Border enforcement devolved onto private vigilantes who read national belonging as white character

Evidence

In the US, the Minutemen, a vigilante border patrol group fueled by Latin American anti-immigrant sentiment with tacit approval from the Bush administration, have been protesting recently under the slogan, “This is America, get off my property.” In this emphatic privatization, the Minutemen perfectly represent neoliberal state commitment, even as they explicitly resist neoliberalism’s more expansive global reach. The traditional state function of border enforcement is at least partially abrogated to a private, self-promoted vigilante group. The claim to America is staked as a national one, the belonging to which is implicitly characterological: one is taken to belong because one embodies the characteristics – the character – of presumptive Americans, their rugged individualism, racially coded as white. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1759

Categorization

• SEED: The Minutemen’s privatized border control and ‘characterological’ belonging is a concrete case for an essay on how threatened-privilege mobilization operates through private-citizen enforcement rather than the state.
• XREF: connects to: Border enforcement devolves to private groups claiming character-based national belonging. — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1759; Vigilante border groups embody the neoliberal model of privatized state functions — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race: Reflections on…, 1759

Broader Connections

• Border enforcement devolves to private groups claiming character-based national belonging. #corroborates (0.97) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1759
• Vigilante border groups embody the neoliberal model of privatized state functions #expands (0.82) — David Theo Goldberg, The Threat of Race, 1759