August 10, 2018
Our latest proof that God has a wicked sense of humor is evidenced by the fact that the start of storied Howard University’s welcome week for incoming freshmen coincides with the second “Unite the Right” rally in which emboldened Nazis and white supremacists will converge on Washington, D.C. Although the prospect of white people rallying behind the cause of the murder or forceful deportation of Blacks, other people of color and Jews may seem extreme, it is a point of view increasingly being normalized in every corner of our society.
Laura Ingraham lamented that the “America we know and love doesn’t exist anymore [because] massive demographic changes have been foisted upon the American people. And they’re changes that none of us ever voted for and most of us don’t like,” (Source: “Laura Ingraham: America as we know it doesn’t exist anymore due to ‘demographic changes,’” by Brett Samuels, TheHill.com, 8/9/18). Although Fox has long been the dog whistle network, this was a bullhorn. The layers of toxic and almost laughably wrong racism in that statement have been amply dissected by many commentators, who have rightly noted that most Americans do not agree with Ingraham’s statement..
That is cold comfort to the Black, Latinx and other people of color who must run the gantlet of emboldened racism on a daily basis. It is no remedy for the mounting list of cruelly targeted policies being enacted on a daily basis by a white supremacist administration.
Just this week, the Trump administration unveiled proposed rules that would make it harder for legal immigrants to obtain citizenship. The administration plans to bar any green card holder from obtaining citizenship if they have availed themselves or their family members of any government safety net program, including Obamacare. The proposal could impact more than 20 million legal immigrants and hit those making as much as 250% of the poverty level (Source: “Now the Trump administration wants to limit citizenship for legal immigrants,” by Julia Ainsley, NBCNews.com, 8/7/18).
We have already seen, though, that when it comes to deporting people of color, when this administration can’t change the law, they just violate it. International and U.S. law mandate the provision of asylum. Article 33 of the U.N. Convention on the Status of Refugees prohibits“refoulement,” – the practice of expelling people back to countries where “their life or freedom would be threatened on account of race, religion, nationality, membership of a particular social group or political opinion.” Despite this, CBP has been deporting would-be asylum seekers at such a clip that 400 children are at risk of not being reunited with their parents.
The most flagrant example of this country’s pride in its status as a human rights scofflaw came yesterday in a D.C. federal courtroom. During a hearing challenging the new exclusion of gang and domestic violence as bases for asylum, Judge Emmet Sullivan learned that the government was in the process of deporting the plaintiffs while the hearing was taking place! A justifiably angry Judge Sullivan ordered the government to “turn that plane around and bring those people back to the United States,” (Source: “Judge orders plane carrying deported mother and daughter to turn around,” by Mike James, USAToday.com, 8/10/18).
The fact is, that Fox’s escalating propaganda war, the Unite the Right rally and this administration’s ceaseless attacks on people of color are all of a piece. They are vicious efforts by mediocre and lazy nihilists to cling to power through a racialized hierarchy with whites at the top. We had better be prepared to show them that we are as committed to defending our democracy and our humanity as they are to destroying them.
#VOTE
#ReadMalcolmX
How does one access the comments?