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<div class="header reader-header" style="display: block;"> <font
size="-2"><a class="domain reader-domain"
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/06/20/family-separation-immigration-history-slavery-mass-incarceration/">https://theintercept.com/2018/06/20/family-separation-immigration-history-slavery-mass-incarceration/</a></font>
<h1 class="reader-title">Separating Migrant Families Is
Barbaric. It’s Also What the U.S. Has Been Doing to People of
Color for Hundreds of Years.</h1>
<div class="credits reader-credits">Shaun King - June 20, 2018<br>
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<p><b><u>Like most of</u></b><b>
</b> you reading this, I am deeply appalled at what I
see happening right now in the United States —
immigrant children being snatched away from their
parents and sent to separate detention centers, often
locked in cages with strangers, with no real idea of
when they’ll ever be reunited with their families.
It’s an abomination.</p>
<p>But I often see two troubling responses to this
crisis that show just how aloof and asleep millions of
Americans are right now.</p>
<p>The first is a statement that goes something like
this: This is not the America I know and love. The
second is a question, rooted in the same ignorance,
that goes something like this: How could this ever
happen in the United States?</p>
<p>What’s happening right now in our country is, without
question, a human rights catastrophe. Yet every deeply
entrenched mechanism used in these policies and the
spirit fueling this catastrophe are as American as
Facebook and Disneyland.</p>
<p>Let me break it down. At least five troubling factors
are at play here. All five were fully and completely
present before this current crisis ever began. They
set the tone and created the culture in which
something so heinous could ever take place.</p>
<p>First, this has happened here before. In fact, it has
happened millions of times across the years in this
country. Africans forced into slavery in this country
were routinely separated from their children — not
only in being transported to the Americas, but then
repeatedly at the <a
href="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123608207">auction
block.</a> Not thousands, but millions — of mothers
and fathers, husbands and wives, parents and children,
brothers and sisters — were all forcefully separated
from each other. And this was no brief period of this
nation’s history, but a feature of the institution of
slavery that existed in the United States for nearly
250 years.</p>
<p>Not only were enslaved African children routinely
separated from their families, but so too were Native
Americans in this country. From the late 1800s all the
way until the 1970s, children were routinely taken
from Native American homes by force and sent to
barbaric “<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2018/05/31/barbaric-americas-cruel-history-of-separating-children-from-their-parents/?utm_term=.63bdf4f82d09">Indian
schools</a>,” where their hair was cut and their
names and culture stripped away. Many of them never
saw their families again.</p>
<p>What might be most shocking, though, is the way the
U.S. — today, in the present — separates so many
families whose stories go unremarked upon. I’m talking
about the crisis of mass incarceration in America, of
which the crackdown on immigrants is but one horrific
piece.</p>
<p>Right now, as you read this, <a
href="https://www.thenation.com/article/america-is-waking-up-to-the-injustice-of-cash-bail/">hundreds
of thousands</a> of adults and children,
disproportionately black and Latino, are in jails all
over this country – not because they’ve been convicted
of a crime, but because they cannot afford <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2018/06/09/paul-manafort-bail-inequality/">cash
bail</a>. Many of them will languish in jail not for
days or weeks, but for months and years without ever
being convicted of a crime. In fact, about <a
href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html">65
percent</a> of people in local jails in this country
on any given day have not been convicted of a crime.
They are in jail simply because they cannot afford
bail. They, too, are separated from their families.</p>
<p><b><u>You’d have a</u></b> hard time finding an
extended period of American history where children and
parents of color weren’t forcefully separated from one
another by the white power structure in this country.
It’s woefully and painfully normal. And it’s because
it’s so normal that it is so easy for it to happen
again and again in this country. This nation has
mastered separating parents and children. Pretending
otherwise is to offer a revisionist history.</p>
<p>It should come as no surprise, then, that so many on
the right — those who would bristle at acknowledging,
let alone apologizing for, this history — are
embracing a policy of forced family separation.</p>
<p>On Monday night, Fox News’s Laura Ingraham <a
href="https://twitter.com/ShaunKing/status/1009053138756784128">said</a>,
with a smug smile, that the immigrant children being
held in detention centers are “essentially in summer
camp.” This, in spite of the reality that the leading
doctors and medical groups across the country have
said that forcefully separating children from their
parents in detention centers causes “<a
href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/15/620254326/doctors-warn-about-dangers-of-child-separations">irreparable
harm</a>” to the children. This, in spite of the
gut-wrenching audio obtained by<a
href="https://www.propublica.org/article/children-separated-from-parents-border-patrol-cbp-trump-immigration-policy">
ProPublica</a> of detained children sobbing and
wailing for their parents while they are mocked by
guards.</p>
<p>Nearly <a
href="https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/politics/immigration-trump-approval/index.html">60
percent</a> of Republicans approve the practice of
separating immigrant children from their parents at
the border. And it’s not hard to understand why.</p>
<p>For years now, Donald Trump has dehumanized
border-crossing Latinos every chance he gets —
routinely calling them animals, murderers, and
rapists. He reduced entire nations of color to being
“shithole countries.” On Monday, he reiterated this, <a
href="http://time.com/5314957/family-separation-policy-trump-rhetoric/">saying</a> immigrants
were coming from “the most dangerous places in the
world.”</p>
<p>This essential step — of reducing immigrants to a
subhuman status — must not be overlooked. It happened
throughout the transatlantic slave trade. It happened
throughout the genocide of Native Americans. It
happened throughout the Holocaust. It happened
throughout the Rwandan genocide. It happens today with
victims of police brutality.</p>
<p>Whenever a people group suffers unspeakable horrors
and oppression, the people in power first reduce and
dehumanize them — making it such that the conscience
of the people in power is fully at ease during the
oppression. This is how Ingraham could compare the
detention centers to “summer camps”: She has convinced
herself that the United States is doing these subhuman
children a favor.</p>
<p>At the root of the current human rights crisis at
American borders is white supremacy and bigotry. Trump
does not have a problem with immigrants. His mother
was an immigrant from Scotland. His grandparents were
all immigrants. His first wife, Ivana, was an
immigrant from what is now the Czech Republic; Trump’s
children with her — Donald Jr., Ivanka, and Eric —
have an immigrant parent. Trump’s third wife, Melania,
is an immigrant from Slovenia. She just became a
citizen in 2006. His son with her, Barron, has an
immigrant parent. So no, Trump doesn’t hate
immigrants. But he does seem to hate immigrants of
color. And this distinction is essential.</p>
<p>Melania Trump’s parents are benefactors of what Trump
and the right call “chain migration.” They are in the
United States legally because of their relationship to
her. Trump and conservatives rail against this policy
— but his parents and grandparents and in-laws all
benefited from it. If the right wing hated immigrants,
Trump would probably be among the least-liked public
figures in the country. But many of those on the right
— like everyone here but Native Americans — are all
descendants of immigrants themselves. Their problem is
not with immigrants; it’s with immigrants of color, be
they from Mexico or the Americas or any of the nations
listed in Trump’s Muslim ban.</p>
<p>White supremacy and bigotry drive so many American
policies. Trump’s senior policy adviser Stephen Miller
has shown <a
href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/politics/king-stephen-miller-latest-liar-bigot-team-trump-article-1.2971639">bigoted
tendencies</a> since high school. And now he is said
to be the chief author of both the Muslim ban and <a
href="https://www.politico.com/story/2018/06/18/trump-aides-plan-fresh-immigration-crackdowns-before-midterms-652246">the
new policy</a> of separating immigrant children from
their parents. We are living in the age where hate
crimes are <a
href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-hatecrime-fbi/u-s-hate-crimes-rise-for-second-straight-year-fbi-idUSKBN1DD2BA">on
the rise</a> in the United States. White
supremacists are running for office in<a
href="https://www.nbcnews.com/nightly-news/video/white-nationalists-are-running-for-office-in-record-numbers-1245616707632">
record numbers</a>.<br>
</p>
<b><u>There are two</u></b> more essential factors are
at play in what we see happening at our border right
now. We need to talk about these things to really
understand what’s going on, to see how we got to this
point.
<p>The first is the reality that the United States is
the incarceration nation. No nation in the entire
world incarcerates more people than we do. We
routinely have somewhere around 2.3 million people in
jail and prison on any given day, and <a
href="https://www.prisonpolicy.org/reports/pie2018.html">at
least 10.6 million</a> are put into jails and
prisons every year. The United States has criminalized
poverty, forcing people into jail if they cannot
afford to pay the most basic fees, whether traffic
tickets, court fines, or cash bail. The United States
has criminalized drug addiction, sending millions of
people to jail and prison over the generations for
simple drug possession. This nation has criminalized
mental illness. Two million people with a mental
illness are <a
href="https://www.nami.org/Learn-More/Public-Policy/Jailing-People-with-Mental-Illness">jailed</a> in
this nation each year.</p>
<p>It was only a matter of time until people seeking
asylum at America’s borders were also criminalized and
warehoused. It’s what this nation does. Instead of
solving our most difficult problems, we increase
police forces, build more jails and prisons, including
tent cities if necessary, and arrest people —
especially people of color.</p>
<p>Lastly — and this is key — what we see happening
right now at America’s borders has everything to do
with profiteering and the privatization of America’s
jails and prisons. It’s a huge <a
href="https://theintercept.com/2016/11/28/private-prisons-were-thriving-even-before-trump-was-elected/">multibillion-dollar
industry</a>. Our nation has publicly traded
companies whose business it is to profit off of mass
incarceration — and there is a profit margin on
building and running emergency holding facilities and
tent cities like we see being formed right now to
detain immigrant children and families. Not only are
these places being staffed and secured, but the food,
the cleaning crews, and the supplies all have an
exorbitant cost.</p>
<p>The same conservatives who campaign on cutting costs
and reducing deficits then have no problem at all
spending multiple billions of dollars on mass
incarceration. Executives from the private prison
industry have seen their profits <a
href="https://www.brennancenter.org/blog/trump%E2%80%99s-first-year-has-been-private-prison-industry-best">explode</a> under
Trump and he has been<a
href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/with-business-booming-under-trump-private-prison-giant-gathers-at-presidents-resort/2017/10/25/b281d32c-adee-11e7-a908-a3470754bbb9_story.html?utm_term=.791ce2dcc122">
rewarded handsomely</a> with six-figure donations
from their executives. In this country, when you see
evil, you can almost always follow the money trail.</p>
<p>What’s happening right now is awful. Period. No ifs,
ands, or buts. It didn’t come out of nowhere, though.
It came right from the American playbook. This nation
has routinely mistreated and abused people of color
for hundreds of years — and has willfully separated
millions of families, sometimes permanently, for sport
and profit, on this soil. Speak out against it.
Organize against it. But just know that what you are
seeing has deep roots.</p>
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