I agree with a lot of what you and Pribnow have said, but I'm unsure about this one. I think there's a fine line between xenophobia and racism in some cases, and I'm more inclined to believe that one can be used to mask the other with policies from states like Arizona. The interesting part of this article to me was addressing white identity, or the lack thereof and touching upon the "I am not" aspects of it, as opposed to the affirmative identity. I wish it went more in that direction and less in the direction it ended up going.Latinos suffer more from xenophobia than from institutional racism, also (although some states seem hell bent on institutionalizing their xenophobic tendencies).
It's hard to disentangle the two in a many cases. But we used to do the same thing to the Irish and Italians, and now they're indistinguishable from other Europeans. My guess is that as Latin Americans become a bigger part of the population, and they start to assimilate more into main stream America, that the xenophobia will erode. At least, I hope so. I think there is historical precedent for such thing, anyway. Blacks occupy a unique place in race relations with whites, and I think it's degrading to the memory of slavery to lump all "people of color" together, similar to how it's degrading to the Holocaust when we call every bad leader "Hitler".I think there's a fine line between xenophobia and racism in some cases, and I'm more inclined to believe that one can be used to mask the other with policies from states like Arizona.