OPINIONS/EDITORIALS Guest Columnists
By Bill Fletcher, Jr.
White America and the Hypocrisy of Trump’s Immigration Policy
There has been a strange response by many White conservatives to the separation of migrant children from their parents. Whether we are discussing undocumented migrants or those requesting asylum, there has been rightwing pushback to the larger chorus of condemnation of the Trump administration for its zero tolerance. These right-wingers claim that it is the parents who are to blame for the separation crisis. Let’s stop and think about this for
a moment. The parents of these children are attempting to escape criminal violence or destitution. Why would they leave their children behind and who would they leave them with? Perhaps that would be the case if one were discussing migrants from economically, politically and socially stable countries who would first send one relative ahead and then bring the family. But what if a woman is trying to escape domestic violence? What if a family is attempting to escape intimidation carried out by criminal gangs? What if one is seeking freedom from political persecution and/or repression? Under those conditions how
Guest Columnists
likely would you be to leave your children behind? I have been thinking about this a great deal in the context of the current, Trump-instigated immigration crisis. But it came to a head for me in reading of Trump’s remarks in Europe regarding immigration. He warned Europe that they were being overwhelmed and ruined by immigrants. My guess is that Trump was not talking about Polish immigrants moving to Britain. Rather, it has become clear, for Trump, “immigration” means immigration from the global South to Europe and the United States. I cannot imagine Trump ordering
the separation of undocumented Russian or Irish immigrants from their children, but if one looks at immigrants from Africa, Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean, as originating from so-called “shithole” countries— as Trump apparently does—none of this should come as a surprise. To blame migrant parents for the current Trump-instigated crisis and to suggest that the parents are wrong for bringing their children along is another display of the ignorance and a racial blind spot for much of White America; that ideology can only originate in the minds of people who know next to nothing about the conditions that migrants are fleeing and their near to-
tal amnesia concerning the experiences of other groups of migrants who arrived on these shores over the decades. What I find particularly unsettling is the way that a sizable minority of the U.S. has become quite comfortable with the idea that migrants from the global South are somehow unworthy of the human rights guarantees that the U.S. is supposed to uphold. I wonder how many of these same people would have questioned the rights of European immigrants in the aftermath of World War II who were crossing borders en masse to escape the results of that war. Oh, but I forgot. That was a deserving population. WI
By William Reed
Opportunities for Wealth Abound for Blacks Who Embrace Return to Africa
Former U.S. President Barack Obama recently traveled to his ancestral home, Kogelo Village, Kenya, where he visited his grandmother and attended the opening of a youth center launched by his half-sister, Dr. Auma Obama, who heads the Sauti Kuu Foundation. The first African-American president is leading Black families back to the continent where many of their ancestors lived generations
ago. Obama’s primary stop was in Johannesburg, South Africa where he gave the 2018 Nelson Mandela Annual Lecture. But in truth, Obama’s appearance was facilitated due to a partnership with the multi-billion dollar-endowed Motsepe Foundation. Obama’s benefactor, Dr. Patrice Motsepe, serves as the founder and chairman of African Rainbow Minerals and is one of Africa’s billionaires. Celebrity Net Worth reports that both Barack and Michelle Obama’s net worth is $40 million. Both are
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examples of up-and-coming contemporary Africans in the diaspora. The continental African Union [AU] consists of all 54 countries on the African continent. The diaspora is an AU ambassadorial post to “invite and encourage the full participation of the African diaspora as an important part of our continent, in the building of the African Union.” The African Diaspora consist of people who were enslaved and shipped to the Americas via the Atlantic slave trade between the 16th and 19th centuries, with the majority of this population in Brazil, the
United States and Haiti. The AU defines the African Diaspora as consisting of people of African origin living outside the continent, irrespective of their citizenship and nationality and who are willing to contribute to the development of the continent. Thirteen million Africans were shipped to the New World; 10.7 million survived the Middle Passage disembarking in North America, the Caribbean and South America. Large numbers of people in the diaspora live and work in high-income countries and are among
prosperous populations. Most diaspora members’ incomes are modest by the standards of rich nations and their savings seem meager in the world of development funding. However, collectively their resources add up to staggering amounts of capital. Worldwide, African diaspora members have accumulated an estimated $53 billion in savings and remittances. More telling, mounds of opportunity exist in the African diaspora.
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By Askia Muhammad
Donald J. Trump, Both the Town Bully and the Village Idiot
There is not a living human being, with even a scintilla of self-respect who watched President Donald J. Trump’s performance alongside Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, July 16 without cringing. Even Trump’s most loyal supporters had to be disappointed with his total capitulation before one of this country’s staunchest adversaries, though they loathe to admit it. When it came to the Russian
leader, the Donald revealed himself to be nothing more than a quisling, who colluded with this country’s enemies: enemies who disrupted the 2016 election, which put him in power. When it comes to everyone else, Trump’s like the town bully who slings his weight around intimidating all who would fall under his spell. Even as he is trying to make nice with the Kremlin, Trump is going all-bellicose, all-the-time against Iran, a much smaller country, a Muslim country, a Middle East regional power, with no loyal friends
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among the elites. He tried to cozy-up to North Korea, so he wouldn’t have two hostile adversaries to deal with at the same time, but the Koreans may have tried to snooker the guy while he battles his allies and threatens his foes at the same time. With China, Trump acts like he’s big and bad, not realizing that while this country was spending like mad on weapons, the Chinese have been investing in enriching their own people, and befriending African nations and buying huge swaths of land. With China and the U.S.’s
neighbors, Canada and Mexico, and the U.S. “allies” in the European Union, Trump is a terror, slapping tariffs right and left on the U.S. trading partners, and they are responding in kind, targeting products produced in Trump Country, U.S.A. for retaliatory tariffs of their own. In this country, Trump has cowed all the Republicans into submission, mouthing his unsavory lines. Far too many of them have succumbed to the Trump rhetoric, or maybe they just felt that way all along but were too timid to express
their true feelings until Trump made racially ugly language commonly heard, if not now permissible, in the public discourse. He pimps and preens about like a ballerina on stage, commanding the public’s attention at all times, for yet another outrageous statement even more ridiculous than his last. What’s worse? He appears to be getting away with it. Even though deep in Trumpland, retaliatory sanctions are hurting Trump’s most ardent folks with deep cuts in farm prices, sales
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JULY26 - AUGUST 1, 2018 23 THE WASHINGTON INFORMER