Rodolfo
Rodriguez, 92, is an American citizen who was brutally beaten on the 4th of
July in Los Angeles--first by a woman with a cement block, then by four men who
joined in the attack. The woman falsely claimed Rodriguez tried to “touch” her
toddler. As she beat him, she demanded that he go back to his own country.
Mia Irizarry, an
American citizen who had purchased a permit to rent a picnic area in a Chicago
park to celebrate her birthday, was verbally harassed for wearing a Puerto
Rican flag shirt. The man who berated
her was yelling “you should not be wearing that in the United States of
America”. Of course, Puerto Rico is a
territory of the U.S., and its residents are citizens--though based on the
pathetic response to the devastation caused by Hurricane Maria, one would never
guess that to be the case.
Srinivas
Kuchibhotla was murdered in Olathe, Kansas last year. The gunman also wounded a co-worker of
Kuchibhotla’s, and a man who had come to their aid. Kuchubhotla was a legal Indian immigrant
working for the tech firm Garmin. His
killer repeatedly yelled “get out of my country” before opening fire.
The list of similar
incidents is voluminous, and is growing daily.
The common denominator? Donald J.
Trump (and the Republicans who enable him).
Hate crimes spiked following his election; attacks against Muslim, South
Asian, Sikh, Hindu, and Middle Eastern communities alone were up by 45% in
2017.
Donald Trump is
recognized world-wide as a paranoid narcissist.
He ought to be accorded similar recognition for his well-known history
of racism. Decades ago, Trump’s real
estate company sought to avoid renting apartments to African-Americans, and in
reference to black employees at his casinos, he noted that “laziness is a trait
in blacks”.
His recent
history continues to be equally vile. He
launched his 2016 presidential campaign with a speech disparaging Mexican
immigrants as criminals and rapists. In
2017 he said 15,000 immigrants from Haiti “all have AIDS”, and that 40,000
Nigerians would never “go back to their huts” in Africa after seeing the United
States. He often refers to prominent
African-Americans as “unpatriotic, ungrateful, and disrespectful”. He has labeled Puerto Ricans who criticized
his Administration’s embarrassing response to Hurricane Maria as “politically
motivated ingrates”. He has stood with
white supremacists (“some are very fine people”), and has shown that he
believes one’s immigration status determines their humanity (“these are not
people, these are animals”). Mr. Trump
has taken the low road at every turn, from embracing Infowars to enabling
QAnon. As founder and chief purveyor of
“fake news” (“Obama is not a citizen”) he’s been driving a wedge between Americans
and reality for years now, and his xenophobic vision of America is inciting
racist violence.
It may be
possible, with time and considerable effort, to undo the damage his disastrous policies and judicial choices will have inflicted on the country, but the
real legacy Donald Trump will leave behind is another matter. He chose, with malice and forethought, to let
loose the genie of hatred, racial division, and violence. The question before us is if that genie can
ever be contained?
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