Not "A Nation of Immigrants"

"What do the Iroquois or Navajo think of the Statue of Liberty? With characteristic grit and brio, Dunbar-Ortiz demonstrates how profoundly the settler colonial history of the United States and the ideology of 'white nativism' have shaped both immigration policy and immigrant identity." -Mike Davis, author of Prisoners of the American Dream

Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has produced a remarkable, engrossing, and readable reexamination of US history. She unites an analysis of the construction of ‘race’ and racism, with the construction of settler colonialism, demonstrating both the historical inaccuracy as well as the strategic blind spot created by thinking of the USA as a ‘nation of immigrants.’ But she does more. Dunbar-Ortiz links the construction of the US as a racial settler state with the growth of US imperialism, decisively demonstrating that global expansion was not accidental nor a matter of policy alone, but the direct outcome of the DNA of the racial settler state. -Bill Fletcher Jr., trade unionist and author of “They're Bankrupting Us!” And Twenty Other Myths About Unions

Not ‘a Nation of Immigrants’ challenges to the core one of the most dominant narratives about the United States, as a country founded by and welcoming for immigrants. Dunbar-Ortiz’s captivating and accessible historical account forces a reckoning with the various layers of the US imperialist project, from territorial control to economic and political influence at the expense of Black populations, migrants, and Indigenous peoples. This myth-shattering book addresses one of the most pressing challenges of our time by demonstrating the implications of White supremacy across time, across groups and spaces, and the connections between them. If there is hope for transformation, it is through the careful, systematic work that this book exemplifies by examining the roots of racism and structural inequality, and bringing forward alternative narratives and movements. It is a must-read. -Alexandra Délano Alonso, author of México and Its Diaspora in the United States: Policies of Emigration Since 1848

Placing settler colonialism at the center, Dunbar-Ortiz untangles the meaning of immigration in a settler state based on the elimination of the Native population. The book traces a ‘self-indigenizing narrative’ by which white immigrants laid claim to the country, turning an aggressive white nationalism into the foundation of US identity. European immigrants became American, and became white, Dunbar-Ortiz shows, by adopting the country’s settler identity. In a tour de force that takes readers from the American Revolution to nineteenth-century New Mexico to contemporary Appalachia to Hamilton and Donald Trump, she shows how different groups of immigrants assimilated into a settler identity that perpetuates US racism and militarism. The book also makes clear that a superficial ‘multicultural’ approach to revising US history still fails to tackle the heart of the problem: colonialism. You will never look at US history the same way after reading Not ‘A Nation of Immigrants.’ -Aviva Chomsky, author of Undocumented: How Immigration Became Illegal