I want to start by saying that I absolutely oppose ripping families apart and housing children in cages. The following post is not at all intended to justify, minimize, or excuse what has been happening on our southern border, but rather to give food for thought about the context, history, deeper implications, and further change that is needed. And if you’re someone who has exclaimed “I don’t recognize my country. This is not who we are!”, you need to pay attention too.
The “zero tolerance” policy did not come out of nowhere. The current state of affairs regarding how immigrants and asylum-seekers are being treated did not occur in a vacuum. The United States has a long and blood history of treating People of Color (POC) terribly, going all the way back to the first white explorers who fumbled their way across the sea and went on to rape, pillage, and intentionally inflict disease and death on indigenous peoples. Our colonialist history is rife with story after story of white people enslaving human beings because of the color of their skin and literally treating them even worse than animals. Our country’s foundation is built on the blood, sweat, tears, and backs of POC. And this is not the first time we’ve turned away refugees and immigrants fleeing bad situations. If you think it is, you should really do some research. Start with how we basically said “Screw you” to refugees fleeing the brutality of Hitler’s Nazi regime. We like to think of ourselves as the heroes in WW2, but the truth of the matter is that we took an isolationist approach that cost millions of innocent people their lives. When we did get involved, it was because the war was brought to our doorstep. And then, we committed some morally reprehensible and unnecessarily brutal acts in our pursuit of vengeance and “trying to bring an end to the war”.
Our country has long been involved in ripping apart families for the color of their skin and inflicting trauma on POC, including children. Our industrial prison system incarcerates POC for things they shouldn’t be incarcerated for, and benefits from their unpaid labor, while making little to no effort towards rehabilitation or restoration. We profit from their pain and incarceration. The school-to-prison pipeline is a very real thing and a big problem. Our treatment of Native American people is reprehensible. We justify and excuse and allow to go undealt with the rampant police brutality that regularly takes the lives of POC in what can accurately be described as state-sanctioned murder. And our treatment of immigrants from south of the USA has long been absolutely vile, under Presidents of both parties. President Obama earned the nickname “Deporter-in-Chief” for a reason. And when President Trump was campaigning leading up to the 2016 election, he told us exactly how poorly he thought of immigrants and that he wanted to treat them badly and wanted to further strip them of their humanity. But we, white USAmericans, didn’t listen. We have long been not listening to the POC trying to tell us how bad matters have been. We have ignored and shouted down and blown off the POC trying to tell us how much we needed immigration reform. We have refused to truly and fully acknowledge the fullness of our racist white-supremacist history and the amount of systemic racism that still exists.
What is happening right now is vile, and a violation of human decency, human rights, and US and international law. But it didn’t just suddenly pop up out of nowhere. And it’s not something that just one party allowed to happen. If we (white people) took a good hard look at ourselves, we’d find that in some way, all of us have held at least some responsibility and culpability in letting matters get to where they are, whether that’s be our actions or our inactions. Voting for politicians who enact and don’t fight against ingumane laws. Not teaching our children better. Not calling out racism and xenophobia when we see it. Not working to hold our elected officials accountable. Not listening to the POC trying to tell us the truth about our history. Not acknowledging our history.
We have to start working for real change, but it needs to go much deeper than just pushing back against this one policy. And it has to start with taking a hard look at our own hearts and habits, with seeing where our own shortcomings lie. Change has to come from within to be true real lasting change. We have to acknowledge the racism that has made this possible, and we have to start working to uplift the POC doing the hard work here. We need to rip out the roots of anti-blackness that this country is built on. We need to examine the systems of oppression that have stolen so much from Native Americans. We need to take a hard look at the American Exceptionalism and colonialist underpinnings of our foreign policy. We must acknowledge the humanity of those we have tried for so long to dehumanize, and stop hiding behind the nonsensical idea that “Well, if they’d just follow our laws…” For one, something being law doesn’t make it right, moral, or ethical. And for another, we still kill and traumatize POC who follow the law, so that’s straight BS.
What is happening on our southern border isn’t ok, but it didn’t just come out of nowhere, it didn’t occur in a vacuum. We have allowed this to happen. It’s well past time to put a stop to it.
Me, Esther Dee. 