalism is a weaponized tool that exerts power through racist nativism that targets black women, indigenous women, and women of color.
With the establishmentof the non-white non-native mother, I focus on the non-native Latinx mothers who are the producers of the anchor babies discussed above. I further this link by examining how the “Latina threat” reinforces racist nativism in white maternalism. I apply this set theory to the non-native Latinx mother, whose alienness is reinforced through white maternalism. I suggest that the elimination of the reproduction of the undesired citizen, the anchor baby, works in conjunction with the denial of personhood of the carrier, non-native Latinx mother. I argue that the reproduction of an undesired fetus through the non-native Latinx mother is the catalyst that showcases the power of white maternalism to create and reinforce the denial of personhood of the non-native Latinx mother.
To further my theoretical analysis, I conduct a historical analysis of processes which the threatened non-white mothers’ abilities to sustain and maintain the life of themselves and their children. Indigenous and Black mothers were and still are the first mothers to be separated from their children. Indigenous women were forcefully removed from their children under the false guise of white maternalism that depicted them as unfit mothers. Black mothers were forced to reproduce life and watch as their children were sold off as as a commodity under slavery, thus their children such as themselves bore the same less than human status through slavery. By examining how each non-white mother and child has been targetted by white maternalism, I show that all are symptoms of the same disease.
My work aims to position white women, specifically white motherhood as a pillar of white supremacy that has reinforced the non-native status of women of color and consequently children of color.By focusing on motherhood as the epicenter for the creation of an acceptable and native citizen, I intent to place value on the systematic and historical elimination of Black mothers, Indigenous mothers, Asian mother, Latinx mother, and all Mothers of Color. This elimination continues today through sterilization practices, foster homes, social workers, public policies, welfare denials, and familial detention homes. The underlying thread of this work is the question of not who was desirable to reproduce and maintain life, but who was seen as human and, therefore, able to do so?

Author

• Geidy Soraida Mendez, University of California- Irvine