Hate Talk, Hate Action
Terry H. Schwadron
Aug. 4, 2019
Among all the hatefulness that Donald Trump continues to spread in tweets, remarks and rallies this week about Baltimore and Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Md., a veteran black Congressional leader, perhaps the most upsetting is his apparent rationale — in an uncaring manner about the effects he is spreading.
Apparently, he was upset by Cummings’ questioning as chair of the House Oversight Committee over the conditions at the border detention centers, particularly affecting children separated from parents, as well as a recent Fox News report with photo coverage of vacant houses and trash in West Baltimore.
Can there any longer be a question of link between such comments and the increasing racial-tinged violence in our country, the most recent of which was a 21-year-old with a powerful rifle who shot indiscriminately at El Paso shoppers in a mall, killing 20 and wounding 26 — all apparently, say law enforcement official, because he seems to have been inflamed by a “Hispanic Invasion” into the United States. Where do you think he got that message?
It seems inevitable that hate talk from the White House will spur hate action among those who feel the most angry — in this case, seemingly white nationalists.
Thankfully, there has been a well-spring of retort to Trump’s racism in attacking the well-respected Cummings, more of a protest than was heard over his attacks on four women Congress members whom he also detests, in part for their criticisms of those same border facilities.
Trump somehow is using Cummings’ own “oversight” function to attack black-majority Baltimore as a symbol of all urban America, loosely trashing the city, its officials and Cummings for “stealing” billions of dollars in government aid. Along the way, he manages to praise himself as “the least racist person in the world” who single-handedly has brought about the lowest black unemployment rates in history (forgetting the eight years of rebuilding a crashed economy that had preceded him).
There is no news in the idea that portions of Baltimore or most large U.S. cities, areas often with large minority populations, suffer rats and trash — along with good restaurants, arts institutions, teaching hospitals and educational institutions. There is also no news in the fact that Trump is a racist, or that he is making hay with urban America as a distraction from his own issues.
Nevertheless, about the central questions that started all this — both on the border and in Baltimore — he is silent.
Apparently, in Trump World, there are no questions to be asked about harsh treatment for children in overcrowded detention centers by customs and border patrolmen who more than occasionally seem to be violating their own codes of conduct, from the internal charges being examined by their agency’s inspector general.
I know that this is about politics and not about seeking humane treatment, but my question is simple: If there is a problem a problem at the border detention centers, why not own them and do what you can to fix them? If there is a problem with conditions in urban America, why only find blame for city officials when it turns out that the federal policies that are supposed to help are being slashed?
It is Trump administration to cut millions from SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Aid) food stamp programs. It is Trump administration policy to cut support for public schools, or to fail to address infrastructure, or to cut monies for urban job training programs — all building-block government support that helps a West Baltimore grown out of its long-term problems.
It is Jared Kushner’s real estate company that has racked up a phenomenal amount of landlord violations for the same rats that Trump claims are “infesting” crime-ridden Baltimore.
On the border, we heard again this week that since Trump supposedly stopped the practice of separating children from migrant parents, there have been more than 900 children who have been separated, continuing the practice even in the face of a court order to halt the practice. In many cases, the administration is finding the tiniest excuse of a traffic ticket or the like to support a decision to detain an immigrant family, separating the children for detention in privately contracted centers where during the height of the influx this spring and summer, children were sleeping on the floor, ignored, denied health coverage, even toothbrushes.
The president turned the conditions entirely into a political mess, blaming Democrats for not giving him a free hand in stopping all asylum and other immigration attempts along the border. In fact, the Democrats allowed a substantial budget to be spent on the conditions of detention centers.
Indeed, the major progress that has occurred on the border has come about by an easing of overcrowding, both because of an increase in deportations, and by a decision by Mexico, under U.S. pressure, to agree to help stop migration from Central America into its land.
“The administration is still doing family separation under the guise that they are protecting children from their own parents even though the criminal history they are citing is either wrong or shockingly minor,” Lee Gelernt, with the ACLU.’s Immigrants’ Rights Project told The New York Times. “This is just circumventing the court’s order.”
If Trump sees racial and ethnic division as positive, we deserve to send him home.
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