President Trump’s intent could not be more explicit: He wants immigration policies that admit white people and shut the door to black and brown people. That is pure racism — and the Republican Party, which traces its heritage to the Abraham Lincoln era, must decide whether to go along.
Silly me. The GOP seems to have made its choice, judging by the weaselly response from most of the Republicans who were in the Oval Office on Thursday when Trump made vile and nakedly racist remarks.
That is how Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Eugene Robinson begins his column for Tuesday’s Washington Post, titled Republicans, do you want a race-based immigration system, too?
Robinson has in mind specific Republicans, notably those in the Oval when Trump made his obscene remarks — which by definition means Sen. Graham is not included in the opprobrium Robinsonheaps on the others.
In fact, Robions specifically notes what Graham told Sen. Tim Scott, his South Carolina colleague, and also quotes Graham’s remarks on what America is, before offering these words:
Other Republicans at the meeting cravenly claimed either deafness or memory loss. Perhaps they simply agree with Trump’s race-based approach to immigration.
There is more in this pointed column. Robinson goes through each of the others at the Oval meeting, what they have said or the silence that has been their response, before he writes
I mention them all because they deserve to be enshrined in a Hall of Shame.
Robinson goes through some history, including the Trumps, father Fred and son Donald, getting sued by Richard Nixon’s Justice Department for refusal to rent apartments to Blacks, and the bipartisan support upon which LBJ relied in order to pass his civil rights legislation.
Then Robinson offers four very direct sentences, the first two at the end of one paragraph, the others comprising the whole of the following paragraph:
That was then. This is now, when minorities overwhelmingly vote for Democratic candidates because they perceive the GOP as either indifferent or hostile.
There is nothing inherently racist about the free-market conservatism that Republicans cherish and advocate. But there is everything racist about the white ethnocentric theory of American identity that Trump champions with remarkable frankness.
Robinson goes into the specifics of the immigration policy that Trump favors, without by the way ever getting into the Muslim ban. You can read his terse but complete summary of what each leg of that policy means — summarized it is policies that diminish the number of people of color coming in. The remarks about Norwegians (whether deliberately intended to reference Hitler’s view of Nordic superiority or not) clearly shows Trump’s favoring of White people (although Norway, like the other Scandinavian countries, is itself increasingly diverse).
The penultimate paragraph has two sentences. I will offer each separately, then offer some commentary.
A century ago, there were nativists who railed against Irish, Italian and Eastern European immigration, claiming that unwashed hordes from poor countries were “mongrelizing” the nation.
Eastern Europeans were not Protestant Christians. Like the Irish, the Poles and many of the Czechs were Catholics. Those from Russia and Romania were Eastern Orthodox Christians. And frpm across all those nations came Jews.
“unwashed hordes” — I note that by 1890 we had the Committee of Ten trying to set the agenda for public schooling, which among other things was intended to “Americanize” the children of the immigrants in part by subjecting them to a Protestant Christianity view of things. After all, the first backlash against massive immigration was the Know Nothing movement in response to the large scale Irish immigration starting in the 1840s. These people were all “different.” The different foods — which would greatly expand our dietary possibilities — also meant to the noses of many of those already here that these people stank. The idea of “mongrelizing” has been a persistent accusation against those who were different, by the threat of social mixing and — horrors — by intermarriage between “Americans” and these others: it was the offspring of such unions who were clearly mongrels. Think of the offensive term for the child of a White and a Native American, “halfbreed.”
We now have a president who rejects American ideals of diversity and inclusion in favor of racial purity.
I am not sure that there was in in the founding of this country ideals of either diversity or inclusion. We have a history that is too much in opposition to that, for all of our time as an independent nation. It is true that we evolved over the several centuries to be more inclusive, to not insist on others being absorbed: here I think of the imagery those of us whose primary schooling was in the 50s of America as a “melting pot” — we could accept a little more “flavoring” provided the basic “taste” of what came out of the pot did not change too much.
We were also still under the various immigration restrictions, ranging from the Chinese Exclusion Act to the “Gentlemen’s Agreement” that restricted immigration from Japan to the imposition of immigration quotas established in the 1920s based on national origins of our population, something that greatly favored people from the British Isles, Germany, and countries of Western and Northern Europe. That approach was somewhat destroyed by our waiving the quotas to take in refugees from the failed 1956 Hungarian uprising against Soviet domination.
By the way, that influx from Hungary changed America in an important way because of a pair of brother who both went to Ivy League colleges, Pete to Cornell and Charlie to Princeton. The Gogolaks introduced soccer style kicking to American football.
Another thing that greatly changed our attitude, at least for a lot of the country, was our feeling that we had to take in people from Vietnam fleeing from the Communist takeover, just like we took Cuban refugees fleeing the Castro regime.
Those are just a few of the examples. People have come from so many other places. I once taught in a middle school in Arlington VA where at least one parent (if not both and the students themselves) had been born overseas in some 35 different nations. Within the school system, we had some 70 languages other than English spoken in the homes of our students.
For most Americans, we have found our lives enriched thereby. If nothing else, our choices for restaurants have certainly expanded greatly. Our music has been enriched. And many of those who have come have enriched many with their imagination, what they have contributed economically, and more.
We have clearly benefited from our having moved to greater diversity and inclusion. We would be diminished as a nation were we to regress.
Which leads to Robinson’s final paragraph, also of two sentences. And the second of those two will clearly sting:
Sens. Cotton and Perdue, Secretary Nielsen, Reps. McCarthy and Goodlatte, do you want a race-based immigration system, too? Please don’t pretend you didn’t hear the question.
Indeed.