Update:
Remember folks, you don’t have to go to every argument you’re invited to, especially when the other guy has already made up his mind. (Thin Black Duke)
If I were teaching a class, this would be required reading.
What’s happening to undocumented immigrants is not new to Black Americans.
by Shalise Manza Young (posting at The Contrarian)
None of what’s happening with undocumented immigrants is new for Donald Trump.
None of what’s happening with undocumented immigrants is new to Black Americans.
A clip of Attorney General Pam Bondi talking about Kilmar Abrego García came up in my Instagram feed last week. Bondi’s white pinstriped suit was accessorized with a sparkling cross, a familiar sight among women in the increasingly fascistic MAGA set.
Apparently the bigger the cross, the bigger the fiction, because not one word that came from Bondi’s mouth was grounded in reality. Kind of like every appearance White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt, also a fan of oversized crosses, makes in front of cameras.
Bondi said, “hard stop, [Abrego García] should not be in our country.” That is patently untrue: He was granted legal status to remain here. Bondi: “MS13 is characterized, as it should be, as a foreign terrorist organization.” No evidence has been presented in court that shows Abrego García has ever been a member of MS-13, and, even if he were, merely being in a gang isn’t a crime.
And on and on she went. With every passing day, the story this administration spins about Abrego García gets more fictional as the administration works to convince the American people that it’s OK to snatch a man with no criminal record and the legal right to be in this country and send him to a foreign gulag with no due process.
He’s brown, so they don’t care. And they’re working hard to convince you not to care, too.
For centuries, similarly fantastical tales have been conjured about Black people to justify their subjugation, which is why this is all achingly familiar for the community and those with knowledge of American history.
The message, often buoyed by the media, has long been: They’re Black, so we don’t care, and neither should you.
If you can read the next paragraph without crying or flying into a rage, you are doing better than I am.
It’s nothing we don’t already know, but seeing those sentences lined up one after another, boom, boom, boom. Truth bombs raining down.