Guest Blog Gig

I've been invited to guest blog at Rachel's Tavern for November. Whoo hoo! I'll be posting some stuff from my archives over there, as well as original racial analysis and commentary.

No other big news, except that the diamond dove chicks have moved out now. We'll visit them this weekend. Georgia is still dry, and ruled by idiots. Happy Halloween!

Thick as a Whale Omelette

Regular readers here know I've written a fair amount about the racist bullying I experienced as a child.

Well, I was just in a discussion over at American Family's about diversity and school choice. Some Asian parents discount diversity because academic excellence is such a high priority, so this idea of sacrifice and the importance of not being the only one or two of "your kind" was developed further in the comments. The commenter group was diverse, including a woman who discussed her experiences growing up as a blind person and how her identity issues compared to racial identity issues, a topic which I found quite interesting.

Then there were a couple bad apples. The most irritating one was a commenter called mccxxiii.

This comment puzzles me:

“by default, American society teaches Asian kids that they are weird, bad and freakish.”

Um... no. By default American society teaches Asian kids that they are super-smart and good at math and science. That has nothing to do with weird, bad and freakish. That’s, like, the polar opposite.

If you want to talk horrid stereotypes, the goth/theater kids are weird, the blacks and Latinos are bad (gangbanger, you know ...), and the closeted gay kids are freakish. Asian kids are the STARS... we *all* wanted to be them!!

Three thick-headed things:

1) Discounting what Asians (like me) have to say, because what do we know about being Asian.
2) Willful ignorance of the concept of "positive stereotype".
3) flat-out delusional statement about everyone wanting to be Asian.

Then in the next post mccxxiii strikes again.

I was the only kid in my class who stuttered, and kids of every race made fun of me. And it is most definitely *not* something I can just change or “make it go away”. (Should gay people just change and be straight, too? Huh?)

It will be with me for the whole of my life. It’s not the most pronounced or debilitating of any stutter in the world, but it’s enough to ensure that I spent my childhood being mocked and teased.

Talk all you want about white privilege, but I was just as sad and bewildered about that as *any* kid who was being made fun of about *anything*. Racism sucks, but it’s not the only thing in the world that sucks, and there’s no special martyr prize for anybody. We all have our crosses to bear. American society is set up to marginalize fat people, too. Should I be unpacking my backpack of skinniness while I’m at it?

Would I have wanted my parents to put me in a whole school full of stutterers so I wouldn’t feel different? I don’t know. Might have made me feel marginally better at the time, but it wouldn’t have helped me in the long run at adjusting to my difference. Certainly not enough benefit to warrant going to a “lesser” school academically.

Plus, if we had all stuttered we just would have found other things to make fun of people about. Kids are cruel. It’s a shame, but it is what it is.

Six more thick-headed things!

1) Oppression Olympics! Dripping with white resentment, they decide that racial minorities must have some special victimhood mojo. How can they get some? In this case, by stuttering.
2) Claiming that original post implies gay people can turn straight; exploiting gay people in the service of their dumbass argument
3) Lecturing everyone else about Oppression Olympics, when they were the one called the games and jumped the starting gun.
4) Condoning casual cruelty and bullying by children
5) Exploiting disabled people in the service of their dumbass argument
6) Ending their dumbass argument with an inane cliché.

Another thing that irritates me about the second post is that I also have a mild stuttering problem. It's never really slowed me down, and it goes away whenever I teach or force myself to get in front of a crowd. I also spent several years in a speech class in elementary school due to pronunciation issues. To this day, I'm suspicious of the reason why. I think it may have been just because I had an odd accent and pronounced my R's English-style instead of American-style. Anyway, I also got a fair amount of abuse for the way I talked.

But I'm not into measuring the amount of suffering, giving myself prizes for it and telling other people to shut up because they haven't suffered as much. All I want to do is talk about it, analyze it, and figure out how to keep it from happening to others. Going through what I did doesn't make me a better person. It just makes me more knowledgeable and more concerned about that particular topic.

I'm really not that knowledgeable about disability rights. However, I'm curious, and I read up on it when I can. One thing I've learned on a basic level is that there is a difference between illness and disability. I can instantly grasp that when someone has an identity as a deaf person, a blind person, an autistic person, a disabled person, that identity can become a really positive life resource and help build communities with other people. That's why I found the comment about blind identity so fascinating and thoughtful. On the other hand, comparing racial identity to an illness is just stupid and disrespectful.

Is stuttering a disability or an illness? It must depend on a lot of factors. I don't know the answer. Nevertheless, I wouldn't go to a stuttering forum or blog and say, "Wow, you think you people had it rough? Listen to what I went through, being Asian! I bet it'll make you feel like a bunch of pansies!"

Leaving the Nest Photos + A Chef Kid

There've been some exciting developments with our beautiful little parakeet-sized diamond doves.

They mated and laid two eggs shortly after moving in. The eggs were infertile and we threw them away after three weeks. They kept right on trying and got it right the second time. The eggs hatched at two weeks, Special D (dad) and Coco (mom) fed them diligently, and here are the chicks.

The family portrait. The chicks are perched on the edge of the nest, Coco is sitting high up in the grit dish, Special D is on a lower perch.

Another family portrait shot.

The two chicks. The one on the left was born larger and darker than the one on the right. The one on the right has his/her eyes closed because of the flash on the camera. It won't be possible to tell their sex until they're fully mature. Males have thicker orange eye rings than females.

You'd think this chick is bravely preparing to launch himself into his new independent life. In fact, he's a sneaky little sucker! He's already flown from the nest down to the ground, onto a perch, and back up to the nest again for his free regurgitated lunch. His parents are getting ready to have some new eggs, so there's only so long he can pull this "feed me, I'm still helpless!" trick.

We're giving the chicks away, and they're going to an outdoor enclosure to live with some ringneck doves. We can't keep them in the cage as they'd breed incestuously. The next time Special D and Coco lay eggs, we might use a form of birth control advised by a diamond dove website: replacing their eggs with plastic ones that they'll endlessly sit on. It sounds a bit cruel but I guess they don't understand the difference.

In other news, we went to an event today with some of the kids my mother and husband are tutoring. It was nice meeting the kids. I was helping to make the salad for the dinner, and a Congolese 5th-grader said he wanted to chop tomatoes. I'd heard this particular kid could be a hellraiser sometimes... but certainly not today.

I gave him some tips on chopping, because his chopping skills were frighteningly bad. Mine aren't that great, but I know to always cut away from my hand. I told him he wouldn't grow up to be a great chef if he cut off his fingers by accident! We talked about cooking for a while, and he was so enthusiastic about it. Of course he wanted to go to cooking school. He liked "Iron Chef" but his favorite show was "Hell's Kitchen". He wanted to know if Gordon Ramsay was really that mean in real life, or if it was all just for show, but I couldn't give him an answer on that one. He told me he cooked for himself a lot at home. I know the subtext for that statement could be very sad, because many of the kids in the program are parentified and take over the daily responsibilities that their parents, traumatized from fleeing war zones, can no longer deal with. Although we talked about famous chefs he clarified that his goal was very down-to-earth: chefs had good jobs and good pay, and that's why he wanted to be a chef.

I've never worked as a cook and probably won't in the future, but I do love cooking, and talking to a kid who loves cooking is a real treat.

Day in, day out, my feet are burning holes in the ground

I felt very low yesterday. Things are just not going along as they should. I got myself out of a bad mood yesterday by going to see a semi-crappy vampire movie. I'm reminding myself I have a pretty good life and a great family. I'm also a member of an eccentric blog community that includes fantastic people (some of you comment!) from whom I've learned a lot. So please keep the below laundry list of ills in perspective.

MAKING ME MAD AND BRINGING ME DOWN

-- my previous caseworker, the lying backstabber

-- my current caseworker, who never apologized for the previous one

-- The fact that we've made ONE HUNDRED INQUIRIES and have received nothing back on them, and a lot of that had to do with my previous caseworker putting inaccurate numbers in the homestudy

-- And when I ask for feedback on our corrected homestudy I can't really get anything. Maybe as new parents we're too inexperienced for the older children, and the younger children are too in demand for our homestudy to even make it to the top of the pile. If someone knows, they're not telling us. I believe we'd make a good family, a good home for so many different kinds of kids, but with every month this belief erodes.

-- That no one can tell me if my race is counting against me in the matching process, or if they do, I don't whether to believe them, because how many Asian adoptive parents in a black-dominated county in a white-dominated country are there…

-- When people tell me "there are Asian kids in the system" when there are not, or they're Alaskan Natives or Hawaiians, a TOTALLY DIFFERENT people and culture, and anyway, the Asian kids are probably "snapped up" by white parents, who for complex, depressing and racist reasons statistically prefer them over black kids.

-- Hearing parents talking about how it's perfectly OK to raise kids where they're the only minority of their type, surrounded by white kids, when that's exactly what happened to me between the ages of 6-14 and it was pretty much a nightmare hell on earth

-- How every discussion of about transracial adoption immediately turns into a discussion blaming, shaming or praising white parents, then sometimes gets turned around to discuss the actual children involved, but never makes it into a discussion of adoptive parents of color, which means I have to constantly fight against internalizing the idea that I either don't exist, am completely irrelevant, or can be mistaken for a white parent.

-- Ugly-ass geisha costumes on sale for Halloween. Dress your little girl like a yellowface ho!!

-- Hypocritical pro-adoption nativists who believe importing tons of children from other countries is great and should be subsidized while adults from those same countries who want to become Americans should be turned away at the border or their families ripped apart if they make it in and get caught.

-- People who say they are anti-adoption, then say they want to foster a teenager or support a pregnant mother in the foster care system, which is an incredible thing to help break the cycle of abuse and make sure the next generation keeps their babies, BUT they never seem to take that first tiny step of going down to the county office and signing up… maybe because it's so much easier, and cheaper, and more personally satisfying to just insult the characters and child-rearing practices of adoptive parents in online discussions.

-- The screwed-up foster care system in general, and specifically in the state of Louisiana

-- Hearing about foster parents getting insulted and persecuted by bad social workers, and not being able to complain and organize or unionize because, after all, if they're troublemakers they'll get their kids taken away and maybe put in a worse place

-- The Japanese government for pretending child welfare problems don't exist in Japan and sequestering abandoned and abused kids in institutions and denying them a chance at the college education that is even more crucial there than it is here

-- My dad for pretending adoption doesn't exist in Japan anymore, when he was my only chance to help me do the Japanese-heritage adoption I qualify for, and the only kind of international adoption I believed was right for me

-- Going through the photolistings day after day and reading the impersonal intimations of horrible pain and loss, feeling sad, feeling sorry for myself for feeling sad, then feeling weirdly guilty because however bad I feel reading and looking, it's nothing compared to LIVING it

-- Feeling inadequate when I emotionally involve myself in the subject, then feeling more depressed when I emotionally withdraw, because then the sense of forward progress and learning vanishes.

-- Thinking what I'm going through now might be much easier than going through what's to come.

-- Feeling like giving up, then feeling guilty for feeling like giving up.

Sigh... comments off. Next post I'll concentrate on something more positive.

Please let it rain today

This blog seems to be settling into a Weather->Plants->Racists!->Weather->Plants->Racists! cycle. Hopefully I will have some more adoption-related news soon.

For now, I am just watching the skies for rain. Our plants are begging for it. Our windfall water source -- the flooded basement next door -- was pumped out. It turns out the landlord really wasn't being negligent. What happened was some crackheads stole the copper piping from the basement without shutting off the water first. It has to be crackheads, since they tend to be the ones desperate and deranged enough to engage in such a high-effort, low-reward criminal activity. Despite all these problems the house has finally been rented, so I guess we'll meet our new neighbors as soon as the plumbing is fixed and they move in. I'll recommend they install an alarm system with an extra sensor on the crawlspace entry, like we already have.

I have tried to plant natives as much as possible, especially in the backyard. But even some of those are finicky. The leucothoe and mountain laurel are gasping. Our fall planting season is going to be ruined unless it rains, since I'm not going to bother planting a bunch of stuff that's just going to die off in the dry winter. We may have to write off our one camellia. Next year I'll concentrate on more drought-resistant stuff.

Japanophile Post Secret

I find the majority of Japanophiles/Wapanese to be obnoxious, personally insulting, ignorant as dirt and blatantly racist. You can see some of my "anti-geisha" posts for a mild example. There are much worse ones. Here's a forum response to the question, "Are you Wapanese?"

well, after viewing that, i'm still kinda saying yes. but i so totally understand the wigger comparison. but i don't try to be Japanese. i understand that i am white (french, british, and lebanese, to be exact). i am just a big fan of the japanese culture. and kids at my school who are Japanese, Vietnamese, Korean, or any other Asian ethnicity, they dont' really embrace their culture. and i've never understood that. ever since i can remember, since i was like 4, i've been obsessed with Japanese culture. but i guess they're just like me...only opposite.

No, I am not like you, "only opposite". And that's really how they view Asian-Americans: pathetic failures who try to be white, and aren't even as good at being Asian as white people can be. If I had any sort of regard for their opinion, it would enrage me.

I also realize there is a certain pathos involved. I ran across a link to the "postcard" image below, which comes from a spin-off website of the "Post Secret" idea. It really makes me sorry for them. I'm not being sarcastic at all; I recognize their motivation and empathize. For them, Japan = escape, release, purification, metamorphosis, apotheosis.

I still don't want to have anything to do with those people. They really creep me out.

Weekend Update

Not much going on right now, folks. I was out on a business trip all last week and I'm just catching up on my regular blogs.

Today we spent all day watering plants, mulching and planting pansies. Our plants are desperate. The state of Georgia is going through a horrible drought right now, and you're not supposed to do ANY outdoor watering in our county. However, it turns out that the empty house next door has a flooded basement, so we've been scooping out their dirty but not-too-smelly water and using it to water our plants. The owner has got to fix the basement before the house can be rented, obviously, but he's being a cheap slumlord and not doing much of anything.

If the weather pattern keeps up, in about three months the city of Atlanta will be bone dry. We just won't have any water at all. This is the result of "stupid growth". I hope state politicians will finally feel a little motivation to address the issue once their toilets stop flushing.

Grill-out bragging

This is just a quick note to pat myself on the back, because I cooked a successful dinner tonight and ran our new charcoal grill very efficiently. I tried a few new things, and they all worked. Stats: All prep took place within three hours. The fresh ingredients for my dishes cost less than $40. There were 8 adults and 2 kids attending. I stuck to my diet, which still meant I was able to eat from 60% of all the dishes. Menu:

- grilled pork and red bell pepper kebabs
- grilled mild-peppery-rub chicken breasts
- very spicy ika poke (AKA Hawaiian-style squid salad) lightly grilled before tossing
- olive-oil-broiled butternut squash
- coconut rice with caramelized shallots
- marinated mushroom salad (not cooked by me)
- mango cream cake (not cooked by me)
- grilled marinated zucchini (not cooked by me)
- grilled corn on the cob
- potato salad (not cooked by me)

The temperature is perfect. We're still suffering from a drought, but it also means the mosquitos are scarce. This is an absolutely wonderful time to eat outside in Atlanta.

The Weird Hell of Honorary Whiteness

The great thing about talking about race on the internet is that people feel so much more free to express their true opinions. Of course, it's also this same thing that brings all kinds of horrifying words and ideas to the surface, and the reason why great sites like Rachel's Tavern have so many creepy trolls. It's a challenging subject, but ultimately very rewarding.

When I was young, dealing with racism threatened to dominate my life. How often have I talked about it since? Not very much. Only with a few family members and close friends... though not my father or mother. I haven't lived much around other Asian-Americans but I certainly haven't avoided them either. My best friend when I first went to an out-of-state school was Filipina. We didn't talk about it on any level other than the most superficial: "I had to deal with some stupid crap in school". "Yeah, me too." Part of it was getting the message pounded into me from all sides that it wasn't a subject anyone wanted to talk about. The rest of it was simply not wanting to appear weak or show any vulnerability.

Therefore, I'm glad I can discuss it here on my blog. I've wanted to do a continuation of my "Handling Racism as a Child" post for a while, because although I did a good job on that post, I need to take it further, relate it to the experience of others and explore some of the fallout.

I was motivated partly by a great, intensely introspective post I read at the Heart, Mind and Seoul about the author's experiences with "indirect" racism, and her thoughts on the phrase "just as good as white". The author lists many examples. Among the more indirect were jokes in her presence about black people. Some less indirect ones...

When I was in 8th grade, I was at a friend's birthday party. One girl named Julie was talking about a group of Chinese boys and ended her rant with "Freakin' chinks - what do they know?" A few people immediately looked at me, trying to gauge my reaction. Julie stammered a bit and finally said, "Ohmygosh, Paula. I didn't mean you, I mean you're not even Chinese are you? I hope you're not upset. I was totally NOT talking about you."

My experience was different. I didn't get the indirect stuff. When other kids ching-chonged and pulled their eyes, they were doing it right to my face.

At an early age, I never felt the ambiguity or nebulous fear that Paula describes in her piece. I just knew everyone was out to get me, because they were. There were some exceptions, but sometimes kids I trusted not to mess with me started hanging out with the kids who did, and then they changed.

I had the feeling from the very beginning that kids who were different, who were vulnerable like me, could be trusted more. Unfortunately it didn't work out that way. Getting abuse from black and Hispanic kids... well, I'll have to save that for another interesting but very depressing post.

When I started getting older, and especially when I went to college, it was almost like stepping into the light from a dark tunnel. Random racist abuse levels dropped from daily to yearly! Wow! I knew things could get better. I'd been going to a great summer school with a lot of international students, so I'd already had a glimpse. I just didn't know it would get better so fast.

By that time I was already pretty conscious about racial issues. I didn't talk about them much, but I read and studied what I could.

And this is really where Paula's post hit home for me, because it was also the point I realized people weren't treating me that much differently from other white people. Was that good, or bad? Both, really... it was definitely confusing. Like I said, I had a "people of color" consciousness from a very early age. I'd always felt like the social world was made up of white people, and everyone else, and I was in the everyone else. Definitely a different path than some of the more common alternatives: a) not understanding why I wasn't white from an early age b) transitioning from a culture where I grew up among the majority.

Had the world really changed, or was this new acceptance a dangerous mirage? How should I think of myself now? Where was I?

Here's a figurative description of what it felt like:

Being an "honorary white" is like not receiving a formal invitation to the party, but at the last minute, another invitee says you might as well tag along.

You show up at the party and stand in the doorway, leaning against the frame. You have a drink. You'll have a great time, you tell yourself.

You notice that in the center of the room, people are dancing and having a really good time. You think about getting up moving further inside, but that might draw too much attention to yourself. Maybe they'd figure out that you don't really belong.

People walk up and talk to you. Normal, normal, normal.

You notice there are some people outside the party who can't come in, and they're glaring at your back. It makes you nervous. Maybe you should give up on the party and go outside and talk to them instead. Some of them look like nice people. But it doesn't look like they want to talk to you. And if the people inside see you talking to the people outside, they might slam the door on you.

Then someone inside the party slams the door shut on you anyway, with no warning. Damn, that hurt. Your fingers got mashed. You're outside now. CHING CHONG!

Then someone opens the door again, and you resume leaning against the doorframe, nursing your bruised fingers. You mention that someone slammed the door on you, but no one wants to talk about it.

The party continues. You're sick of it by now. But you can't just walk away... it's your job/school/life.

It's a really extreme example of how I felt about the situation. I wasn't that passive, and not even that tormented and confused, because after a certain point I made myself stop analyzing it. I had a lot of things on my mind and being in this hyper-aware state about my racial identity didn't help. After some point you just have to decide what's right and wrong, live by that, and walk away from the rest. By walking away I absolutely don't mean abdicating responsibility for social change. But it's not my responsibility to define exactly who I am and exactly where I stand at any given moment, no matter how much I myself might feel the need for that level of certainty.

That's why I like talking about these extremely uncomfortable and painful subjects. Ultimately, I find they lead to increased resolve about the need for a better and more honest future.

My caseworker could be a lot worse

I have to stop browsing tonight, because I keep reading things that make me angry... like this.

Another piece of the puzzle falls into place

I've often wondered why there are not more Chinese-American adoptive parent bloggers. In fact, I asked a well-known China adoption blogger about this, and she gave me some answers and linked to a few other Chinese heritage bloggers.

I'd like to establish that not all Chinese-American parents qualify to get expedited, as the rules are quite restrictive. Also, expediting doesn't sound terribly dramatic. If a non-expedited parent waits two years, maybe an expedited parent waits one year, or a year and a half.

This is just to give you some background on a very disturbing thing I stumbled on tonight. It's on the front page blog of a very large China adoption forum. It's sick, sad and racist... not the post itself, but the fact someone felt it was necessary to include the note at the end of paragraph.

http://chinaadopttalk.com/2007/10/03/notes-from-this-batch-2/
[...]
One thing to note, there seemed to be a bigger batch of expedite referrals this month than we’ve seen in a while. I’m guessing that there were between 30 and 50 expedited families referred in this batch. Still a very small batch, but at least maybe it’s not almost a tie with the smallest batch ever (yeah yeah, I know, in recent history, not ever). And, as a side note - I saw a lot of questions about expedites, so I’ll answer now that if one prospective parent was born in China (or if both parents of a prospective parent were born in China, and you can prove that, which often is not possible) then the CCAA expedites that family’s file. You usually don’t see any blogs listed of people who are expedited because oftentimes the adoption community says mean things to them. So please let these families bask in the joy of their new referrals without saying anything nasty to them in the comments. They followed the rules and didn’t do anything shady and I am happy for them.

So it's a preemptive defense against those out there -- and apparently they are somewhat numerous -- who are mad because Chinese-Americans are getting Chinese babies faster than they are.

It makes me so glad I am not a part of that community. Ugh! I feel like I need to take a shower now.

Great Immigration Proposal: Transnational Unions

Not much going on right now on the personal or adoption front. I'm on Day 4 of the South Beach diet, though. I have to say, the name always put me off. Having lived in Miami slightly before South Beach got all glammed up, I've associated "South Beach" with good coffee and cheap, fatty Cuban sandwiches. After looking into it, I really like the healthy eating principles, and it seems very balanced. I can have miso soup with tofu for breakfast! Cutting out rice has been really tough, but I'll get to add it back in small amounts later on. I'm just looking to lose the bit of weight I put on after quitting smoking two years ago.

I read this short article about immigration a week ago, and it's been on my mind recently so I'd like to share it. The interim proposal for immigration is fantastic and it's very much along the lines of what I've been vaguely thinking ought to be done.

Ultimately, I'm an open borders radical. If a US company is allowed, and actually required, to make denim jeans in a factory in Mexico, where they pay workers less, why aren't those same workers allowed to move to the US and do a similar job for more money? The border is a joke... for corporations. For human beings it's very real and even deadly. If the corporation is allowed to travel to where the labor is cheaper, the labor chould be allowed to travel to where the corporations pay more. I also believe in eliminating all the legal indentured servitude visas... the H1-Bs and H2-As.

Unfortunately most Americans aren't prepared to accept this concept. We have to get to a more just system slowly, and by many steps. Here's one great step! It's called transnational unions. I'm thinking about buying the book referred to in the article.

NY Times
September 30, 2007
Worker Solidarity Doesn’t Have to Stop at the Rio Grande
By LAWRENCE DOWNES

Comprehensive immigration reform was supposed to overcome the debate’s dead-end disagreements — It’s amnesty! No, it’s not! — by tackling multiple problems at once. It failed, miserably, twice in two years. Congress tiptoed back to the battlefield this month with a modest attempt to legalize some immigrant children who go to college or serve in the military. That failed too. Federal agents, meanwhile, have been feverishly raiding immigrants’ homes, taking parents away in the dead of night. The illegal population has not left the country yet, but it is terrified.

And yet for all that, the country is still no closer to figuring out how to handle the stream of workers over its borders, or how to be a global fortress when it is already a global magnet. What we need is a better debate.

Jennifer Gordon, a professor at Fordham Law School who won a MacArthur award for her work with immigrant laborers, is offering one. In a recent article she presents a compelling way out of one of immigration’s trickiest riddles: how to manage the immigrant flow in a way that is realistic, workable and fair to both newcomers and to native-born Americans.

Sealing them all out is impossible, throwing the border open unthinkable. Creating a permanent underclass of guest workers has a long, nasty history.

The challenge is to build institutions that conform to reality but lessen its ill effects. “We can’t revert to the fantasy that we can just turn the tap off,” Professor Gordon said. “We have to engage with the question, not abdicate the debate to restrictionists on the one hand and a corporate-designed guest worker program on the other.”

In “Transnational Labor Citizenship,” published last spring in the Southern California Law Review, Professor Gordon offers a new way to structure labor migration.

Her proposal would link the right to immigrate not to a job offer from an employer but to membership in a cross-border worker organization — a kind of transnational union. Migrants could work here legally, but only after agreeing not to undercut other workers by accepting substandard pay or job conditions. The organizations would enforce the agreement and protect members’ rights here and in their home countries.

The goal, she says, is “to bring up the bottom, not by shutting immigrants out, but by organizing them before they come.” Workers who follow the rules would become “transnational labor citizens” — supporting their families and the American economy while offering a powerful check on under-the-table exploitation.

Professor Gordon readily acknowledges the implausibility of winning that One Big Union on a continental scale. But persuasive precedents for her approach exist. The Farm Labor Organizing Committee, an agricultural workers’ union, signed a contract in 2004 to protect thousands of Mexican guest workers in North Carolina. In 2005, it opened an office in Monterrey, Mexico, to further its organizing efforts and defend its members from abusive recruiters there.

Last year, the United Farm Workers and Global Horizons, one of the largest suppliers of agricultural guest workers, signed the first nationwide contract covering immigrants. It provides employer-paid medical care, a seniority system and a grievance procedure to ensure that employers comply with the law.

Doubters will insist that it is crazy to expect immigrants to risk their meager paychecks to defend their rights and abstract notions of worker solidarity.

But they have already shown that they will. Professor Gordon won her genius grant after creating the Workplace Project, an organization of Latino immigrants on Long Island that uses its members’ collective power to regain withheld or stolen wages. Worker centers like it around the country are providing a surge of energy and optimism to the labor movement. Latino day laborers, organizing themselves at hiring corners around the country, are putting a floor on wages and thwarting abusive employers.

That’s why John Sweeney, president of the A.F.L.-C.I.O., went to the annual convention of the National Day Laborers Organizing Network in Silver Spring, Md., in August and lauded their shared struggle.

The heart of Professor Gordon’s proposal is the insight that we can enlist immigrants themselves in upholding the lawfulness and high standards we hold dear. An immigrant worker who is unafraid is better than one who is vulnerable and easily abused.

As she sees it, politicians who so bitterly oppose day-laborer hiring sites and other attempts to regularize the underground economy are unwittingly enabling the exploitation and lawlessness they profess to oppose. The “transnational labor citizens” Professor Gordon envisions, on the other hand, would uphold American working standards as they assert and defend their own.