The benefit of this history is that we know how the story ended then; with the adoption of racist immigration laws, and the immigrants from the “shithole countries” of the turn of the century defending the country in two world wars. But their children and grandchildren, having assimilated into the very whiteness Walker and his ilk saw as endangered, now repeat the same slander laid upon their ancestors against a new generation of immigrants looking for a better life in America. The old lies are now again embraced by the descendants of those who once suffered because of them.

Already the president’s defenders lurch from one argument or another in transparent bad faith. No one is offended by the president’s use of profanity; it is the substance of his remarks, and not the specific word he employed, that is appalling. It makes the president’s remarks no less racist to say that many who voted for him share the same sentiments; it merely means that those voters subscribe to the same racism. The president was not making an assessment of the relative quality of life in Haiti or Norway, he was condemning entire populations of people of as undesirable because of where they were born. Trump’s remarks do not merely express contempt for foreigners; but also for every American who shares their origins.

The president’s focus on the nationality, rather than on the personal merits, of immigrants suggests what he means by “merit-based” immigration: Not accepting those immigrants who have mastered science or engineering or some other crucial skill, but instead a standard that finds white Scandinavians acceptable, while ruling out Haitians, Salvadorans, and Africans. The only “merits” here are accidents of birth and geography, owing to no individual accomplishment at all.

It would be useless to point out that African immigrants are, on average, more highly educated and more likely to be gainfully employed than native-born Americans, or that immigrants in general are less likely to commit crimes. Trump’s is not a logic that employs facts, it is one that employs tribe. It is the logic of “us” being better than “them,” with white Scandinavians reflecting a self-definition of “us,” that excludes blacks and latinos regardless of their relationship to this country.

This is to say nothing of the fact that America’s wealth relative to the poverty of Haiti, El Salvador, and the nations of Africa is directly related to U.S. and European colonialism. It is a convenient trick to rob a person of all they have, even their own body, and then mock them for their poverty, and blame it on their nature.

To describe the issue here, as many media outlets have, as one of coarse or vulgar language, is itself an obscenity. The president’s remarks reflect a moral principle that has guided policy while in office, a principle that is obvious to all but that some simply refuse to articulate. What is certain however, that is in the face of this delusion, the president will continue to articulate it himself.

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