Christie Michelle Poitra: Sorry but settlers are immigrants too

Coulter’s beliefs about the history of the United States are steeped in a Manifest Destiny narrative. To Coulter, America came into existence because of the efforts and ingenuity of early settlers to discover an unoccupied territory and forge a government. Coulter defends this half-truth by stating that: “[she is] not living in Cherokee Nation. So [she is] not an immigrant to Cherokee Nation. [She is] living in America—which was created by settlers, not immigrants.” Her views on how America came to be purposefully ignore the long legacy of aboriginal land ownership. Moreover, she does not acknowledge that America was not unoccupied when it was “discovered” by settlers, or the atrocities that were committed against Native people that resulted in the displacement of these societies to the reservations that exist today.

The core of Coulter’s argument against immigration (which is highlighted in the interview transcript) is that there exists two classifications of immigrants, (1) the early settlers that predate the United States, and (2) everyone else. Coulter is not using the term Native American to claim a connection to a Native Nation, rather, she is using the label as a rhetorical tool to weave a semantic argument. Her bastardized definition of Native American enables her to craft an artificial (and arguably racist) hierarchy where her ancestry and individuals sharing a similar background as her are deemed “real Americans.” In essence, Coulter has given herself the right to define who belongs in this Country, and who does not. Following Coulter’s argument to its logical end, neither Native people or anyone who has immigrated in the last 100 years can fit into Coulter’s narrowed definition of a “real American.”