It seems like a lifetime ago that we had a competent, scandal-free, empathetic president. We had two terms with President Obama, who maintained his dignity and grace even when the Republican leadership did everything to undermine him. If it was not clear before, it should be now: racism played a large role in the Republican treatment of President Obama, with the final indignity being a denied Supreme Court appointment.
Russian interference into our election process stirred up racism and hatred to levels I have not seen in my lifetime. Granted, as a people, we tend to look back at the past with rose colored glasses. I know I often look back on my time in the service as being devoid of racism because we were all “green.” I also know that is not a realistic portrayal of military service in the ‘80s; Racism existed and was common especially with postings in the American South.
Racism has always been a part of the American experience going back to the beginning of our nation. We have often failed at meeting the promise of “All men are created equal.” For most of American history that has meant, “All white men who own property and have a certain level of income are created equal.”
Donald J. Trump is the epitome of “All white men who own property and have a certain level of income are created equal.” If there were truly justice in the world, he would be a drunken hooch hound sitting at the end of the bar in a darkened tavern boasting of all his great deeds and female conquests during his glory days of high school to anyone who would listen—but we do not live in a just world.
We live in a world where a narcissistic grifter and his crime family were able to con just enough people in this country using dog whistles, outright racism, and a brand of populism that attracted the lowest common denominator of the American people—our friends and neighbors, the people we thought we knew. Hillary Clinton was right when she stated:
[D]on’t get complacent, don’t see the latest outrageous, offensive, inappropriate comment and think well he’s done this time. We are living in a volatile political environment. You know, to just be grossly generalistic, you could put half of Trump’s supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables. Right?
We have one side who has used George Orwell’s novel 1984 as a road map for their foray into power. Never-ending wars, newspeak, and the constant lies that leave us permanently outraged.
“Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past.” — George Orwell, 1984
We see, and hear it with the words of Acting Citizenship and Immigration Services Director Ken Cuccinelli:
"'Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet and who will not become a public charge."
Changing the words to Emma Lazarus’ poem, “The New Colossus,” he’s changing the very meaning of the promise this nation has always represented to the rest of the world:
...“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
The promise, while our nation has never truly lived up to it, has always been that we are all created equal, and that we will take the people in that no one else wants. When my great grandparents arrived at Ellis Island, they came with nothing. Most of our ancestors came here with no more than the clothes on their backs, and in many cases, less than that. Immigrants to our nation have always been treated poorly. Doing the jobs that no one else would do, often residing in squalid living conditions. That has not changed today.
In a recent ICE raid in Mississippi, 680 undocumented immigrants were arrested.
U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents swept through seven work sites in six cities across Mississippi on Wednesday, arresting approximately 680 people the agency said were undocumented immigrants in what officials said is the largest single-state workplace enforcement action in U.S. history.
The raids targeted agricultural processing plants, part of a year-long investigation into illegal employment of immigrants in the state, officials said. They did not say how many individuals they were targeting in the operations, nor what proportion of those taken into custody were what ICE calls “collateral” arrests — those who were swept up along with those ICE was seeking.
ICE acting director Matthew Albence said at a news conference in Jackson, Miss., that some of those arrested will be prosecuted for crimes, others will be swiftly deported, and some will be released pending immigration court hearings.
Not a single hiring manager or company executive was arrested for hiring undocumented workers. It should also be noted, especially for the “They are taking our jobs crowd,” that only 100 applicants showed up at a job fair held almost immediately after the the raids.
The job hopefuls expressed skepticism that the poultry plants would be able to find enough workers to replace the jobs wiped out in the ICE raids. “There are 680 jobs that were lost, and there are not 680 people here,” said Hailey Brewer, 26.
It should also be noted that these jobs are brutal, hard, and low-paying.
On a muggy August morning, black, white and Latino job applicants filed in and out of the Win job center, a nondescript office building where workers can apply for jobs and unemployment benefits. Some people had never worked at a chicken plant, and others were looking to return to the industry, drawn by hourly wages ranging from $9.20 to $12, well above the minimum wage of $7.25.
The Washington Post article notes that the minimum wage in the United States is embarrassingly low—at $9.20 to $12 an hour—while above the minimum wage is still below the poverty line and is still an incredibly low wage for such dangerous work.
Work at a poultry plant can be messy and dangerous. Workers with past and current experience at meatpacking plants describe gruesome scenes from the “live hang” line, where chickens are slaughtered, of bird feces and blood splattering on their faces. Employees often have to work in frigid rooms, and mistakes with the slicing equipment can be fatal.
One would need $12.37 an hour for a family of four to meet the poverty line, and that is assuming no unpaid time off for 52 weeks. In Mississippi, where these raids took place, you would need $14.43 an hour to rent a two bedroom home for your family of four. Is it any wonder why people are not pounding at the gates to get one of these jobs? Is it any wonder why plants like this prey on undocumented immigrants?
Executives and managers have little to fear. They likely know the documentation they run through E-Verify is falsified. But without fear of prosecution, they continue to hire undocumented workers who are the only ones who will work these low-paying, dangerous jobs. Then when the people who are being exploited by these companies get deported by ICE, these companies will just do the same thing all over again. Because it is cheaper to exploit immigrant labor than it is to improve plant conditions and pay a living wage that would attract a workforce that was comprised of American citizens.
Which brings us back to, “All white men who own property and have a certain level of income are created equal.” You can bet that we will never see the owners and managers of these workplaces be punished for hiring undocumented immigrants. But the people who came here for a better life for themselves and their children, who work hard every single day will have their families ripped apart. They will pay the price for the hubris of these rich white men who will exploit anyone they can to make a buck—then they will blame the very people they are exploiting as being the problem.