The (White) Child and the Dustin Inman Society: American Ethnonationalism, Masculine Protectionism, and Racialized Citizenship

Abstract

Abstract: Utilizing feminist discursive analysis, this article examines the public rhetoric and activism of the anti-immigrant group, the Dustin Inman Society (DIS), in order to analyze how and to what ends the DIS mobilizes the memory of a dead, White child in service of anti-immigrant animus. The article demonstrates that by positioning the rhetorical figure of the Child as an oracle of the national future, the DIS frames its anti-immigrant activism as nothing less than a struggle for the survival of the next generation of (White) Americans, of a sacred American-qua-White culture, and of the nation itself. This rhetorical, ideological, and affective framing of the White Child justifies and legitimizes a particular kind of ethnonationalist male protectionism against both the ‘illegal invasion’ of Latina/o immigrants and a feminized federal government. The DIS’s racist and gendered rhetoric simultaneously contributes to rising swells of White ethnonationalism and travels along preexisting channels of racism and White (masculine) supremacy that are carved deep into US society. This analysis reveals much about the complex interrelationships between White masculinity and ethnonationalism, xenophobia, and nativism, and about how these rhetorical framings aid in the (re)definition of American citizenship as racialized, able-bodied, genealogical, and above all, White.