In the 2010s, many on the right embraced Martin Luther King Jr.’s plea that people be judged “not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” That phrase became a conservative defense against progressive arguments that race must be written into policy to fix statistical disparities. In policy, this translated into DEI programs; in media, into widespread critiques and caricatures of white people. In that environment, invoking colorblind individualism was a reasonable defense for people being judged as members of a group.
Fast-forward a few years and the shoe is on the other foot. After violent incidents or fraud by individuals from particular origin countries, leading voices on the right have rejected individualism and instead denounced whole national or ethnic groups. Stephen Miller dismissed the idea that migrants are merely individuals, arguing that “at scale, migrants and their descendants recreate the conditions, and terrors, of their broken homelands.” Trump, in response to reports of welfare fraud tied to Somali communities, condemned Somalis as a group and said he didn’t want them in America.
This is racial collectivism: judging people by ethnic, racial, or national groups rather than as individuals. It’s the same logic that drove restrictive immigration policies a century ago, when elites warned that southern and eastern Europeans were “beaten men from beaten races” whose presence would degrade American life. Historian John Higham labeled that attitude “racism.” Today the label has many meanings, but the core idea fits: an “-ism” that holds people should be judged by the collective accomplishments of their race or origin.
So what happened to MLK’s colorblind principle? The short answer: the right gained power. Individualism often functions like a defensive principle—people promote it when their side is under attack and abandon it when they’re ascendant. Many who championed individualism were doing so defensively; once MAGA got the upper hand, racial collectivism resurfaced as a central organizing idea.
MAGA’s overriding goal is immigration restriction. They fear that immigrants from poor, violent, or unstable countries will “make America more like those countries.” That belief is honest in speakers like Trump and Miller, and it shapes the new right-wing ideology. But it has a problem: most Americans support individualism and have relatively favorable or mixed views of immigrants. Polling shows pro-immigration sentiment rebounding after a dip, and many Americans—even across racial groups—supported recent limits on racial preferences in admissions and profess broad support for equal opportunity.
The empirical record undercuts the racial-collectivist claim that immigrants recreate their homelands in America. The U.S. immigration system is highly selective; selection explains much of the different educational attainment between immigrant groups. Indian immigrants illustrate this: India’s per capita GDP remains lower than some Latin American countries, yet Indian Americans have the highest median household income and educational attainment among ancestry groups in the U.S. Cities with large Indian populations, such as Fremont, California, are often wealthy, safe, and have excellent schools.
Institutions matter too. El Paso is overwhelmingly Mexican by heritage, yet it looks nothing like Juárez across the border; El Paso’s homicide rate is low and it benefits from American economic opportunities, culture, and institutions. Even less-selective immigrant flows tend to converge toward American norms because of institutions and opportunity.
There are exceptions and carryovers—organized crime and gangs have migrated and adapted—but by and large immigrants do not “recreate” failed states inside the United States. Selectivity and institutions change outcomes dramatically.
To win, MAGA needs a narrative that justifies sweeping immigration restriction—one that convinces people to judge by group not individual. That requires finding or manufacturing a group to fear or hate. During the 2024 campaign season, for example, false stories about Haitian immigrants allegedly eating pets circulated before being revealed as hoaxes. More recently, revelations of fraud involving Somalis in Minnesota have offered a more potent wedge: Somalis are poorer on average, are often refugees (the least selectively positive immigration category), are visibly Muslim, and have built political influence in some localities. Those factors make them a better target for a narrative that frames them as a cultural or civic threat.
If MAGA convinces a critical mass of Americans to reject Somalis categorically, they achieve a conceptual victory. Once “Are the Somalis bad?” becomes a legitimate public question, the same logic can be applied to Afghans, Haitians, Jews, Indians, Chinese, Italians—any group. Even if individual groups later defend themselves successfully, the shift matters: people would have to defend membership in America as a group rather than as individuals. That undermines the liberal ideal that rights and privileges attach to persons, not collectives.
In the 20th century, liberals checked the growth of a “racial estate” society—Jim Crow and explicit race-based immigration law were opposed and largely dismantled by appeals to individualism. MLK’s articulation of that principle helped make America a more liberal, individual-rights–oriented country. What worries me is that progressive identity politics in the 2010s weakened that rhetorical advantage. Appeals to individualism carry less moral force when those making them have recently emphasized race-conscious policies and rhetoric that many perceived as devaluing colorblind norms.
This isn’t to blame progressives for right-wing racial collectivism—the right has long sought to organize politics around race and group identity. But adopting identity-based politics did reduce the rhetorical potency of liberalism’s core appeal: that people should be judged as individuals. That loss creates an opening for right-wing ideologies that prioritize group-based judgments and immigration restriction.
If the public again accepts that entire groups can be judged and barred on the basis of their origin, America shifts away from an individualist liberal order toward a society where group membership determines rights, influence, and belonging. That is the prize MAGA seeks, and the reason they keep looking for groups to vilify.
