“43% of immigrants from “shithole” African countries have a bachelor’s degree or higher, compared to 33% of the overall American population.”
Republican marketing star Frank Luntz
You’re right to be outraged, but don’t be outraged about the words. Save your anger for the hate and the divisive nature of what the president says, not the profanity he uses.
“It’s clearly what he believes. You can be outraged. You can’t be surprised.
Democratic strategist David Axelrod
And here’s the kicker: right now, I want you to think of two people you know–friends, family, coworkers–who share the president’s philosophy, but don’t express it in such crude terms.
You might make excuses for those people, but that doesn’t change the fact that millions of Americans share the president’s feelings about immigration. That’s especially true of immigration of non-white people.
Two of the three women the president has married were immigrants, but their skin was pretty white so that must be okay. And the president’s mother was also an immigrant, but she was pretty white too. Friends, it’s clear to me that immigration doesn’t bother the president or those people you thought of. It’s non-white people moving here.
Look, you can believe that isolationism is good foreign policy. We probably won’t agree, but we can have that discussion. But it’s not your country, fellow white people.
White European settlers overran the people living here and stole the land. So unless you’re ready to tell me from which indigenous people all of your ancestors originated from, we can agree that your ancestors took the land and you really have no position to be screaming that others can’t move here. That’s still going on today so we are all complicit.
People in other countries don’t laugh at us or hate us for our freedom. They mock us because we don’t acknowledge our racism or the way that we treat most other people as inferior. That’s done in other countries too. We just don’t acknowledge it. In fact, we deny it.
But watch the videos from Charlottesville again. Those were our neighbors and families marching with swastikas and torches. The vision horrified any American who lived through World War II and the rest of the world where there are everyday reminders of that horror.
Are you really grateful that Martin Luther King shared his dream of children of all races playing together or do you just want another Monday off?