Mr. Blow is such a party-pooper.
We shouldn't be proud of a sacred national monument that is widely understood to symbolize our strength as a nation of immigrants? We should scorn Lady Liberty, who has come to represent our nation as a haven for all people from all corners of the world who value freedom and opportunity?
Goodness gracious, Mr. Blow.
Why can't we both be proud of Lady Liberty and what she stands for, and at the same time recognize that our country was and is flawed? Why do you only ever focus on the latter? Do you believe that America is irredeemable because of its imperfect past? Why can't you admit that, despite regressions and delay, the arc of history trends toward more freedom and equality for all, even the people of color you claim this nation is determined to forever suppress?
5
Now, tell me again why freed slaves were not compensated after the civil war, but former slave owners were?
6
Heartfelt but misguided. Read the poem’s words just before those that are quoted here.
As mentioned, the statue is not about immigration, and the poem was tacked on later.
And even if you say the country somehow adopted its new meaning and poem, times have changed since then. With automation and AI and the fact we already need more skilled labor than unskilled labor -- which was decidedly not the case back in the day where labor was in demand -- you'd be an nice nation, but ignorant hater of the future, to want more unskilled immigrants over those needed for the 21st century.
2
We have no obligation to take in economic refugees.
5
Amazing how someone can toss out their racist inclinations without you even asking them to do so.
I think the right honorable Kenneth T. Cuccinelli really capped it off in his effort to contextualize the quote when he said it applies to "people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class."
Wow!!! I did not know all immigrants came from Europe.
And wretched? Hmmm?!!! Isn't that how his boss has described many who weren't/aren't from Europe?
Keep pointing out this behavior Charles. Remind us that we are in 2019 not 2019BC.
The "in-your-face" signs of racism and other biases Charles. They come with such ease.
1
Amazing how someone can toss out their racist inclinations without you even asking them to do so.
I think the right honorable Kenneth T. Cuccinelli really capped it off in his effort to contextualize the quote when he said it applies to "people coming from Europe, where they had class-based societies where people were considered wretched if they weren't in the right class."
Wow!!! I did not know everyone came from Europe.
And wretched? Hmmm?!!! Isn't that how his boss has described many who weren't/aren't from Europe?
Keep pointing out this behavior Charles. Remind us that we are in 2019 not 2019BC.
The "in-your-face" signs of racism and other biases Charles. They standout with such clarity, don't they?
We have no obligation to take economic refugees.
Nayib Bukele, President of El Salvador, stated that it was his country's fault that so many of its citizens were fleeing, and the reasons were economic.
What he wants is a partnership with the U.S. to improve conditions in his country. We need to help these people in their countries of origin, and the aid we send needs to be more than monetary.
These countries need to be educated. Think of all the things required for a stable and healthy nation. Representation, judiciary, education, energy grid, food & water distribution, housing, jobs/industry, mining, roads, bridges, health care, law enforcement, monetary system!...the list goes on.
We should start something like the Peace Corps, but more complex, sending teams of experts in their fields, to these countries to assist development.
Over half the people in the world live in “poverty” (over 5 billion, 15 times our entire U.S. population, exist on $10 or less per day), and we can’t solve that problem by allowing them to immigrate here.
WE HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO OVERPOPULATE OUR COUNTRY, just because other people have already ruined theirs with UNCONTROLLED POPULATION GROWTH.
One can complain about the U.S. and focus on its flaws, or recognize the fact that we live in one of the most organized and capable countries in the world.
To preserve that, we must also recognize that immigration must be controlled, not because of race, but because of numbers.
2
Reflecting on this column, it's probably a miracle that my white, non-Christian grandparents and great-grandparents were allowed to settle in this country. They were from shtetls, essentially lowly peasants or workmen, a bricklayer, a tailor or two and the like. The bricklayer didn't stay, but his son, my grandfather, a boy of 13, did, never seeing his mother again. My other great-grandfather brought his wife and seven of his ten children to America over a period of years.
These were poor but honest hardworking people. They wanted to improve their lot and that of their children. It wasn't easy, but they left progeny, now 4th generation Americans, who have mostly done good and done well in America. Wasn't this the American dream? Shouldn't it still be the American dream, no matter what color the skin of immigrants?
7
And the Lazarus poem beneath the Statue of Liberty would be more inspiring if not for the fact that what it *really meant was "Send us warm bodies to be chewed up in new factories we are building as fast as we can to construct an Industrial Revolution that will dominate the economies of the world.
The Statue was Dedicated on October 28, 1886.
Whenever we see any public sign *seeming to support "regular people" in this country, we all do well to "follow the money" to
discover *why that sign was originally commissioned, and/or allowed to stand.
6
Charles, wrong target. Yes, you are historically accurate. What the poem teaches is aspirational. We should always work and fight to have the country that reflects the values of the poem. Fighting those who wish to take away that aspiration is the point.
4
Just because we did something in the past, doesn't mean we have to keep doing it forever.
Time for economists and mathematicians to break away from the current economic paradigm and get to work on a structure that DOESN'T depend on population growth, for economic growth.
The world population has increased from about 3 billion in 1960 to almost 8 billion today (a doubling time of a little over 40 years, assuming exponential growth).
US population has increased over the same time frame from about 179 million to almost 330 million (a doubling time of just over 60 years). Both India and China are getting close to 1.4 billion inhabitants, right now.
IMAGINE OUR CHILDREN LIVING IN A WORLD WITH 16 BILLION PEOPLE, and a U.S. with almost 700 million.
WE HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO OVERPOPULATE OUR COUNTRY, just because other people have already ruined theirs with UNCONTROLLED POPULATION GROWTH.
Immigration and population control are not forms of racism, just common sense.
5
Argh. Stop tossing out this Lady Liberty red herring. It is simple economic and environmental reality that we are not the same country we were 100 years ago.
Imagine a few mice living in a shoe box. They hang out a sign, "C'mon mice, join us!" Everybody's happy for awhile. But too many mice and they start squabbling over space, food, etc. Wouldn't it be common sense for the mice to take down the sign? It doesn't matter if the mice are white or brown. Too many mice and they will literally devour each other.
Repeat in your head until it sinks in: "Nothing unlimited is sustainable!"
We have economic stress with growing job losses due to automation and foreign outsourcing. We have affordable housing crises and growing homelessness. We have growing economic disparities, a disappearing middle class. We have environmental stress with worsening climate change. Federal agencies predict economic, food supply and health crises. Half the country may end up uninhabitable. And there are no solutions in sight.
It will be difficult enough to take care of the people we have already without adding more and more mice to the box. How is that so hard to understand?
4
Time for economists and mathematicians to break away from the current economic paradigm and get to work on a structure that DOESN'T depend on population growth, for economic growth.
The world population has increased from about 3 billion in 1960 to almost 8 billion today (a doubling time of a little over 40 years, assuming exponential growth).
US population has increased over the same time frame from about 179 million to almost 330 million (a doubling time of just over 60 years). Both India and China are getting close to 1.4 billion inhabitants, right now.
IMAGINE OUR CHILDREN LIVING IN A WORLD WITH 16 BILLION PEOPLE, and a U.S. with almost 700 million.
WE HAVE NO OBLIGATION TO OVERPOPULATE OUR COUNTRY, just because other people have already ruined theirs with UNCONTROLLED POPULATION GROWTH.
Immigration and population control are not forms of racism, just common sense.
6
Giving special status or visas to people of higher financial means was tried in Canada, Vancouver is now considered to be Asian, money laundering from China has destroyed the chance of the middle class of buying a home. Toronto is also unaffordable for the same reason. Careful what you wish for Don.
3
It is the United States of PART OF NORTH America and not the United States of America as a Canadian or an Argentinian or anyone from any country in between has the right to describe themselves as an American.
If you don't believe me then have a look on a map, where you will see that America is a continent and not a country.
Lady Liberty is a bronze statue built 100 plus years ago to celebrate a different time. It’s a beautiful piece of art.
Our immigration rules were different and changed frequently during the hundred years before the statue and in the hundred years since it was built. There is nothing in the statue that suggests we cannot change now.
What we need is the hard ugly debate, the ugly politics, of getting to the point of changing our laws for today’s time.
We are too cowardly to do it. We are looking to a relic of a statue to help us dodge the fight. We have a president who us so cowardly that he sends out childish tweets full if lies rather than man up for a fight. But what can you expect from a draft dodger?
Lock congress in the capitol, limit their food, cut them off of all outside communication, give them weapons if needed, lock the door, and let them out only when they have new laws. Drag the president into the Capitol and keep everyone there until he signs.
Short of that just stop whining
4
"For most of American history, the country has never truly welcomed nonwhite immigrants. "
They also hated the Irish, the Italians, etc.
Ironically, that is Ken Cuccinelli's heritage.
1
It seems Charles would like us to tear it down.
3
"This is why President Trump’s base loves him. He is fighting for their primacy, their privileges and their power."
While I mostly agree with Mr. Blow's points, I must disagree with the above one.
Trump's base loves him because they feel they have no primacy, privilege or power. Along comes a (supposedly) wealthy self-made man, who plays directly to their sense of disempowerment.
Whatever primacy, privilege or power they might once have had got sold down the river long ago by the very corporations they had pledged their lives to. Relentless de-unionization, de-funding of public education...the list goes on and on.
All of it enabled by their elected politicians who convince them that the real cause of their very real distress is the "other".
The "other" varies. Pointy-headed intellectuals, coastal elites...and now immigrants whose skin is a shade darker.
4
Reputable sources estimate that there are 10-20 MILLION illegal immigrants in the US.
I believe most Americans welcome LEGAL immigrants, but do not want ILLEGAL immigrants. They recognize that the US cannot afford (or choose not) to support our own citizens: the poor, the ill, elderly, disabled, veterans, et al., and that they and other US taxpayers cannot possibly support the hundreds of millions of foreigners who would like to come here, especially if they are likely to be dependent on taxpayer support.
US laws allow foreigners to seek entry and citizenship. Those who do not follow these laws are in this country illegally and should be detained and deported; this is policy in other countries, too.
The cruelty lies not in limiting legal immigration, or detaining and deporting illegal immigrants, or forcing those who wish to enter the US to wait for processing. What is cruel, unethical and probably illegal is encouraging parents to bring their children on the dangerous trek to US borders and teaching the parents how to game the system to enter the US by falsely claiming asylum, persecution, etc. Indeed, many believe bringing children on such perilous journeys constitutes child abuse.
No other nation has open borders, nor should the US.
29
@Mon Ray
There are employers who employ those immigrants.
Have they been prosecuted for breaking the law?
US citizens have benefited from the work those immigrants have done, everything from using a high pressure hose to remove the small bits of meat left on the heads of pigs in a slaughterhouse, to those workers in Mississippi cleaning the entrails out of chickens as they move along an assembly line. Farmers depend on these immigrants to harvest their crops and work their farms.
These people pay taxes including social security which they can never benefit from, it's a gift into the system.
80% of these people have been here over 10 years, 30% over 20 years.
You think it's fair to remove these people which are so integrated into communities that the citizens there try to stop ICE from grabbing them?
Do you hold the US congress responsible for twiddling their thumbs rather than create an equitable system where this situation can be dealt with in a reasonable manner?
Do you understand that the US cannot sustain it's economy without having a system to allow enough people into the country legally to fulfill the needs for working age persons?
Simple answers are easy to say, understanding why no harm is being done by these people is more difficult.
Whatever the answers, it involves more than kicking people out of the country and not allowing a decent number to enter.
Do you know how many people from Central and South America are allowed to enter the US legally each year?
34
@LibertyLover
Do 2 wrongs make a right?
If we didn't have cheap immigrant labor our workforce would have to be paid better. This is especially hurtful to our poor who are not white
If you are illegal you don't pay federal, state, or SS tax, you only pay sales tax
What does length of stay have to do with legality? We need a way to make them legal, absent that, discouraging illegal immigration with deportation is a good political move.
Congress has and is the problem. But recently the Democrats, especially the squad, won't open borders so they continue to contribute to the problem
No proof that we need immigrants to sustain our economy.
6
@Dr B
This is not true. Immigrants acquire fake documents and their wages are subject to paycheck withdrawal.
Why can't wages be raised with the immigrants here? A law establishing a decent wage would be enforceable anywhere.
Length of stay as an upright resident who has contributed positively should count for something. They have children who are citizens and they have roots here. It's called being reasonable and not vicious.These people are human beings, not cattle.
Yes we do need a way to make them legal. I doubt deportation is a deterrent. They have been deporting people for decades, more selectively than now though.
There is no Democrat that favors having open borders. What some favor is making it a civil offence for crossing the border, not a criminal one. The reason is to avoid having people imprisoned unduly for long stretches before they face a judge.
We have a 3% unemployment rate which is functionally no unemployment when you take job changing and dropping out of the work force into consideration.
Who is going to do those millions of jobs that are unappealing to Americans when these people leave?
Did you see American lining up for jobs at the chicken factory in Mississippi?
I would, sincerely suggest you do some reading about the future manpower needs of this country and how native born persons are not going to be able to fill the gap. We have the entire boomer generation now going into retirement. There is an imbalance between the working ages and retired.
16
There seems to be some assumption that European immigrants were welcomed when they arrived in America. Nothing could be furthur from the truth. Jews were kept in ghettos, Irish were hated because of their Catholicism, Italians were hated because they were Italian, etc. If a background check was done on my relatives when they arrived they would have been sent back.
4
You're of course right that every utterance about America as a beacon of liberty is compromised or negated by the ongoing, imbricated history of slavery, Jim Crow, systemic racism, and the overt racism of resurgent white nationalism.
That said, the subject of the questions posed to Cuccinelli wasn't the statue, it was the poem. And the poem was written by an actual person, who is not mentioned in your essay--a Jewish woman, Emma Lazarus. The statue may be facing Europe, but I doubt Lazarus was thinking of Europe as a great model; its history is interwoven with horrific bigotry and dotted with pogroms. (Indeed, reading the whole poem makes it clear that its not a paean to the greatness of white European culture).
This doesn't invalidate your larger point about brazen hypocrisy. But an honest examination of that tangle of high-minded messages and contrary actions within American history demands that all strands be considered--or at the very least that none be written out entirely.
2
America wasn't welcoming to all the white peasants of Europe, the Irish Famine survivors were vilified, the jews who followed, hated, the Italians like the creep suggesting the change weren't even considered white, the Polish detested and on and on. We are a country with a large cadre of white people who have always been quick to hate the other and I do not doubt that it originated in slavery.
2
"Trump isn’t giving birth to a racist policy; he’s resurrecting one." I am forced to agree with Mr. Blow on this. Lincoln might have freed the slaves but after Reconstruction was over the South went right back to its old ways of treating the Negroes. America had apartheid but we didn't call it that.
Let's not forget that we excluded Asians or that we didn't want to let Italians, Jews, and others into America for a long time. Now it's Mexicans and other South Americans we want to exclude. Nothing has changed but the nationalities and the religions. Not only are we not the city on the hill, we are not even the light of the world.
3
Mr. Blow's column is a perfect example of how Democrats are playing into Trump's hand on immigration, as illustrated by today's most excellent NYT counterpoint to his misty-eyed sillyness:
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/15/opinion/on-immigration-the-democrats-are-playing-into-trumps-hands.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
7
Thank you, Mr. Blow for giving Emma Lazarus' poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty an historical context. We must look much further back than the Lady Liberty for a moral paradigm for how we must treat immigrants and refugees to the Torah and the Gospels. There are many passages in scripture that tell us that we must welcome the stranger. My personal favorite is Matthew 25: 35 "I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me." The Trump administration not only rejects the moral obligation articulated by Lady Liberty, but Judeo-Christian values regarding treatment of the less fortunate and the vulnerable.
We must remember that the goal of assimilation of immigrants into American society and culture to bring them into integration and participation as peers and equals is not accomplished by denying them access to the resources of our commonwealth. We must expose the morally bankrupt policies of the Trump administration's immigration policies, which exist to exclude and expel immigrants, especially immigrants of color. President Trump's agenda is clear and It is completely contrary to who we are as a nation.
3
Much of what you say I did not know and I am grateful for the knowledge. Thank you.
However, here are a few points that would make your commentary even more compelling.
A. The colonial revolution of 1776 represented the first wide-scale successful revolt of the peasants over the nobles and to that extent was a triumph of Enlightenment values. No amount of critical analysis can or should obscure the virtue and heroism of that event, although critical analysis has greatly clarified and tarnished the event relative to the mythology constructed around it and the ideals it represents.
B. Of course the colonists liberated themselves first, and then turned to people who they thought resembled them most. There's no shame in that; blacks, East Indians, Native Americans and Asians have done the same thing, and so likely would you and me, Mr. Blow, given the chance. It's not saintly, nor what we'd prefer ideally, but it is what human beings naturally do. An unavoidable extension of 'family first', which is so ingrained that no one has seriously criticized it, though it can work great harm, even evil. Please discuss this! It's important.
----
Your commentary would be more compelling if it were more realistic; if you praised America's many advances as well as its many sins, rather than holding it up to some ideal never attained in all, long human history, a history rife with prejudice, racism, slavery and other misdeeds, and complained so loudly of the unflattering comparison.
6
We need prominent political and cultural persons to unite in calling for a national walkout of all nonwhite citizens and white citizens who are not bigots. These Americans should take the day off from their places of work and spend it at their representative's local office and office in D.C. Let them know we want the nation to live up to our ideals, especially that we are all created equal.
Maybe the white supremacists would get a better appreciation of the value of nonwhite Americans. Maybe corporations and businesses owners would better understand the contributions and economic value of nonwhite employees. Maybe Republicans would get a better sense of the political power of nonwhites.
A national walkout of nonwhite workers would send a loud clear message to our government and white supremacists: Nonwhites have more power than you imagine.
1
I am tired of this going back and damning all these historical "mistakes."
So what if Blow's history is correct. It has BECOME a Beacon of liberty and what it means to millions of people who did find freedom here. That has become its importance not necessarily the true meaning of the artist.
Understand history but focus on the here and now.
4
America First is an expensive and dangerous mistake. When a nation is the world's number one economy, the world leader, or both, it is the competitive target of every other nation.
The fervor of the world's have nots is greatly reduced when number one is viewed positively by the world's people because of its magnanimity and policies that are a boon and beacon to humanity.
The need to spend an extra $Trillion on weapons and armies is greatly reduced by having allies and the goodwill of billions of people engendered by the relatively small expense of doing the right things. As the generals say: every diplomatic dollar reduction, requires ten times the spending for bullets. Every Trump cruelty directed against the world, will eventually cost even more.
4
Fascinating; it makes great sense. Thanks for this history, shocking as it is. I will google and look for a photo of the broken shackles originally intended for the Statue of Liberty.
Please make sure that every future newspaper article contains this correction, that the sculptor intended it to be about abolition of enslaved people. " Free" the enslaved people, and give them reparations.
1
Charles, your premise may be true, but your conclusions are wrong and quite destructive.
Some words or writings start off meaning one thing, and evolve into another. For example, our Constitution, which started off excluding women and condoned slavery, but eventually evolved to be inclusive of all.
To most Americans, the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty has become a corollary to the torch she holds - a lighted way for all those in need of a new path in life.
There is no value in trying to help those who wish to bring it back to what you say was the original meaning. Your column only assists the haters.
7
These are good points, but the author fails to mention that the US used to have the same animus toward Irish and Italian immigrants that it now has toward Central American immigrants.
3
From the original, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses, yearning to breathe free..." to Ken Cuccinelli's “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet." If Trump has his way, it'll be edited once more to perhaps just two words, "Papers please."
1
America is neither great or good. The country has been racist and genocidal from inception- and all the rewritten history and propaganda can't change that.
Yet what we face now is the most brazen attempt in human history to efface the truth; destroy institutions and individuals that protect individual rights; and use war and violence to take from other nations and groups what they won't willingly give. That, and an ecological disaster- sharpen the battle lines between those who either through ignorance or deliberate acts seek to destroy the foundations of civilization and those who seek justice.
But as institutions weaken- free reign is given to extremists. And the propaganda machine deepens the divisions and equates the reckless with the wise, the well informed with the ignorant, the compassionate with the hateful. The mark of a fool is that he believes he is always right- only the wise understand and even welcome the complexity of human interaction and seek to protect its richness.
So you see- this is what at stake. And you thought it was just an inscription on a statue with a checkered history.
4
Charles, I've read your work here consistently since Individual One came down that escalator. In the beginning of this tilt toward madness, your thoughts were welcomed as either supportive of mine or worthy of consideration for another valid point of view.
Perhaps what I sense now in your columns is a reflection of what has happened across this country. An erosion of positions on the part of citizens has led to what I consider an under-the-radar-Civil-War.
But I am sad to experience what I believe your justified outrage has led you to regard the Statue of Liberty's position in the harbor and words on her tablet.
Regard the first lines of her sonnet, the ones not inscribed and reconsider:
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips.“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses............
Mother of Exiles. She doesn't tell us where from, does she?
As a second generation, white citizen, I am gravely disappointed in your column today. It shows, to me, a narrowness of perspective I hadn't attributed to you before, at least not to this degree.
Alice
6
Let's face it, our so-called leader is a liar,, and of course a racist. He can't even get his lies straight. But the biggest con that this man is playing on the American people is keeping us in a perpetual chaos. By doing this we take our attention away from what the big corporations are doing to America. They have been slowly breaking down the laws, and liberty's of this country. Along with our court's of law, and our environmental laws. We are going to leave such a mess for our grandchildren.
I feel so ashamed at this time to say I'm an American.
3
'If not for rape or incest, would there be any population left?' Iowa 'Congressman' Steve King's 'astute' comments 48 hours ago reflect the same racism, white nationalism and white supremacy that has plagued this country since its founding, although today's
policies are condoned and encouraged by those at the highest level of our government and its courts. That's what this is all about, not statues. Spewing hatred, inciting violence, propagating corruption and consorting with our most formidable sworn enemies to control our elections is where we are today. Those who call themselves true patriots are acting truly un-American.
Vote.
1
The white europeans fearing pogroms who ventured across an ocean, or the brown mother who is so afraid for her children that she takes them on a thousand mile odyssey. Any person that can survive either of these journeys proves their strength and should be welcomed with open arms.
3
My mother was a Hungarian immigrant but her marriage to a true Yankee meant that entered easily. The idea that Lady Liberty was for Europeans has now been re-examined and was in fact about slavery as it existed. Those white immigrants as a father-in-law who came from Scotland as a young orphan made it, but the movement toward not welcoming nonwhite people began. Shithold countries and all that. Now the Italian Cuccinelli rewrites the poem at her feet to make clear the symbol metamorphizes again into a racist emphasis on immigration
Take this opportunity to combine the original meaning of Liberty Lighting the World, the end of slavery, with its later meaning of welcoming immigrants. Instead, Charles Blow chooses to degrade them both. Liberty stands on broken chains rather than holding them. She faces today's problems, not yesterday's. Many laws kept formerly enslaved persons from the full benefits due to them. Yet, when opportunity knocked, for a generation the Civil Rights Acts of the 1960s moved us again toward those ideals. No racist can undo the intelligence, morality, and grace of Barack Obama.
I worry that we will see a rerun of 2016 in which people who claim to deplore Trump do not vote or to vote 3rd party. I do worry that a Republican-controlled USSC upholds every voter purge and shuts down every attempt to enforce the tattered remains of the Civil Rights era. But wait until after Election Day to dispair.
My family has lived in and around New York City since the 19th Century. Weeksville inspired my grandmother to hire "colored people" during the Great Depression. Later, you would have been wrong to proclaim New York City dead in 1973 when the banks ran the City. Mayor Koch wrested the City from the Banks, then the NYPD was cleaned from its sludge of corruption. The NYPD still has problems but it is better than it was.
After 9/11/2001, a stronger city emerged. Don't call out the progress toward a better America because we are in a dark hour.
1
The statue is not 'facing Europe'. It is facing the direction from which all ships coming to the Piers on Hudson and East River had to come. Unless there is some secret passage in which a ship could come into NY harbor WITHOUT being greeted by Lady Liberty.
4
"America Made Lady Liberty a Hypocrite"
"There were people right here in America, black ones, yearning to be free, and the federal government did very little to help facilitate that freedom."
This article reads as an absolute without the mention of the following:
"Forty acres and a mule"
From Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forty_acres_and_a_mule
"Forty acres and a mule is part of Special Field Orders No. 15, a post-Civil War promise proclaimed by Union General William Tecumseh Sherman on January 16, 1865, to allot family units, including freed people, a plot of land no larger than 40 acres (16 ha). Sherman later ordered the army to lend mules for the agrarian reform effort."
The article does say that the Reconstruction era took back some land the black people had received, but blacks in other areas of the country not only kept their land, they managed to increase their land holdings by homesteading.
If we are going to have a conversation on race, let's include all of the historical facts.
3
Here we go again. All policies which aren't strictly toeing the far left line are "racist." It is truly becoming more and more difficult to remain a Democrat. (A strong third party is needed but that's a matter for another post.)
I detest Trump and what he stands for but, though difficult to admit, his new immigration policy makes sense. Our nation is trillions of dollars in debt. It would be great to be able to help everyone in need but how can we continue to allow people into our country, whatever color they are, who will likely use an already-strained benefits and welfare system?
Given our current state, is it wrong to give preference to those who will most likely be self-reliant?
6
"And the federal government has never shied away from giving these white peasants support. It only chafes at giving things to nonwhite people."
Despite the claims of Mr. Blow and Dr. King, blacks were not excluded from taking advantage of the free land in the West. They were included in the Homestead Act of 1862, the only persons not eligible were those who had taken up arms against the United States. Few of the Confederate veterans were black.
5
Can't we have an honest conversation about immigration, which includes neither Trump's demonization of immigrants or Mr. Blow's demagoguery which reduces any desire to limit immigration to racism?
It is 2019, not 1909. Those immigrants to Ellis Island received virtually no government benefits. American citizens didn't either. The public safety net we built in the corresponding 110 years just didn't exist back then.
Today's immigrants - documented or otherwise - receive emergency medical care, public schooling, public school lunches where those exist, English language training in those schools where they exist. Eventually, legal immigrants are eligible to receive TANF, SSI, Food Stamps, federal cash and housing assistance, Medicaid and CHIP. Great.
But what about the 1 million destitute, unskilled, often illiterate immigrants who will have entered the country just this year? No, they can not possibly "pay more in taxes than they take in services" no matter how decent and hard working they are.
You want "free college," Medicare for all? How about just functioning public schools? You can't have that and an endless in-pouring of poor people.
No more racism, Mr. Trump. No more teary-eyed lectures about the Statue of Liberty, Mr. Blow.
Honestly please.
8
In answer to your introductory question: no.
2
One of your best columns, Mr. Blow. Thank you for pointing these things out. As always, history gets distorted by what refers to black people and other people of color being suppressed and replaced by what refers to white people. We're constantly learning that we have even more to relearn than we already knew about. Thanks again, Mr. Blow.
2
Yes. AND, into the last century there was a law on the books stating that a white woman (one born here) who married a man deemed "non-white" would lose her citizenship. Those deemed non-whites were not allowed to become citizens. By controlling the womb of white women, i.e., by preventing her from being a citizen and giving birth to a racially mixed child, the country strove to keep America white. The ideals we think we had are far from what the reality was/is (see "White by Law" by Ian Haney Lopez).
2
It is fitting for Mr. Blow to remind us of America’s original sin in this 400th year of committing it.
It is also fitting to remind us of our failed, or at best partial, attempts to address it. Looked at this way, America—land of the free and home of the brave—peeked out in 1865, but it was through the curtain of white supremacy, both economic then legal. We began to draw the curtain in 1964 with a wider view a year later (the years of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts). Those were after a century of struggle, but we finally took a second big step to live up to our ideals.
There’s been a lot of back-sliding since then. Until very recently, the covert beliefs and attitudes supporting white supremacy were hidden in private or embedded in public dog whistles. Perhaps it’s better that they are now overtly expressed beliefs and attitudes. We can have an honest national conversation about our values.
Let us bend the arc of justice and hasten its day.
91
@David Potenziani, I don’t think an “honest” national discussion can be applied here. First, both sides have to wear the mantle of honesty. That makes any attempt null and void.
Look at it this way. White supremacists who belong to evangelical cults are dishonest with themselves, so what is their relationship going to be with you? What is their relationship with their God? Fraudulent!
12
@David Potenziani
We need more than a conversation. We need to eradicate bigotry insofar as it is possible to do so and make the American dream a reality for Americans of all colors.
2
@David Potenziani
What does this have to do with "original sin"?
2
Cucinelli's reinterpretation is extremely bather some. He clearly comes across as against non-Euorpian immigrants (i.e., non-white), like his boss. Both come across as people with racial biases.
2
“American slavery began 400 years ago this month” – the headline from the NYT...
Nice! Really nice!
Is the NYT charging me with being a slave owner although I immigrated to this country a quarter century ago?
I am an American, thus allegedly directly responsible for the American slavery?!
If there is no Islamic terrorism but just the terrorism, then there is no American slavery but just the slavery.
If there were only a few percent of the slave owners in the USA four centuries ago, why to put all of us in the same boat and charge with the same crime?
4
I’ve been taking all of this in for the last few days. As a Cuban refugees our family arrived in ‘62, without a penny to our names. Would Trump have allowed in the million or so Cubans who flew to Miami on Pan Am Airlines?! Most of us, were children of Spaniards but many other were of mixed race, Afro-Cubans or Mulatos, even Asian-Cubans. The Republican president, would not have allowed the Cubans fleeing Castro into the U.S.
The Republican president, is a racist, Mr. Blow, is correct it’s always been about promoting the white race and keeping the black and brown people away or oppressed. By the way, the majority of people who use the safe net, Welfare, Food Stamps, are white people!
Please vote, folks! Let’s defeat hate and racism!
8
As always with Mr. Blow's writing, this is a powerful and heart-felt statement about the Statue of Liberty. But the truth is a little more complex.
This country has never been particularly welcoming to immigrants, even white ones from Europe. Catholics, Jews, Irish, Italians, Germans, and that's not to mention the treatment of the Chinese ... all have faced the collective scorn of this country at one time or another.
I think the American dream is just that, a dream. An illusion.
We need to come to terms with our past and how it is playing out in the present, so we can collectively live up to that dream, that ideal in the future.
The Statue of Liberty is not a hypocrite, but right now America is, as much as we might wish it were not so. Our first step is to vote this entire administration and its GOP enablers out of power. But that is just a beginning.
The lady in the harbor has turned her back on us, but it doesn't have to be that way. We need to continue to fight to right the wrong this administration has imposed on her. And on all of us.
111
@avrds It has always bothered me when people grumble that some cannot achieve the American Dream. Dreams are meant to be wished for, rarely do they come true. Dreams that come true would be truly terrifying.
Dreams != Reality
1
@avrds
Is there any country that has, through time, always welcomed immigrants to its shores, without debate, without pause, without reservation? I think you will be hard pressed to name one.
3
@avrds: The US has false-advertised itself to foreigners to maintain a labor surplus for most of its history.
4
The new immigration rules that the Trump administration has been fighting for for a couple of years now have finally been adopted and will go into effect unless stopped by the courts. Apart from being designed to limit the arrival of brown people as Blow highlights there is the other stated goal that must not be overlooked: keep out the poor and allow in the already well-off. I think it’s important for everybody, especially the lower rungs of Trump’s base to wake up and see that this attitude of favor the wealthy and shaft the already struggling is a basic part of the Republican brand and it applies to everyone, not only immigrants. The wealthy are given huge tax breaks while middle and lower classes get crumbs. Regulations are relaxed for industries to increase profits and income for CEOs and investors while ordinary citizens pay the price for health and environmental outcomes. Food stamp programs and Medicaid benefits are threatened, affecting the poor (whites as well as brown) not the better-off. For profit education is supported to the detriment of our public systems. Better education for those who can afford it. The common good; why bother? Can we continue to permit this to go on? It will divide and destroy the country if we don’t reject this ideology.
91
@Richard wrote "Apart from being designed to limit the arrival of brown people.."
That's quite a straw man that you and Blow have constructed. There's no reference to race in this law; in fact our immigration laws prohibit racial discrimination.
And you feel that "poor people" are targeted, but most, if not all, nations have some economic requirement for immigration. I must also point out that the US has taken in *more* immigrants (of all races and economic status) than any other nation.*
*https://citizenpath.com/countries-with-the-most-immigrants/
5
@Richard I don't know how the 78% of Evangelicals who support Trump square the policies of "shaft the already struggling" with the words of Jesus: "Blessed be the poor", (the Beatitudes) being only one of many examples of His championing of the underdog, the down-trodden.
3
@Richard: Americans are so dumbed-down, many don't even understand that public sectors of mixed economies conduct socialism by taxing and spending.
3
I remember a song by the Guess Who circa 1970 titled American Woman. It was not about American women it was about America. I married an American woman and we are still together and the love still grows but as I read today's column the tears started to flow.
There are two women who represented the America I was taught to love.
Lady Liberty and Lady Justice were America and once upon a time they represented the promise if not the reality of America. I know America's history and the promise of a more perfect union and certain inalienable rights.
The world is in despair the country that led us into the future has lost her way. Lady Justice has removed her blindfold and puts her thumb on the scales. Lady Liberty no longer welcomes Emma Lazarus' wretched she no longer believes in liberty, equality and fraternity. Lady Liberty now believes "all animals are created equal but some are more equal than others." Orwell
It has been three hundred years since Swift wrote Gulliver's Travels welcome to Lilliput.
99
@Montreal Moe People can only be created "equal under the law." People are definitely not created or raised equal because we are individuals, with different tastes, proclivities, interests, smarts, energy, perseverance, health and physical traits. Not to mention we are born in different places, in different times, with different parents and communities and cultures and morals.
1
@Montreal Moe
Thank you again for your eloquence in the cause of justice, liberty, decency, and right.
1
Like the honorable @pic from Cleveland reminds us - there are many parts of the United States that urgently need an influx of workers, entrepreneurs who employ workers, and everyone in between, and the corresponding tax base they represent. But we can only start to understand the issues surrounding immigration if we listen to facts and not propaganda, and we can only start solving if we stop fighting.
And the potshot at Senator Warren? Not cool. Whether we agree or disagree with her policy proposals, she absolutely gives her all for our country. The rest of us should stop the infighting, team up under a far more expansive and forward-thinking Blue tent, and do our level best to do the same.
138
@common sense advocate Saying of her view that it is "well-meaning but historically false" when you've argued well that such is the case, hardly counts as a "potshot" - and I support Warren for POTUS from January 2021.
2
@GRW - my point is, of all of the terribly retrograde and damaging things that have been said about immigrants this week- dissecting Warren's statement about the Statue of Liberty, when she works her hardest to level the playing field for all people- is a needless slam during the most important election cycle of our time.
8
@common sense advocate
Unless you expect to keep growing the poulation forever, we are going to have to grow up and accept that a stable population and eventually a shrinking one is a fate to be expected, desired, and pursued. 7 billion going on 8 billion is about 6 billion too many. Time for universal global family planning and free birth control.
7
Indeed Mr. Blow.
I’m sure you’ve read
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/black-history-american-democracy.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share
Lets hope the arc of liberty does in fact continue to bend towards justice for all, for if it does not, when future white Americans are a minority they will know that todays white Americans will have failed to “secure[d]the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity” - one of the 5 mandates of our people’s government written in the preamble to the US Constitution
1
Like Trump or his dumpy base could even read the poem without using broken English.
What hypocrisy looks like: Trump hires hundreds of illegals and his base gives him a free pass.
3
A Jewish lawyer asked Jesus: “Teacher, what should I do to inherit eternal life?"
Jesus replied, “What does the law of Moses say?”
The man answered, “‘You must love the Lord your God with all your heart, all your soul, all your strength, and all your mind.’ And, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”
“Right!” Jesus told him. “Do this and you will live."
The lawyer then asked, “And who is my neighbor?”
Jesus replied: “A Jewish man was traveling from Jerusalem down to Jericho, and he was attacked by bandits. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him up, and left him half dead beside the road.
“By chance a priest came along. But when he saw the man lying there, he crossed to the other side of the road and passed him by.
A Temple assistant walked over and looked at him lying there, but he also passed by on the other side.
“Then a despised Samaritan came along, and when he saw the man, he felt compassion for him.
"Going over to him, the Samaritan soothed his wounds with olive oil and wine and bandaged them. Then he put the man on his own donkey and took him to an inn, where he took care of him.
"The next day he handed the innkeeper two silver coins, telling him, ‘Take care of this man. If his bill runs higher than this, I’ll pay you the next time I’m here.’
“Now which of these three would you say was a neighbor to the man who was attacked by bandits?”Jesus asked.
The man replied, “The one who showed him mercy.” Then Jesus said, “Yes, now go and do the same.”
6
Can someone please gift wrap the 1619 project Magazine section of NYT and present it to Donald Trump. He doesn’t read much but at least he can see the photos for himself and realize how deep his racism is ingrained.
3
Once again you reveal your obsession with race. Trump is not targeting "nonwhite immigrants". He's targeting lawbreakers who are entering our country illegally. Why is that so hard for you to see?
4
@Robert Howard
Don't fool yourself. Trump's message is one of broadband racism.
Trump based his presidential campaign on hatred of people of color. He attacked Barack Obama with his fabricated Birtherism chants. He called Mexican immigrants rapists and murderers. He accused Muslims of celebrating after 9/11. The list of his documented racist slurs is very long.
Cuccinelli is now picking up Trump's racist cudgel and continuing a vicious effort to legitimize white supremacy. A particularly time for all Italian-Americans whose families went through their own dark days in the America of the past. .
It is up to those Americans who still believe in what the Statue of Liberty stands for to rise up and throw Trump and his band of hate mongers out of our government.
4
On the backside of our twenty dollar bill we have the words: "In God We Trust".
On the front is a picture of Andrew Jackson. He murdered American Indians. He treated his numerous black slaves with great brutality. Those slaves made him rich.
Trump admires Andrew Jackson and visited his grave at the Hermitage.
Let's Make America Ugly Again!
3
Yeah. I actually have met some illegal aliens working in the US taking American jobs. They were Canadians. All is cool with them invading the USA.
Perhaps one day Charles will realize that the millions of dollars spent on illegals means millions of dollars NOT spent in poor African American communities.
4
Being originally from Northern Virginia and having most of my family there, I have followed the career of Ken Cuccinelli over the past few years. Not only is he rabidly anti-immigrant, but he is a self-described opponent of LGBT rights and same-sex marriage, rejects climate change and filed numerous lawsuits against the EPA while attorney general of Virginia (2010-2014), and he is fiercely opposed to women’s reproductive choice.
To see him given a national platform in the Trump administration is almost more than I can bear.
363
@Susan
But Susan, this IS the trump platform. Cuccinelli is the other side of the Trump coin. And they must be voted out of office,
44
@Susan
Yes, Susan, Cuccinelli is rabid--in quite literal senses--about all of those issues, and completely committed to using/abusing the law to carry out sweeping rollbacks.
So, yes, lindap, a perfect errand boy and choir boy for the current occupant of the White House.
21
@Susan Many, but not all, of Trump's cabinet picks are meant to be the equivalent of a sharp stick poked into your eye. Some were so obviously unqualified and unvetted (remember Herman Cain) that they seemed like practical jokes.
15
A few months ago I saw a bumper sticker: "Hey immigrants! We're Full!"
What a failure of imagination. What a failure of humanity.
Our nation is not a lifeboat. My venerable and beautiful home city of Cleveland has the infrastructure for a city of 1 million (our mid century peak), but is currently at a population of 500k.
We are not full. We are not a lifeboat that must carefully monitor who and how many we let aboard.
I say again. What a failure we are becoming.
379
@pjc
I can never figure what keeping out even 1000 Mexicans will do for one Midwestern farmer who continues to support Trump, yet is teetering on bankruptcy because of his policies? Many of their problems are self-inflicted: electing people from both parties who've used them as poster children, while catering to the plutocrats. Sometimes I think it just boils down to a chilling realization that their way of life is doomed, and like a drowning man trying to drag down their rescuer with them, they are thrashing about for victims to join them.
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@stan continople
Here would be my twist tho: the way of life is not disappearing, if they protect it. France, for example, jealously guards its rural and farm life.
The tragedy of these "heartland" voters are that they keep electing people who are the ones with the dagger against the way of life -- farms, good paying jobs, decent schools, etc. -- they think is being attacked by the other side.
Why they think that in my opinion, boils down to racism and other changes in civil rights. Many of my relatives would never vote for a Democrat because "liberals" believe in race mixing.
Hard to feel sorry. But I do mourn the collapse of anything resembling a reason=based democracy.
49
@pjc
Why is Cleveland, a once great city not full?
8
"And the federal government has never shied away from giving these white peasants support. It only chafes at giving things to nonwhite people." No, Mr. Blow, not exactly true. White Europeans did not receive the handouts immigrants now get. There actually pictures of (white) immigrant children in the early 1900s working in mills, foundries, warehouses between the ages of 8-14, seven year olds selling the New York Times on the streets of New York. There were no ETB cards, healthcare, housing credits, free education, nothing. What you're proposing is a bald-faced lie, a rebranding of history in your own imagination. Please.
6
@Tee Jones
With all due respect Tee Jone, that was what was going on at the time.
Child Labor laws didn't go into effect until 1918.
But even with that, the Supreme Cout didn't approve it.
And of course, the type of help that you are describing didn't come about until after WWII.
Things are very different now than in the early 1900s.
But you know what, the way things are going with this president, those things are a decrying now, many American's will be ing those same 'benefits' in short order.
2
"Liberty" has other names.
She is -
Columbia.
Semiramis.
Isis.
Mary.
It is appropriate that She be center stage in this transitional period.
It is the energy of the Goddess, our divine Mother who is returning to us, that is driving us to see ourselves more clearly, that we may recognize our situation and move to restore Her to the center where She belongs.
Long ago they tried to get rid of Her.
They "reformed" our true religion, the religion of life. They tried to displace it with a religion of ignorance, division, and greed.
That hasn't worked out so well.
And now She is here with us again.
Something wonderful is happening.
While it seems patently true that Trump, Miller and the rest of his despicable crew want to exclude nonwhite immigrants, they will find very few normal white immigrants willing to come to this place under these circumstances. Maybe that's part of the pan too: to entice only white, abnormal, racist whackos to this country.
It is not with our precedent among the "white nationalist" sect: a certain leader of a certain party in a certain country in the last century had a pan-national vision of racial purity and actively recruited white, non-nationals to his elite military units.
There, I have managed the comparison without running afoul of Godwin.
3
Charles Blow, thank you for teaching me things they never taught me from the time I began grade 1 in Rumford RI in 1937 to the day I left East Providence High School in 1949.
But I have learned a lot since then and thanks to all I have learned I want to present a challenge to you, to the Editors, and especially to Lauretta Charlton, Editor of Race/Related.
The challenge arises from reading your statement:
"For most of American history, the country has never truly welcomed nonwhite immigtants."
That is indeed true, but now in the 21st century thanks to everything we have learned about the human genome, we know that being so-called white is simply a result of evolution as controlled by environment and the ability of the genome to adapt to the environment.
The challenge: You and Lauretta Charlton team up to enlist a few experts to teach your readers that there is only one race, the human. Tell them that some day the Census Bureau will have to end use of its archaic system, created by racists.
And, please, Lauretta Charlton, pick up where you left off in your interview with Thomas Chatterton Williams, and explain to White Nationalists that it will be impossible for them to design a system for selecting those for citizenship in their white nation.
Our genomes reveal a simple truth. There is no pure white, black, yellow, or green race.
Start telling your readers that truth. Trying to do this in comments is an exercise in futility.
Only-NeverInSweden.blogspot.com
1
I hear you Mr. Blow. America was founded by and for Europeans who were primarily white. I guess that is now a sin...a sin that is forced upon us by the accident of being born white. Can you imagine what turmoil would erupt if "white Americans" by the thousands were to try to rush the borders of an African country or any of the countries South of America. The more we dig up past sins and failures of this country and force feed them down our collective throats ...the more we move towards two Americas separate and hostile. Our country is on a slippery slope and the trajectory is down...straight down.
2
This is why Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. could say in his “The Other America” speech at Stanford University in 1967:
"In 1863 the Negro was freed from the bondage of physical slavery. But at the same time, the nation refused to give him land to make that freedom meaningful. And at that same period America was giving millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that America was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor that would make it possible to grow and develop, and refused to give that economic floor to its black peasants, so to speak.
Charles, you quote Dr. Martin Luther King correct. Now your leftist political colleagues are trying to do the same thing, or have you not paid attention? The "black peasants" in the United States, as well as our homeless, our veterans, our indigent, are all being ignored, while illegal immigrants are being offered asylum, free healthcare, funding, etc., that your Democratic colleagues are NOT offering to their fellow citizens.
How about you address that issue?
2
Mr Blow brilliantly shows that the Statue of Liberty is white America's security blanket, with their hypocrisy and racism is concealed under her skirts.
Trump, Miller and Cuccinelli at least make no bones about it.
2
Looking at the US from abroad it seems to be a country of racists who used the gun to create the United States of America. Trump is the latest manifestation who is supported by fellow racists and gun lovers.
2
Thanks goodness we have Mr. Blow here to write us column after column about how America is hopelessly racist and about how everything is stacked in favor of white privilege.
Whatever our traditions, whatever our cultures: all is for naught. We are doomed to failure and evil.
And most pernicious is the fact that Mr. Blow has been forced, by our society's systemic racism, into only being able to write these columns, rather than to take his place as the leading intellectual in the country.
3
The only thing missing is the noose that belongs around the good lady's neck. trump will no doubt provide a big beautiful one to keep his base cheering.
2
"What we are witnessing is an all-out, every-avenue strategy to maintain America as a white majority country — and, by extension, to extend white power and white supremacy — for as long as possible."
That sums up it up nicely. This is what the KKK is about, isn't it? So where does this ultimately lead? White dominance by law? Extermination? Forced mass migration? With over 100 million non-whites in America and the number growing how does an all-white America that the neo-Nazis (who include some good people according to Trump) are calling for come about? What is it that Trump is not telling us? Is he hiding the end game?
2
Americans loathed all immigrants at all times of all “colors”...
Scandinavians were a particular focus of utter contempt...Even now people imitate Swedish accents with an exaggerated dumb cadence...I think there’s a muppet Swedish chef character with the stereotypical accent...Hasn’t anybody read Willa Cather or Upton St Clair?! See how native white Americans looked down upon supposedly “white” blonde Protestant immigrants! Even Ben Franklin thought Germans weren’t white...
There’s nothing new under the sun...
2
Ill keep it short and to the point Mr. Blow and i hope you read this. I would like to say thank you so much for providing unsugarcoated (i know thats not a word) history lessons in context to what is being presented by the majority in this country. The truth hurts sometimes. But I rather hurt knowing the truth than feel comfortable being lied to OR given the element of the truth. Thanks again.
1
The Statue of Liberty has no relevance to the heirs of enslaved black African property and colonized and conquered brown aboriginal first nations human pioneers who were the victims of white European Judeo-Christian invaders and occupiers of the New World. Africans and First Nations people were not immigrants.
Lady Liberty was a white supremacist bigoted prejudiced callous cruel cynical lie from the birth of nation by Founding Fathers who were an evil combination of African slaveowners and First Nations ethnic sectarian cleansing terrorist white European Judeo-Christians.
1
Mr. Cuccinelli is merely the latest example of a conservative sacrificing his humanity and integrity at the altar of Trump.
Recommended reading for Mr. Cuccinelli: 'Everything Trump Touches Dies'-----Rick Wilson
3
Interestingly Cuccinelli's grandfather came to this country with less than an 8th grade education. If he was somehow able to be instantly independent and self sustaining without any charity or other help it would be miraculous. And Steven Miller's were escaping the maltreatment of Jews in Europe. Did they come with personal wealth or did they rely on help from others?
6
That Cuccinelli should read about the history of the Italian immigration, so hated that the congress passed one of the first laws to limit immigration and targeting Italians in primis. They came to this country with the least amount of cash in their pocket, second only to the jews of the east European countries.
They were often robbed of they little cash by other Italians with the promise of a work. Italians that approached them with the promise of a work often far away in the west. Italians that they trusted because they had no choice since they were almost all illiterate and certainly not speaking the English language but only their strict dialect.
And so that Cuccinelli now thinks that immigration has to be only for rich people, only for those that do not need to emigrate or work; for that people that once here will consider blacks, browns and poor inferior and that take away their never earned money.
3
Cuccinelli doesn’t know that back when Italians were arriving they were not considered “white” by the white Americans. Cuccinelli has forgotten that fact.
1
@Mari
True. And the same was true of the Irish and of Jews who were not looked upon as being "white".
But acknowledging that would naturally invalidate Mr. Cuccinelli's argument -- and probably cost him his job.
1
Ahh, the weekly anti-Trump, anti-white article from the author. I've said it countless times, he simply regurgitates the same, and I mean the same exact message in literally every article, just uses a different headline to jump into the same message. I got to the third paragraph before finding the SAME message as always, normally it only takes two paragraphs at the most. Long ago I quit reading beyond the first few paragraphs, just a waste of time, but like I've said before, he's got a great gig, take five minutes to regurgitate the same message and make good money doing it--he's smarter than I am, I have to work for a living. "This is the game. This has always been the game. This is why President Trump’s base ("base" is racist/Lib code for white people) loves him. He is fighting for their primacy, their privileges and their power."
7
This columnist is showing a preference for people of color and his argument is that poor people, particularly those of a darker persuasion should have preference. That sounds a lot like racism.
5
@kdw
can't you read? The freed slaves were not given a fair chance, far from it:
In 1863 the Negro was freed from the bondage of physical slavery. But at the same time, the nation refused to give him land to make that freedom meaningful. And at that same period America was giving millions of acres of land in the West and the Midwest, which meant that America was willing to undergird its white peasants from Europe with an economic floor that would make it possible to grow and develop, and refused to give that economic floor to its black peasants, so to speak.
1
@kdw And exactly where does Mr. Blow talk about giving preferences to people of color? I've read the article twice; I can find no reference to preferential treatment. Are you referring to the fact that the "public charge" rule will restrict immigration to those people who are emigrating with money? The rule will deny entry to people who are poor, the majority of whom will likely be people of color coming from poor countries in Central and South America and Africa. Therefore, the preference Mr. Blow is exposing is the Administration's plan to allow the wealthy to enter this country while the poor are turned away.
@kdw Where does Mr. Blow argue that "poor people, particularly those of [sic] darker persuasion" should "have a preference"? Please show us an example, pulled directly from the essay, revealing this argument.
Donald Trump is the son of an immigrant on his mother's side, two out of the three women he married are immigrants, and four of his five children were born to an immigrant mother. It is deceptive for President Trump to ignore his own family's history as it relates to immigration, and it is hypocritical and cruel for him to set policies that mandate what kind of immigrant America should accept.
Instead, the administration should study how legal immigration from all countries promotes economic growth and vibrancy in the US and work to optimize that power. They should not set financial requirements that are not asked of our own citizens. If there is a sudden economic downturn or a disaster, legal immigrants should be able to receive the same assistance as US citizens, and their entry into the US should not depend on how much wealth they have.
3
All well noted--but rather than playing the continuous blame game, by saying "America" in the third party, take on responsibility. Are you an American, then you too made her a hypocrite, correct. We cannot keep blaming others, especially our forefathers. "We, not them". BTW, writing a NYT column does not absolve you from additional responsibility. How are "we" going to be part of the solution, and not the problem.
7
You are basically correct re Trump and history but you have to watch it and not go to the other extreme.
What I mean by this is come up with a fair immigration policy that gives every hard working immigrants a shot but don't have open borders.
Don't let in terrorists, criminals, dead beats, obviously mentally ill, etc in and set numerical limits.
If you don't do that, you will help re elect the ego maniac demagogue Trump.
Everybody who voted for Trump are not racists, only a relative few. The others did not want an extreme identity obsessed social engineering zealot like Hillary on social issues while she was a Neo con on all other issues, exactly what middle America did not want.
2
FYI: Hillary would have been president if we didn’t have the Electoral College and if Putin hadn’t hacked all of our states! She beat Trump three million more votes.
Can’t support a racist or a bigot unless you are one.
2
@Mari-Thank you for your reply. Re Hillary, woulda, coulda, shoulda, bait and switch. She lost because she was an identity obsessed social engineer on social issues and a neo con on all other issues, exactly what middle America did not want.
Guilt by association re your last sentence ie many people held their noses and voted for Trump who were not bigots just like many people held their noses and voted for Hillary who were not identity obsessed, man hating, social engineering neo cons.
2
@Paul
Nice try. But she still won by over 3 MILLION popular votes, whether Americans "held their noses" and hated women or not.
There's no limitation to the amount of damage Russian interference, social media, Citizen's United, Republican gerrymandering, voter suppression and the Electoral College has done to our free and democratic election process -- no matter WHO is running.
1
So, now all of us who look to the statue of liberty as a beacon of freedom are racists!
Enough already!
The statue of Liberty stands for freedom and liberty, for everyone, NOW!
There has been change over the years, change for the good. That does not absolve the country of prior racist acts, but lets acknowledge the progress, and not demean those of us who believe in that progress.
5
There is no argument that what you have written and what you feel has many truths. It is sad that we as human beings have so many faults and so many weaknesses. I find despair in how our small human differences, i.e. the color of our skin, our faith in God, are being used by a foreign leader (Putin) and an ungodly, unpatriotic excuse for a human being (DJT) to divide our nation. Divide and conquer has always been a weapon used by dictators.
4
Anyone with any knowledge of Kenneth T. Cuccinelli II's background wasn't suprised at all that he altered the Statue of Liberty’s poem to read, “Give me your tired and your poor who can stand on their own two feet, and who will not become a public charge.” The man is a fanatical, evangelical, radical, militant right wing Christian which was on full display during his tenure as attorney general of Virginia.
6
Mr. Blow's focus on the ongoing racism in the US has to be highlighted in this time of reaction.
And I want to add that the history of immigration of "Europeans" is also dripping with racism. Northern Europeans were welcomed, while those from the south, and from the east were not. Those southerners (and Jews) were not seen as good white folks and more, they were seen as Papists, not good Protestant stock. And early depictions of the southern Europeans often referred to them as black.
While it is likely that the poem, The New Colossus, was written in response to the Russian Pogroms against the Jews, but Lazarus meant it to symbolize the plight of all of the despised peasants of Europe.
It was not part of the original statue, and was written for a fund raiser for the pedestal for the statue. It was added to the pedestal by the group that raised the funds.
The irony about Cuccinelli's comments is that his ancestry is from those despised people, Italians and Irish (who because of their Catholic religion, a threat to the Protestant majority).
Stupidity knows no bounds.
4
Some blacks were able to get some land in the Homstead Act.
From Britannica: 'the black farmers who took advantage of the Homestead Act found the West more hospitable than the South. While black access to land never equaled that of whites, the Homestead Act of 1862 gave thousands of ex-slaves the opportunity to own their own land, something that was unattainable in the South.'
3
I am grateful to you Mr. Blow for educating me, a 70 year old privileged white guy, about the true but purposefully silenced history of the Statue. It is an eye-opening history that must be taught in every single secondary school system in America. Although not specifically indicated in your piece, I assume that those “broken shackles “ migrated, due to an ironic early display of racist political correctness, from L.L.’s left hand to her foot. Might you provide your readership with a photo of this foot? Again, thank you for yet another hard-hitting, pedagogical column.
1
France is going to take Liberty back and give her to Canada.
It could happen. It probably should.
4
After getting into her head - literally - years ago, I thought I knew what the She stood for. Thanks for knocking that conception out of my head. Gives new meaning to Statue of LIBERTY! And why Civil War Confederate-Republicans keep instigating a Civil War do-over. They've finally found their cowardly leader to command them.
Any doubt that trump, all by himself, is the most costly “public charge” in the history of America? What has he contributed to the society that enabled his wealth - taxes are for little people.
How many of the wealthiest idle rich immigrants with ill-gotten wealth (think Malaysia's former leaders) - and his ideal rich white immigrant, Murdoch, benefited as a “public charge” from the $2 trillion wealth transfer from society? Notice how that $2 trillion has vanished into their Wall Street casinos doing absolutely no good to anyone.
Murdoch is trump's ideal because he made money the GOP way - optimizing a hate-feedback-loop to divide formerly united states into red and blue states for profit, to be enjoyed tax free living abroad. Compare Murdoch's contribution to America to a single poor immigrant picking food to feed Americans. How many of the idle rich "can stand on their own two feet" without their ill-gotten wealth?
tempest-trump-tost caged children and broken families with the wretched refuse from trump-America's teeming swamp shore, sending these, the homeless, healthcare-less and hungry, as trump lifts his club to beat them out of HIS golden door
1
Wow. Every American should read this.
@Gord Lehmann
You would probably be surprised to know how many Americans are actually living this.
1943 repealed 1882—because of China’s favoured status during WWII—but the quota of 105 remained in place.
Historically the US has always been a racist and class based society. Even the current surge in anti- immigration sentiment is not new, nor are all the America First and keep out the riff-raff tropes that are used to support it.
Are people of color and the poor always targeted? Does race and class always become a political football used by those who want power? Yup. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Americans don’t ‘do’ history so even the complicated political machinations that took place over slavery between 1776 and 1865 are seriously misunderstood and misinterpreted by most. Since it’s always the victors that get to tell the story of a war, our Civil War story has mostly been told through the lens of the winners - the North. Was it about slavery? Yes. But is was probably more about economic and political power. Wars are always won by the side who has the most resources, and the South was woefully outgunned in that department - so they lost. Their economy was smashed and the majority for people , both white and black, plunged into poverty for a hundred years. Did blacks become scapegoats and stay at the bottom of the heap? Sure. Pure racism and the flowering of the violent White Supremacy movement. Tragic? Yes.
But if truly want to understand the history of our country we most know and study it objectively. We must discard the myths, and look at the losers and the winners, admit the terrible injustices we have done to others, and seek to right them
My family emigrated from the U.K. in 1963. We had to be sponsored by someone in the US, friend or family, to guarantee that we would not be a financial burden on this country. I didn’t see anything wrong with it then and still don’t. However, I think the Trump administration’s reasoning is completely different. It’s just one of the many ways Trump and his goons are trying to stop all those brown people from coming over the southern border. This time it’s racist. Next week they’ll come up with something else. And his base will love it. America deserves so much better. Vote.
6
Throughout our history certain ethnic groups have been either restricted or outright banned from coming here. In the late 19th century the Chinese were banned from immigrating here. Jews fleeing Hitler face our daunting quota system where they either had to have a relative vouch that they wouldn't be a burden or have a job waiting for them. Since we were in the middle of a Depression jobs were scarce. The fact that we had a strict quota system didn't help either. FDR sent the St. Louis, which was the last Jewish refugee ship allowed out of Europe prior to World War II, home to Hitler.
Even Europeans faced all sorts of problems as they tried to flee oppression because they yearned to breathe free.
1
We have been in denial over the racist roots of our nation since it's inception.
Racism is so embedded in the DNA of our nation that an protest against racism is taken as an attack on America.
2
Mr. Blow, I don’t know why you say America has never welcomed immigrants of color. Under an immigration passed in 1924, the combined annual immigration quota for all African nations was set at about 122 persons per year. Liberia’s quota was set .5 persons. What could be more welcoming than that?
3
Start using the correct terms in discussing human beings without the proper papers to stay in America.
Many had Visas and Passports to arrive and these passes expired.
These human beings are
IMMIGRANTS WITHOUT PAPERS” and POLITICAL REFUGEES and MIGRANTS who are hired in their country to come to America to pick our crops and clean our dead livestock in food plants and process the worst of our industrial military complex.
So stop dehumanizing these humans cuz they are exactly as human as you all are that think you are superior religiously and politically in America.
Get a life and stop listening to trump.
Btw a recession is looming.
Remember what the corporations did to us under Bush as Obama walked into the door.
Republicans forced a bailout for Wall St.
No raise in minimum wages though.
In order to survive in America nothing less than a $30 per hour minimum wage is adequate and only immigrants will work for pittance.
Unless you racist bigots want the jobs these poor souls agree to work in.
2
Trump has changed the inscription on the Statue of Liberty:
"Give me your wealthy and white. As for your tired, your poor,
your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, we keep the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. I don't want your homeless and tempest-tost. The lamp is off and the golden door is now slammed shut."
1
Americans are pretty good - exceptional - at the dark art of hypocrisy. The republic’s ideals were poisoned the day the republic was born. And it hasn’t got any better.
1
There's no such thing as American values. If there were, more people would be repulsed by depravity in the White House. More people would consider truth sacrosanct. The most American value today is hypocrisy.
3
Lady Liberty is now the ticket taker, for the new and improved Immigration Policy. A “WHITES ONLY” banner will be draped across her torso, and the torch will be replaced by an assault Rifle. Thanks for the lovely gift, France, but we proved unworthy.
Sad.
1
One of the few instances I disagree with Mr. Blow. His implication that European immigrants have had a warm welcome will come as a surprise to people of Irish and Italian backgrounds here in Rhode Island who faced painful discrimination - "Irish need not apply" signs and job-wanted ads upon their arrival. Of course, their whiteness eventually helped them gain a rung up the economic ladder, and bias against people of color has been far deeper and far more lethal. But Mr. Blow over-reaches in this case - a rarity for this fierce advocate of justice in the Trump era.
4
Ken Cuccinelli sez', people "…who will not become a public charge.”
Lost in this bizarre brouhaha, is that the total cost of Ken's so-called "public charge" is peanuts - a "safety net" that's mostly holes!
in 2017, the TOTAL COST of our TANF/MOE program (federal and state so-called "welfare") was $31.1 Billion, or .78% of our $4 Trillion federal budget. Less than 1/4 of those funds were distributed in direct payments - the rest was spent on Child Care, Administration, Work activities, Pre-School, Child Welfare, etc. The median monthly payment (family of three) was $428.00.
There were 2.2 Million recipients, or .67% of our 330 Million citizens. 77% of recipients were children. Undocumented immigrants don't qualify. Documented immigrants can only qualify after 5 years. Recipients are limited to two consecutive years and a Max of 5 total years in their lifetime. Recipients must work or provide documented proof they're looking for work.
SNAP, aka, "food stamps" had a TOTAL COST of $60 Billion, or 1.5% of our federal budget. The maximum monthly payment worked out to $5.33/meal. Recipients must participate in documented "work activities". Undocumented immigrants do not qualify.
GoodBrain and the (R)egressives are squealing over programs that cost less than 2.5% of our federal budget, while they empty the nation's treasury in windfall tax cuts for the Pluto-corporatocracy and throw gazillions of dollars at the bloated, top-heavy MIC!
MAGA!
3
As usual, the argument is conflated by bias and equivocation. Asylum-seeker is one type of immigrant, different from those who chose to immigrate. Legal, documented, illegal, undocumented-all lumped in order to support an agenda that refuses to consider any reasons for regulating immigration and smearing those who want to do more than pass symbolic laws as racist. We cannot have worthwhile debate in this country because no one wants to learn and understand, they just want to win the argument and the political and financial power that goes with it, and will do anything to language and reason to get there.
2
This column, as many of Mr. Blow’s columns, makes me want to spread my new improved pledge that much further: I pledge allegiance to the flag and to the republic for which it stands, one nation, UNDER LAW, STRIVING for liberty and justice for all.
1
Twenty years after the Lazerus poem appeared on the Statue of Liberty, Congress passed a law whose purpose was to exclude certain Europeans -- Slavs, Italians and eastern Europeans, specifically Jews, from entering this country. Emma Lazerus, who was Jewish, certainly didn't intend for her poem to pertain only to white, northern Europeans. Like the US Constitution, the words were greater than those who created them and more universal than their original intentions
6
With a price tag on admittance to this country, only wealthy & well-educated Asian & Indian people will be able to immigrate here. (The wealthy white Norwegians that Donald loves are way too smart to leave their own country - they know they've got it good there). Not that such immigrants are unwelcome by any means, but think about Donald's base. He has them so stirred up about immigrants "stealing" American jobs. So he is blocking admission to the most terrified & desperate people on the planet, eg the Central American refugees. It is such desperate & hard working people who staff our slaughter houses & clean our fancy hotels & mow our lawns & etc. Tormenting & blocking entry to the most needy immigrants will therefore create plenty of jobs for Trump's base. But without access to educational opportunities & affordable job training, nobody in Trump's base is going to be able to compete with the only immigrants he is welcoming here - educated & well-heeled Asians & Indians. If anybody is competent to "steal" good jobs from Trump's base, it's the intelligent educated & moneyed Asian & Indian immigrants who tend to prosper here. Why doesn't Trump's base agitate for improved & low cost public education & job training for themselves so that they have the ability to compete for the best jobs? Why harass the poorest & most vulnerable immigrants, people who are actually the most like the immigrant ancestors of most Trump supporters?
4
so I'm no Trump supporter - and I do think he is a racist. But there are also many people of color who are racists. They see the color of people as an element of decision making that makes them think and do very unwise things. For instance, It does not matter the color of the immigrant and to say those of darker persuasions deserve privilege is racism. Immigration needs to be based on sound policy of who can bring talent, and self determination to America. In the past, immigrants were not entitled to entitlements and this does become a factor for consideration. Immigrants who are in school, can live independently and want to be productive citizens need to be given priority no matter their color. And all people need to understand their decisions determine their future and people earn their own way without having expectations of entitlements. That is the American way.
3
For decades people have been "spinning" the poem at the base of the Statue of Liberty. Perhaps one of the best ways to determine was meant by it is to look at its author and what she was doing when she wrote it.
The author of the poem (which is called The New Colossus, written in 1883) is Emma Lazarus.
She was Jewish, of German and Portuguese descent. At the time she wrote the poem in 1883, Lazarus was very active in causes related to Jewish immigration after the Russian anti-Semitic pogroms following the 1881 assassination of Tsar Alexander II. Thousands of poor Ashkenazi Jews emigrated from Russia to New York, and Lazarus helped establish the Hebrew Technical Institute in New York to provide vocational training to assist them in becoming self-supporting, and in 1883, she founded the Society for the Improvement and Colonization of East European Jews.
In 1883 when she wrote the poem, Lazarus was dedicated to helping the poor resettle after escaping violence, bigotry and oppression in their home country. It was a major part of her life until her death in 1887, too young, at age 38.
My grandfather, his parents and brother were some of those who escaped the pogroms and came to New York, through Ellis Island, in the early 1900s. His Certificate of Naturalization, granting him citizenship in 1943, hangs in a frame by the front door to my home.
Trump, Cuccinelli and their racist ilk do not deserve to even utter the words Emma Lazarus wrote.
6
I'm less interested in the history of the statue and the poem than I am with what they currently mean to Americans and how their meaning is being perverted by the vile racism of the White House's occupant and his minions. Part of the poem reads "From her beacon-hand glows world-wide welcome." World-wide welcome, with no mention of a specific continent or race. It's still inspiring to me, and I have ancestors who came through Ellis Island with nothing and went on to make great contributions to this country. Today's immigrants should be given the same chance.
6
Thank you. At the heart of almost all of what we wrestle with -- the crushing of blackness under the foot of the mighty.
Clearly Lady Liberty is a work in progress, in Mr. Blow's recounting of the statue's history. What is also clear is that, generous as it was, America today is not worthy of the gift. It should be dismantled, stored away or shipped back to France until we have a democratically elected administration that values people of color — and all immigrants — as much as it does tenth-generation Caucasian Americans. Until that time Lady Liberty is just stone, copper, and an empty promise.
Thank you, Charles Blow. Thank you for getting in the face of American hypocrisy, and thank you for writing about history as an
existential force, and for unassailable factual thoroughness.
3
Trump and the GOP require a white majority country to remain in power (and for Trump to avoid prison). The Presidency and the Senate control the government. The House is worthless. Simple enough.
1
I have to disagree with this editorial. The Statue of Liberty is a big symbol to me. I accept that she has not always been welcoming to all, but she is big enough to change. And change she must and will. I believe in the verse inscribed upon her. The United States can and should do much better. We will look back upon this period with shame and disgust. We would do well to live up to that verse.
2
No American should view any historic period in our history as halcyon days. "Lady Liberty,"(named by Lazarus, "Mother of Exiles,") was erected in the dragon ridden days of the 1880's. Poor people starved, suffered and died. Black people's lives were little better than described in Frederick Douglas' 1852 4th of July speech 30+ years before. Asians were not thought to be human and our leaders pinned medals of honor on our uniformed butchers of true Americans at Wounded Knee.
The statue of liberty and its poem are aspirational, as is our constitution & Declaration. We fall short, but never more so than now.
Current leadership reads our founding documents to see how their intent can be suborned ("by the people") and used in bad faith to cheat America in pursuit of their personal interests. Liberty and honor are for fools. Preserving their minority rule through voter suppression, gerrymander, use of foreign interference and bad faith administration are embraced as sophisticated M.O.'s.
The world notes we disdain justice. This will haunt our future.
Under Trump/McConnell/Barr we don't even aspire toward the light. There is no interest in defending freedom and democracy. Bad faith is our rule. U.S. officially stands for racism, caging children, harming refugees. Learning nothing from 20th century wars and holocaust, it disdains its allies and international agreements. It foments nationalism that will lead to conflict just as climate change looms. MAGA indeed.
4
I doubt many people will come to the US from Europe. The plain truth is that the US doesn't have much to offer. Our healthcare is inferior. We don't have any architecture that compares. The food is better. Train travel is better. People are more cosmopolitan. The museums are better. There is far less crime. Fewer gun nuts. The history is much more interesting and rich. They handle terrorism better. Soccer is much better. Education is better and cheaper. Religion is dying out there. Abortion isn't threatened there. Much easier to learn a second or third or fourth language there. Flights are cheaper. And no Trump.
5
"The federal government has never shied away from giving these white peasants support."
Are you kidding? When the theory of white privilege extends to minimizing the suffering of millions, the salience of class, the struggles of the labor movement, and the necessity of backbreaking work, you know it has taken a wrong turn. So much for solidarity.
1
I just learned about the original intent of the the stature about a week ago. As usual our history is buried when it is inconvenient to the popular narrative. Since it stands as a symbol to such blatant hypocrisy I say tear it down and shred it. One fewer ode to the hypocritical pile of pablum we pump out to make ourselves feel good as a nation.
Only the most gullible do not comprehend what iss happening here. The argument that we should keep people out of the country who are likely to end up on welfare rolls is a poorly concealed justification to keep out minorities. It also flies in the face of the purported American dream. The claim presupposes that someone with little education or skills will not succeed in our nation and will end up on welfare. Preposterous! Who among us cannot recite immigrant success stories where either the first generation or his or her progeny work diligently and achieve honor and success. The policy will be used to exclude people of color and Muslims. It is very thinly veiled racism.
2
Actually, the game is to import poor people and promise them free taxpayer subsidies and make them future Democrats. That has always been the game. Yet Blow and the democrats use race as cover for this scheme. Sorry, most people know better.
6
We must collectively fight the idea that we need to enact retroactive social justice against our forebearers because their views of right and wrong and good and bad differ from our own. Or more specifically that their actions didn't always match up with their ideals (equality as a principal but not in practice). This is and always will be a pointless and losing endeavor which only weakens our bonds and pits us at odds with one another. This is not to say that we cannot be critical of past missteps. Acknowledging that George Washington owned slaves should be part of our historical curriculum but shouldn't make us tear down monuments to him. Celebrating his greatness and undeniable contribution to the birth of our nation doesn't mean he was perfect or that he gets a "pass".
Today's pursuit of more social justice and equality is admirable but it isn't perfect. The very same people who so easily and gleefully take down our forebearers and cite America's ills may themselves be judged harshly by future generations whose perspectives on right and wrong are likely to be far different than ours. Of course they struggle to understand that because they are so convinced that they are right and others are wrong that they cannot see it any other way.
1
When are we going to talk realistically on this subject? Imagine you are now in your 20s and you tell your parents that your are going to move to San Francisco. The first question a parent will ask is how can you afford that because rents are very high there. When you explain that you don't have any money or education and poor job prospects but you are going anyway they will try to dissuade you. A good parent would steer you toward a more realistic destination. The America of 2026 will not the be the America of 1876, it is getting harder and harder to make it here if you are poor and uneducated. We should help people, not set them up for failure.
1
The intention of celebrating emancipation from slavery was a great idea, even if continuing racism made it overly optimistic. The change to a raised torch and the date for the Declaration of Independence made it more general message, a new form of government where it’s the governed rather than an anointed autocrat and liberal values. A symbol of an ideal of liberty rather than of an act of liberation.
Blow changes that to a bunch of white racists celebrating independence from a monarchy instead of a liberated slave because white peoples wanted it that way. That’s his opinion. The fact is that he has reached a point where who things serve is what matters, not how they serve anybody. A republic, a democratic form of government, guarantees of individual liberties, and a government of laws not men, mean nothing. The people who developed this form of government were racist and made slavery legal, so it’s all meaningless.
1
even to those with a conscience, the tearing down of everything as hypocrisy toward blacks (as in this article) gets wearying and depressing.
at the same time, the statue and its poem are not "the values that america was founded on". they were a 1900s annotation, like a hallmark holiday card you send when your parents get really old that reads "I never get to tell you just how much you mean to me...".
for many, the statue and it's poem's "meaning" only crystallized when the statue of liberty was tied to ellis island for purposes of tourist revenue - sparking the so-called ancestry industry, which was often limited to information from those ships that came from europe in the 1900s for which documentation records exist. it is easy to think that the ancestors who founded one's first-generation family in america "founded america,"; but that's anachronistic. they just showed up late to the party.
all of it is mythology (both the hypocrisy accusations and the idea that the founding values crystallized around 1900 on a pedestal during the era of european immigration that was just a chapter in time). what we need now is fair and balanced and intelligent public policy.
2
So I just googled the percentage of white supremacists in America, 31%, which correlates with Trump's "base" percentage. I may be going out on a limb here, but what I have seen of the base are not the best and brightest amongst us. The more diverse parts of the country by race and religion seem to be more indicative of the type of people who can stand on their own two feet, work hard, get educated, and succeed. I feel a diverse population is a vibrant population, as witnessed in Metropolitan areas, e.g. College towns. It has been said that America is great due to its diversity. What then is America if it is all a homogenized color of white? Its boring, inward, stale, and stagnant.
6
@SLF
Please provide support for this 31% number? What's your source? It's pretty absurd (in my opinion) to cite a super high figure like that and only reference Google. It's also highly suspect and convenient that you can line up white supremacy with Trump's entire base. Btw - I did a quick Google search under the same terms and according to the Southern Poverty Center, there were 148 White Nationalist hate groups in the country in 2018. While the trend is certainly going up (sadly) this hardly represents 31% of the population. Come back with real facts please.
1
@SLF
Good points, SLF and N. Smith.
Imagine ...
Imagine how the so-called "redskin" Native American Indians -- their ancestors slaughtered or forced to live on so-called "reservations" -- feel about the whiteskin invasion of THEIR homeland and their ways of life.
Except for descendants of either the true Native Americans or of black-skinned African natives who were kidnapped, enslaved, and forcibly brought here -- we are virtually all immigrants ourselves, or the descendants of immigrants who came here because they wanted to and because they were allowed to.
That includes Trump and his enabler Melania, and other "white nationalists."
None of us did anything to be born wherever we were born, nor to be born with whatever is the color of our skin.
Science has proven that we are all so much more alike than the diverse colors of our skin appear. So why do so many white people feel they have the right to claim so many privileges while excluding so many others?
Let it be known that Donald Trump, with his new and biased immigration policy is actually using one of the oldest housing tricks in the books -- which is no surprise coming from someone who calls himself a real-estate developer and magnate.
In order to keep the less "desirable" tenants from your properties, you simply price them out by making the residences unaffordable to all but those who are considered to be in the upper echelon.
And for the most part, that excludes people of color.
This isn't the first time Trump has employed this kind of racist policy, because a federal lawsuit was brought against him in the 70s for housing discrimination when he refused to rent to people of color, even when they had the financial means.
He lost.
But there's no reason to be surprised he's doing the same thing now because that's who he is, and he always doubles down.
The only difference is this time, he taking the entire country down with him.
5
I really couldn't care less about this history, or at least Blow's interpretation of it. Having hoards of illegal immigrants charging our southern border is a problem. Having a legal immigration system that prioritizes the poor rather than the well educated who can help us compete with China is a problem. At least Trump is trying to address these problems. I'm living in the 21st Century, Blow. What happened in the 19th is interesting but beside the point.
8
It is also absurd to craft policy on a 100 year old poem from different times. The world has changed. We do not weep for the factory owner who cannot dump his effluent in the public water supply. We do not lament that we have no vast lands to carve into free farms for the taking. And we are not a country so boundless as to need 1 million new immigrants each and every year!
3
Racial prejudice is just one of our many ethical failures. Where do you even begin listing them in priority?
We have textbooks full of our shortcomings from the ideal, but, as history attests, no real way to change the leopard's spots.
We are what we are: animals with clothes on. Yeah, we try to gloss over it, but our flawed human nature can't be denied: We have real, lasting, ingrained ethical issues.
We are problems to ourselves, to others, and to society. And no effective, widespread solutions are in sight.
We've tried magic, religion, philosophy, and science. And they no doubt helped some, but the barbarians are still at the gate, and they always will be.
All we can do is keeping sticking our thumbs in the dike hoping it will hold one more hour. Luckily, we've got lots of thumbs.
Nonetheless, you still might squeeze in a picnic at the lake without getting shot; however, watch the drunks on the road on your way there and back.
This morning in the NYT I read To Know The Brutality Of US Capitalism, Start On The Plantation along with Charles Blow's opinion article. I urge everyone to read both because they are companion pieces. We have begun finally to speak of toxic masculinity, perhaps we should also speak of "toxic capitalism". Indeed it's not as if they are not related.
3
There are truly two Americas.
One America is a land where we believe in ideals
As imperfectly as those ideals may have been applied, we believe in the notion that all are welcome, and anyone, regardless of origin, can become American.
That's what the Statue of Liberty is about.
The second America (including our president and millions of his supporters) is one based on a notion of land, skin color, and an "I got here first" mentality.
The words on the Statue of Liberty have always been anathema to those who are in this second group.
No, Lady Liberty isn't a hypocrite.
Millions of Americans are (and always have been) hypocrites.
2
Disconnection
Throughout the land sorrowful trumpets, trumpet taps.
Three corner folded spangled cloth, placed on weakened laps,
Liberty's Lady defiled, closing the previously open door;
Unfounded fear pockets the key, dismissing decrees allowed before.
Sapiens life divided, categorized; place, hue, visage, beliefs.
Right or wrong, causing wide spread anguish, unwanted grief.
Survival pushed hurly burly: hugging a rugged individual’s realm.
Resisting common fate, leaving Nature surely to overwhelm.
The elected ignore our lot, making civilization a joke,
To face existence alone; struggle to lift a mendable yoke.
Senses falsely disconnect measured wisdom.
Emotions, blasting to bits reasoning’s kingdom.
World divided, disarray, the road to collapse.
Must we travel on an undependable map?
To be out of sync with Earthen rules, none dare disobey,
Hastening misery, self inflicted folly, inevitable to rue the day.
1
Thank you for the history lesson.
But are we to expunge every object or literary work that is tainted by slavery and bigotry? The confederate statues represent(ed) nothing worth revering, but Lady Liberty, and Emma Lazarus’ poem, have welcomed millions of immigrants and continue to serve as an aspirational symbol across the world. That her history is not pristine, is as American as ... Since our inception, we have struggled to live up to the ideals professed in our Constitution, Declaration of Independence, and other founding documents. We understand that liberty is neither universal nor free.
Perhaps a refurbishment or lady liberty would have her rotating, but to face NYC would otherwise mean she is turning her back on immigrants.
“Freedom is a debt that could only be repaid by purchasing the freedom of others.” The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
This article seems to make some dubious assertions.
Programs such as 40 acres and a mule (started 1865), which this article references was targeted exclusively at black and African Americans. It did run into predictable political issues, but was nonetheless an overall success.
Black individuals received immense amounts of land peaking at 15,000,000 acres in 1910. The problem is that many would eventually go on to lose their land not because it was taken from them, but because of economic reasons.
Running a profitable farm is very difficult, running it with minimal to no education (on the management side) paired with the fact we were edging towards the great depression in 1930 made it even more so.
To deny these facts is not only intellectual dishonesty, but also a slap in the face to the many people that fought for such programs.
--
The other big issue is that this article implies the poem on the Statue of Liberty and the statue itself are intrinsic. They are not. The Statue of Liberty was privately funded, and that poem was one of the pieces of works donated to help with its fund raising.
Emma Lazarus who wrote the poem was primarily an advocate for Jewish causes; especially Jewish migration. It's correct that the person who initially envisioned the idea was a staunch abolitionist. However this was a time when people would work together, even when their ideologies sharply differed, and so assigning homogeneous ideology based on the designer's is inaccurate.
3
Yet one more example of "The greatest country in the world" that shows us we aren't. We have been conned. This country has a horrible underpinning that most people don't want to see or hear about.
3
I thought I remembered reading here at the NYT a few weeks ago that one of the interesting facts about the so-called Great Awokening was that white liberals in recent years had in fact gone even further to the left compared to black and Hispanic Americans on issues such as race and immigration.
I'm not convinced that black and Hispanic Americans are on average nearly as gung-ho about unbridled immigration compared to the liberal elites in media and politics. I also disagree that wanting a more restrictive immigration policy necessarily implies racism and xenophobia.
The author states that the statue of liberty faces towards Europe, yet the author Emma Lazarus was a Jewish activist who fought against the discrimination towards Eastern European Jews once they began immigrating in large numbers to America around the 1880s.
The 1924 Immigration Act which instituted the concept of national quotas severely restricted immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe, but interestingly enough didn't actually place a quota on immigration from the Western Hemisphere, including Latin America, although it would be disingenuous to suggest that this was due to any sort of ethnic affinity for Hispanics.
Immigration restriction in American historically though has had a significant impact against people from various parts of Europe, so I question the author's portrayal of the the Statue of Liberty as facing towards Europe and away from America.
4
This is a calculated move to force Democrats make statements defending the immigrants so Trump can use it against them in swing States in Midwest. He will say you are suffering here, but Democrats want to bring in people and give them your tax dollars.
It may be uncomfortable to acknowledge but the immense hypocrisy of US ideals that pervaded our propaganda through its birth and long history well even into this current century was a useful social tool to engender whatever improvements that have been accomplished. The raw disgusting horror of the Trump administration is the proud open flaunt of the open disdain for people who have been historically punished terribly for merely being born somewhat different in various innocent ways. The huge number of powerful people and a very large number of prejudiced citizens of the USA who can now openly display their lack of human decency with a sense they are legally supported says something rather revealing about, not only the nature of the administration, but the nation as a whole.
2
"This is yet another way for the administration to restrict people coming from poorer countries, many of them countries with black and brown people" This is a crucial logical connection that is not as compelling as the rest of Mr Blooms column. Certainly Trump is a racist and is working his base based on racists attitudes and racist understandings of the world, but a policy to limit immigration to those who can be expected to sustain themselves, to not require social welfare system support, has lots of logical support that runs far beyond "keeping America white" - and keeping America white may not really be driving it at all. I think this is appealing argumentation in the current environment but I would rather see a discussion about humane treatment of refugees, about the capacity of our social welfare systems (and our schools and hospitals), and the economic impact of taking in people who are clearly "do-ers" and likely future net contributors - THAT only slightly more complex discussion and that critical analysis is worthwhile - yelling "racism" and "white supremacy" is shallow if convenient and in-fashion thinking.
3
While I think Lady Liberty is a sidebar to trump's "March to the Sea", it is, nonetheless, the most visible iconic symbol ever to represent America's most precious ideals and beliefs of liberty and freedom. More so, when, the ending of the 'Planet of the Apes' showed Liberty's broken head lying on the beach - that one image, said it all, that America was gone.
When that tablet recalls, "that all men are created equal", it's trump who wants to make exceptions, in order to remake America in his own image. Alas, you can beat this dead horse but it's not going to change trump.
Lastly, I like to give a shout-out to General Lafayette (1757-1834) for helping America and France - "The Hero of the Two Worlds".
1
To me, what is hypocritical is the way the US chooses to enforce immigration laws. If the USA REALLY wanted to slow illegal immigration, the government would incarcerate the employers. Jail the CEO of Walmart for a few years. Jail a couple of grandmas who hire illegal immigrants to do their yards for a couple years. A few dozen of such incarcerations and the job market for illegals will dry up in months. Every employer would do extensive background checks ensure every employee is legal.
What American REALLY wants to address the problem in a practical way? 100% absolutely ZERO Trump supporters, Right Wingers, Corporatists, and Conservatives. Much easier to punish and incarcerate the poor than actually try to solve the problem.
2
Thank you for the history lesson.
I was born in a Minnesota Sunset town and never saw a Black person until age 11.
This peasant woke long ago.
I realize I have far to go before I sleep.
2
Charles, thank you for teaching me the original meaning behind the Statue of Liberty. I was never aware of what you have just taught me and what our history books often fail to mention.
My paternal grandparents emigrated from Sicily, maternal ones from Calabria. They were olive-skinned peasants with curly dark hair and Papists to boot. And, yes, they were discriminated against and called names I will not repeat here. They had to work hard, but unlike many African-Americans they were free from the start and had the support of huge families already on our shores. When I speak of my being only a second-generation American, my conservative friends in a patronizing way will state that my grandparents were “legal.” Such a ludicrous argument, is it not? To them it is moot, irrelevant, that Africans were stolen and forced into slavery. To them it is irrelevant that brown-skinned people from the Middle East and from south of our borders are attempting to flee from violence, suppression and oppression. Will we ever learn?
2
Trump thinks in terms of memberships like those required at Mae-A-Largo. This place is soon to be gated. You need a membership to gain entry....otherwise, keep out!
1
Charles, yet again, only sees the world through color and race. He cannot fathom a world in which others do not see things this way, so he treats us to op-eds like this one. Is Trump a racist or at least harbor some racist ideas? Probably. Is changing our legal immigration policy to limit the acceptance of immigrants who would immediately add to weight to our social safety net implicitly or explicitly racist? No, it is not. It is actually good policy. We have an immigration problem folks and we need reasonable reform to make it work.
7
Charles M. Blow's column is educational for me, how the "meaning" of Lady Liberty evolved, from abolition in initial design, to the D of I, to the addition of Emma Lazarus' poem in 1903, inviting all immigrants like herself.
But in reality, the government was legislating racism.
Now Trump's 'Poet Laureate' Ken T. Cuccinelli II has new lyrics for Lady Liberty in tune with Trump's racist aggression against non-whites, especially the poor.
Would it be out of character if Trump remodeled the statue, unveiling Lady Liberty in full Klan regalia holding up a burning cross?
4
Sometimes under the presidency of Donald Trump, I feel as if I am living in the movie Blazing Saddles.
Reading from time to time about the closing of rural schools ( https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/13/us/arena-wisconsin-schools-empty.html ) or about the concept of abandoning a great deal of the infrastructure in middle America in favor of the return of the buffalo commons, I have a feeling we could offer 40 acres with or without a mule to a great many immigrants and minorities and the neglected rural regions would welcome them wholeheartedly.
A diner selling arepas, tortillas or carne asada would be clearly preferable to a pharmacy flooding the land with opiates. The diner can give us sustenance; the pharmacy only addiction, misery and death.
Which would you choose Wisconsin, Nebraska, West Virginia, Kansas?
2
While I take Mr. Blow's points, it would have been courteous (to say the least) had he noted that the poem that is being abused was written by Emma Lazarus, a Sephardic Jew. Neither Jews nor women were being treated particularly well at that time in our history.
1
If we let in more rich people and no poor people, won’t housing prices just go up and make life harder for those who don’t have any inherited wealth? Isn’t that kind of what’s been going on in NYC and Vancouver, BC for a long time with all the Chinese landlord-hating proletarian but somehow obscenely wealthy Communists?
1
This is also a well-meaning but historically false reading of America’s values. I don't dispute the interpretation of Lady Liberty. However, Americans were plenty racist against European whites too. The Irish in particular come to mind. Although we should mention Jews and Poles and basically any unwealthy non-protestant. They weren't sending these people West to make them prosperous. They were sending them West to get rid of them. The migrants happened to get wealthy in the process.
Another shockingly assertion masquerading as an essay. Statements like: "The independence of white America had been elevated and the independence of black America had been pushed as low as it could go" are paranoid assertions, not reasoned analysis.
5
Actually, America was welcoming to immigrants from northern Europe and many were deeply troubled by others from elsewhere that we would now consider 'white'. The laws passed to limit immigration in the 1920s were intended to stifle the influx of people from eastern and southern Europe - Jews and Catholics, which the law then absolutely did. Lady Liberty meant so much to those who came here in the late 1800s up through the 1920s. That doesn't mean you are wrong in your analysis, it's just that 100 years of meaning and promise have deepened the meaning from the initial intention of the statue.
1
This is a helpful article. Thank you for reminding us that the Statue of Liberty was conceived by a French abolitionist, was originally intended to prominently display broken chains, and currently stands on broken chains. Thank you for reminding us that we have fallen far short of the worthy national goals of welcoming all who yearn to be free and seek a country with liberty and justice for all. However, I favor seizing the powerful image of Lady Liberty. Let’s use this symbol to support achieving these valid goals.
Out West, the Chinese Exclusion Act was not the worst. European Americans in Oregon shot Chinese immigrants. Attempts to prosecute for these crimes were inadequate. European Americans had already used vigilante groups and the U.S. Army in acts of genocide against Native Americans to seize the land. Racism was so strong in “liberal Oregon” that state law, including the later adopted constitution, excluded African Americans from 1844 to 1936. Local ordinances, in cities like Lake Oswego, even favored selling land to immigrants from England, Scandinavia, and Germany, thinking that immigrants from places like Spain and Italy had skin that was too dark and languages that were too different.
Yes, these parts of our history are very bad. We need to improve this country. The history of other countries is often worse. We need to improve the world.
3
Lady Liberty had nothing to do with immigration. The Emma Lazarus poem confuses the meaning of the statue, which Charles mentioned in passing, is only about Liberty.
The Emma Lazarus poem is beautiful. Let's create an immigration museum extolling the contributions that immigrants have made to the US, and relocate the poem there.
The great thing about a principle is that it can take on a life beyond the flawed human that espouses it. When I visited the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia, I was spellbound by the story of how Sojourner Truth and other abolitionists invoked the image of the Liberty Bell to bring people to the cause of abolition. The bell was bigger than the people who made it. So too, the image of the Statue of Liberty is bigger than people who agree to place it on Ellis Island. It is important to study history, which hold many clues to our present suffering. But is it also important to appreciate the power of a vision that stands taller than any flawed human ever could.
2
While I agree with your column, I,take issue,with your statement that Lady Liberty has to back to America. When I sit in Battery Park and look out into the harbor, I see the Lady's face clearly. Unless I missed something, NY is still part of the US.
3
This kind of strict interpretationism of art work is always disappointing at best. The spirit of true art allows it to speak as clearly to the current generation as to earlier ones even if the message changes over time. I expect a call to tear the statue down at any moment.
Kvetching about Lady Liberty's accurate historical placement in our nation's history of white supremacy, Euro-centrism and appalling treatment of people of color generally and black people in particular is interesting, but hardly helpful.
The fact is, most Americas see Lady Liberty as welcoming all to the land of opportunity. All means all. Explicitly favoring white people betrays our value.
Senator Warren has it completely right.
12
The reality is that while America is credited for its acceptance and diversity it has not always lived up to that standard. Each generation of immigrants was feared/hated by the previous one because they were poor, or spoke a different language, or spoke with a funny accent. Trump and Stephen Miller should understand this and perhaps not wish to impose the trauma suffered by their grandparents/great grandparents on others. Of course, these immigrants chose America because they saw it as a land of freedom and opportunity and they embraced what it meant to be American. And the children of each generation of immigrants grew up with other American children and--for better or worse--internalized what it meant to be Americans. So, by original intention or not, the Statue of Liberty stands for the diverse and accepting country we sometimes are, and would like to be.
5
Thank you Mr. Blow for the very interesting history lesson. I and I am sure the vast majority of Americans had no idea of its true intent.
It is so revealing that to this day our president supports and advocates for a segment of society that still stands behind such inhumane and archaic notions. It causes me to initially think that we have not grown much since that time. But on second thought the majority have moved forward we just made the very big mistake of allowing supremacists a voice. They are not a majority and will not be allowed to publicly maintain that voice beyond Trump.
16
At the turn of the century the bar for "Likely to become a public charge" was pretty low. An immigrant, to avoid deportation on these grounds, had to demonstrate they could perform manual labor, have the intelligence to hold a job and present the equivalent of $30 to the inspectors. In current dollars that is about $900.
6
@Jim Peskin
Yes, but at that time they weren't eligible for a number of benefits that they are eligible for now.
1
This is an interesting history lesson -- but we live here and now. True Trump has no decent motive for anything he does...but immigration is a serious problem and needs to be addressed seriously.
Canada has a point system for people wanting to immigrate. It is not wrong to require the same thing while implementing it evenhandedly. It might also be useful to issue work permits to immigrants for jobs that no American wants so the worker can be documented, pay taxes, and not drive wages down as happens in non-union construction jobs, etc. Also, many school systems would not be suddenly blindsided by having to increase class sizes at the last minute.
Fair immigration policy and, yes, if it curtails the 100,000+ per month wave of people from south of the border (just imagine what we all would be saying if they came in boats in those numbers and landed on Coney Island!) who are browner than the majority of Americans is not racist, it's an attempt to deal with immigration reality now as it exists.
Of course, Charles here can preach from the pulpit...but is he, or any one of us, opening our homes to 2-3 immigrant families to camp out until they can have a hearing, obtain a green card, etc. Likely not. It's no different in the broader context.
They need to be treated with dignity, but we as a nation need to treat our institutions with dignity and not let courts, schools, hospitals, etc., get stressed to the breaking point or be played by families using children as bargaining chips.
21
"...we as a nation need to treat our institutions with dignity and not let courts, schools, hospitals, etc., get stressed to the breaking point..." These institutions are stressed only because we don't provide them with sufficient funding operate properly. The answer is simple. Raise taxes on the rich and provide more funds for schools, courts, etc. People like you always feel that we can't do a better job at anything. What happened to: we can do better?
15
@Jon
Know any native born Americans desiring jobs slaughtering chickens? I understand there are some openings.
2
Raise taxes so we can care for more immigrants. Now, there’s a winning issue!
Mr. Blow's column represents an eloquent and historically sound commentary on American values. As other readers have noted, however, those values can evolve. The Statue of Liberty originally may have symbolized our attitudes toward European immigrants, but it can also represent our image of who we are as a people. The tablet inscribed with the iconic date of July 4, 1776 refers, of course, to the Declaration of Independence, with its assertion that "all men are created equal."
The founders of the republic may not have intended that statement of belief to refer to black people, but today we do. We still fall far short of converting that ideal into reality, but it is important for Americans to insist that the lady in the harbor proclaims to the world our country's embrace of the principle of the brotherhood of all peoples. Symbols matter, and this one provides a rallying point for those of us determined to resist Trump's attempt to convert the US into a have for xenophobic 'whites.'
19
America has had to change with the times during the past 100 years to bolster the orderly legal entry of visitors who were to become potential immigrants and revisit our immigration and naturalization laws. Patience and due process has paid off well to those who chose the orderly legal path to citizenship. Very few countries in the world to this day afford the liberty to replace the citizenship of a country in which they were born and take up citizenship pf another. In the century and half since the poem written under the statue of liberty, America has processed, welcomed and settled millions of people from overseas who came to America by boat by airplanes and buses and today if our population is over 300 million and rising it is largely due to those who entered the USA and call America their permanent home.
No time in history has America made lady liberty a hypocrite not even yesterday. Yes America and more specifically congress needs to do immigration reform and Trump should have the liberty to enforce the laws passed by congress. How hypocritical is it to have the liberty to enforce the laws of the land and secure the border as mandated my the people?
10
Hypocrisy is too strong. Some goals are not meant to be reached, but exist as ideals to strive for. That, however, is different from total rejection due to paranoia.
6
@gratis The key to your comment is the word "strive." The current administration strives in the opposite direction from that of the poem and therefore, for them, the ideal of which you speak does not exist.
"Restriction" (control of non-white immigration to America) is another word for racism through legal ports of entry into the United States of America. The Statue of Liberty was the seminal gift from France to the U.S. after the Civil War. The South lost that War between the States, and the North re-united the country and won emancipation of the slaves from their 500 years of shackles and slaveowners.
Today Lady Liberty is being reconstrued and used to signify welcoming only immigrants friom class-based Europe, not Africa, Asia, South America. The South in 2019 is still boiling as it did in the 19th century.
Donald Trump, the most unfit and malign of American presidents, is championing ''desirable" immigrants (Those who won't become "a public charge") through Ken Cuccinelli II, his Acting Director of Citizenship and Immigration Services.
Most of Trump's appointees are "acting" 2 years into his presidency. We have an "acting" president.
Reconstruction and Jim Crow put paid to keeping black people in line for the 19th and 20th Centuries here in God Bless America. For sure, The South won't rise again. Be assured that Trump's white base won't 'replace' people of color in our time. Are we headed to a Second Civil War? Or to World War III?
4
While slavery and racism was, is and always will be a stain on this country, it does not render invalid the ideals espoused in the inscription, among which, is that we are a nation of immigrants and we welcome those who are willing to embrace the values of temperance, hard work and community regardless of race, creed or ethnicity. Your attempt to discredit these beautiful words as stillborn because our white ancestors did not live up to the ideals is cynical and in my view bigoted.
30
@Anthony C
Yes. The view that ideas like liberty and democracy are invalidated because we've failed to perfect them and/or apply them consistently over time is without merit. We are, all of us, a product of our time. Our founding "fathers" were great, but flawed men and women. They rallied around big ideas, even if they themselves did not fully or completely embrace them. That's why retroactive justice and applying today's moral and social standards to prior generations is dangerous and frankly, unnecessary. What is good and right today was not necessarily what was good and right back then. To suggest otherwise is folly.
14
The democrats are committing political suicide. The mood in this country is to deport those who entered illegally and to grant asylum according to our laws. One of these laws, The Immigration Act of 1891, specifically permits the exclusion and deportation of paupers or persons likely to become a public charge. Yet the democratic presidential hopefuls are falling all over themselves in order to give freebies to these very people, ensuring that Trump is reelected.
22
@Jim Tagley
Thanks for giving your opinion as if you know what the opinion of the majority of people in this country is.
1
@LibertyLover
One does not have to be a genius to read the mood of the country. One just needs to be living in a state other than California, New York, Vermont, or Massachusetts.
2
@Jim Tagley
I'll add to my comment that the ultimate anti-genius, Trump, was and is astute enough to read this mood in America today.
1
The history lesson about the statue, its intent and the poem is fascinating. Mr. Blow, in the era of “everything is racism’, has conveniently omitted that even white immigrants where discriminated against. “No Irish need apply” was not uncommon. Jews were suspect. Germans an issue, etc., etc. So no, it’s not all about color. (And yes, I am a person of color, 2nd generation, whose grandparents came here legally).
Our immigration system is a mess because of hyperbolic, over reaction on all sides. We are nation founded on the rule of law. Millions of people living here, flouting our country’s laws is untenable. The Left refuse to acknowledge the difference between legal and illegal immigrants. The Right are outraged and strike out in overly harsh ways. Writers like Mr. Blow take the Trump bait and incite more fury.
We need to change to our immigration laws. Asylum seekers should be allowed to apply in their home country at our embassies. The majority of asylum claims are legally denied. Dragging children thousands of miles through torturous conditions only to be denied needn’t happen.
If you are here illegally and you are deported, your minor children who are not citizens, must go with you. Would that not be more humane that “dividing families”?
Controversial but needed is a constitutional amendment that denies citizenship to children born of parents who are not legal.
Unfortunately weaponized, means testing is a necessity, having little to do with poetry.
20
@Ikebana62 In the immortal words of Johnnie Cochrane, "Everything is about race. The sooner we stop dancing around that issue, the better off we'll all be." Too many white people today are in denial about how much racism there is and how effective it is in our political campaigns. Racism is how Donald Trump got elected even though he was---and still is---totally ignorant about how the Constitution works, especially with regard to the three branches of government. It's patently obvious racism is how he intends to win re-election. We are a country that embraces white supremacy and white nationalism, and it gets worse and more divided every day. Putting blinders on and disparaging those who call it out is a pathetic response to what's ruining America.
1
@Ikebana62
"Dragging children thousands of miles through torturous conditions only to be denied needn’t happen."
Do you seriously think parents WANT to drag their children thousands of miles through torturous conditions? Things in their home country must be really bad to make that decision.
And what do you thing would happen to someone who lives in countries run by corrupt dictator gov'ts and/or rampant crime lords who walks into an American embassy to apply for asylum? Do you think they'll wait out the many months for an answer living in peace and harmony? My thought is, they won't live. They might not even make it home from the embassy.
Is Mr. Blow throwing our iconic and beloved Statue of Liberty under the bus for his own (valid for him) interpretation of this historic monument. To me, Mr. Blow may be increasing the division in our country. My grandfather came here from Ireland and became a NYC firefighter. He was poor, took huge risks coming here and did service for NYC and was able to buy a modest house on Staten Island. Thank you Lady Liberty. Thank you America. I’m almost certain my grandfather would never have been a fan of Mr. Trump
21
Arguments about poor immigrants "dragging down" the country don't hold up. Immigrants are coming here because they have struggled mightily to survive in their own countries but could not catch a break. They see coming to the US as a once-in-a-lifetime chance to make something of themselves.
If you were hiring a worker, would you hire an ambitious immigrant or an "entitled" American to get the job done?
This goes to the core of the anti-immigrant argument.
4
Excellent history lesson in reality. The truth cuts away all the clothing of lady liberty leaving her bare and cold. She is ashamed of her nakedness. Once a marvel of beauty and boundless strength, the beacon of hope and resurrection. There is not a fig leaf for cover. Exposed for all to see. How have we allowed the light of her heart to go dark.
2
I heard the quote on the radio yesterday morning and thought it was satire. Then I found out Cuccinelli was serious (his father must be so proud to have the same name) and I was left sad with ire.
6
This column just reminds me how much work Americans have to do to get closer to the ideals and principles upon which this country was founded. Right now we are in a period when Trump and his party--the GOP--are in the throes of attempting to weaponize a white minority in any way they can. Trump and the Republicans have the rabid allegiance of at least forty percent of America that consists of angry, frightened, and privileged white people who want their country back. No diversity of any kind for them. In their eyes America is white, Christian, and heterosexual. Any other kind of American is unacceptable and unwelcome here. I don't know what this 40% intend to do about the non-white, non-Christian, non-heterosexuals who are either native born or naturalized citizens. It is frightening to even consider what that remedy may be. As for Lady Liberty--well she is an ambiguous ideal at best. Who we are and what we stand for really depends on us--the millions of Americans who inhabit this country and what kind of America we choose to be. Now is the time to make that choice. It's time that all of us start paying attention to choices that are being made in our names. And if they're not the ones we want--then it's time to start participating in our democracy--working for and speaking for candidates and issues that we support and voting in every election.
5
At what point does the conversation about racial tensions and disparities in outcomes focus on practical solutions?
Not all of the tensions and disparities are rooted in slavery, regardless of what the Statue of Liberty represents to whomever.
It is truthful to point out that the Europeans who conquered the world during the age of European exploration did not regard Africans or Asians or anyone else as their equal. The Europeans of their time regarded themselves, actually a subset of their civilizations, as the pinnacle of humanity. They compared their accomplishments in industry, architecture, the visual arts, orchestral music, science, military and so on and concluded that they were god's ideal.
They were wrong. They were immoral. We get it.
Obsessing with that reality these hundreds of years later does not change the reality of today's race relations dysfunction.
If you truly want to address the problems of today's race relations dysfunction, we have to start by addressing all of the causals. We then have to hold all people of both European and African stock accountable for how they will change their daily behavior to demonstrate to each other that they do value moral and ethical standards and laws. That they must do so in order to have a civil society.
Until that happens, obsession with the past may be a form of reality show edutainment delivered through media, but it's not likely to change anything in our lifetime.
6
@TDurk You write: "It is truthful to point out that the Europeans who conquered the world during the age of European exploration did not regard Africans or Asians or anyone else as their equal."
I think that's true of the nineteenth century, but not of earlier times. Earlier Europeans knew the east was where the riches were, which was why the west went east to trade and not vice versa. And when they got there they were often treated as barbarian inferiors. Even Napoleon thought Europe was a "molehill" compared with what Asia offered.
3
Mr. Blow,
The poem was commissioned and written in 1883. Just because the plaque was not placed on the pedestal until 1903, does not mean “The New Colossus” was some afterthought, its meaning grafted onto the statue. The composition was sold at an artists’ auction to benefit the Pedestal Fund. The money paid for it went to build the pedestal the statue now stands on. There’s no need to diminish one of the multiple meanings of the statue in order to elevate another. They are equally valid.
P.S. The tablet represents the law, not the “independence of white America”. It is in the shape of a keystone, the final stone placed at the top of an arch. The symbolism: the law is the key to liberty. Without liberty being enshrined in the law, the law being adhered to, and no man being above the law, liberty cannot stand. It will crumble like an arch without a keystone.
13
One would hope that the ideals of America as we interpret them through Emma Lazarus's poem are vibrant and vital enough to recover. I think it does little good to trash a symbol, no matter how flawed its ancestry, that represents the America we want to become.
14
The Declaration of Independence and the original Constitution were documents that reinforced the slavery and dehumanization of millions of people. But as Frederick Douglas frequently asserted, the struggle, the fight and, indeed the Civil War, were needed to both create a new country with a truly renewed and reconstructed (pardon the term) set of freedoms and to live up to some dimensions of the hope and promise established in those founding documents. Can we not look to the words on the statue in the same way—to assert hope and promise for new gerations of immigrants and renewed set of values for our country worthy of fighting for—despite the problematic origins of the statue?
6
I love to learn, because essentially the essence of life is to do so, and for this column, I leaned a whole lot. Thank you, Sir.
I have posted the poem (or just a phew phrases of it) often while blogging (always goes to pending, and sometimes never appears), thinking I knew of its true meaning. I always came from the point of view of equality for all, so there is that.
I would go one step further though (and have done so many a time, especially as of late) that we, as a global society, need to get away from the idea of borders altogether.
This planet cannot sustain 7,000,000,000 already, and adding another 1,000,000,000 every decade or so is only going to exacerbate the problem as resources (in particular water) dwindle. Furthermore, with continuous strife/war going on in the world, people are fleeing. Couple that with failed states, and said climate change, and no country can simply raise the drawbridge.
I have said often that this administration, republicans, and President are using a trope as a means to an end - that is to say who will have and produce the most amount of money for their select group. Color does not factor into it.
Although, I suppose it is apt for them that the Statue of Liberty is partly green, for that is the only color cared about.
6
Although Charles Blow's essay usefully reminds us of the circumstances in which the Statue became a part of our culture, it misses a much deeper point: that America's ideals are always a work in progress. The Statue represents those ideals. Certainly, the Irish, Germans, Jews, Italians and others whom the Statue once welcomed were despised in those days as much as black and brown people have been. Now the children and grandchildren of those immigrants are respected citizens. Today, the Statue must be interpreted as welcoming the new "wretched" of the earth as well as inspiring justice to our own domestic oppressed people.
21
The history is of interest as history. When the statue was new, people interpreted it to mean that people like my grandparents who came from Hungary and Russian-controlled Ukraine were welcome in the USA, not the Chinese, or Africans or Cubans. Why are we not allowed to reinterpret the meaning of the statue and the poem, just as we reinterpret the 14th Amendment to include the equal protection of marriage rights for same-sex couples today? No one, except for Pres. Trump, Stephen Miller and now Ken Cuccinelli thinks the statue has anything to do with welcoming Norwegians in the 21st century, though escaping from the regime of Orban in Hungary or the Russian-occupied portion of Ukraine does not require much of a stretch in 2019. Most people who refer to it as a symbol of acceptance of others today, however, are thinking about people from Honduras, India, Pakistan, Haiti, Somalia, China, etc., and not Europe, seeking to escape repressive regimes, crime or poverty, or some combination thereof, and hoping to make a better life for themselves and their children in the USA. That so many Americans refuse to see that not all their fellow citizens are given equal treatment, that they do not recognize that some of their representatives continue to spend their time, even as I type this, concocting son-of-Jim Crow laws for the same purpose as the original laws served, is a different matter, compared to what we want the statue to symbolize today, regardless of its meaning 100 years ago.
9
All true. And very sad.
Unfortunately, there’s still a large minority of Americans who support rule by white Christians. I’m not a part of that group so I’m characterized as a member of a group that they believe deserves only scorn. Opportunities are fewer and unwritten restrictions are many. Just the same, I have never been called a racial or religious epithet by an African-American. Just by white people.
But voters still re-elect their leaders term after term and the status quo remains.
What about starting with term limits in congress, just like the president? Things might not change overnight, but it’s a beginning. I used to think institutional memory was important. Now I think it’s a danger and a contributing factor to the state of the union today.
The demographics of the United States has changed and eventually so will the way and by who the nation is governed. The current press and his supporters aren’t going to stop that from happening. That’s fine with me. I don’t expect revenge. People who have suffered are less likely to give the same treatment to others, at least in my opinion.
4
If you're going to have term limits for Congress, don't forget the Supreme Court as well. Lifetime tenure is absurd. Say 25 years max for the term. That way there is incremental change, but not at the pace of a revolving door.
Thank you, Charles, for this historically enlightening essay. I have never deeply thought about the Statue, just always taking it for granted as a beacon for freedom. I admit, I fell for the myth that America stands for the ideal of immigration from all who escaped a lesser life to come and partake of the 'if you work hard you can succeed here'. People of all stripes that came for freedom.
One thing can be said for Trump: he's blowing the lid off of America's myths. I think that's a good thing. Let's get it all out on the table and decide at this moment in time who we are. Will we be a nation of xenophobes and racists or one that lives out our golden myth and make it true this time?
23
@sophia
The United States has plenty of "poor" people who are struggling. Why would we "import" more....? When all those people came over at the turn of the century, we did not have welfare or food stamps. There was incentive to work.
1
@sophia It is a good thing to blow the lid off America’s myths. The myth that white people arrived on our shores and without assistance created success must be thoroughly examined and analyzed.
1
Amen, Charles.
Cucinelli's observations are incoherent to say the least.
During the era of which he speaks, every nation was conspicuously class-based, not just European nations. And many Europeans who immigrated--especially those accommodated in steerage--would not satisfy the "public charge" standard.
Historians invoke the "push-pull" model of immigration. Many Europeans were not only motivated by the possibility of greater opportunity in America but fleeing inhumane conditions in their homelands, whether pogroms, religious persecution, famines, or exploitative labor practices.
European immigration to America has always included in spirit the category of asylum seekers, beginning with the Puritans, who fled to the sanctuary of the American wilderness to escape the yoke of the Church of England.
The standard for immigration should be based on the potential to eventually contribute to society and civil behavior, not on race or sheer wealth.
According to this standard, Trump and his cronies do not measure up.
12
America today has no use for huddled masses and wretched refuse of any color. Perhaps it did once when grist for the mill and canon fodder were needed in large numbers and there was Territory to claim through occupancy. The proposed immigration policy makes perfect sense and is an overdue reform. We cannot continue perceptually to increase the burden on social service programs through immigration programs. The world is full to the brim of huddled masses. Shall they all come to the US? What would they do today? Where would they go?
18
@Daphne
True, back when we welcomed the poor from Europe, we did not have a welfare state.
No food stamps, no Social Security, no Social Security Disability, no housing subsidies, no Medicare or Medicaid...the list goes on and on.
If you did not work, you starved.
So, we could take in very poor people who were uneducated, but who were willing to work. And, work very hard. No family leave, no sick days, no months off for
getting sick or having a baby.
Today, we are a different country. We have a cradle to grave welfare state. We are even fighting now to expand this welfare state by adding massive health care benefits.
So, how can we possibly have an open door policy like we did at the turn of the century? In fact, it is very disingenuous to advocate for universal health care or expanded Medicare at the same time you want to open our borders to the poorest and least educated seeking to come here.
6
@Daphne
Daphne, you are right that the capacity for the US (or any country) to take in new immigrants is not unlimited. In addition to the number of people in the country, and in the world, we are now dealing with the effects of Global Climate Change. It will only get worse. Don't you feel any empathy for people whose farmland has dried up from heat and lack of water, which was caused by the US and other advanced countries' continued use of fossil fuels? Globally, migration in the future will make today's migrations look like a small trickle. All of the countries in the world need to come up with humane plans for the future, when larger parts of the world become uninhabitable. You ask: "Where would they go?" For many the answer to that question ends with "Not here." Don't you think we can do better than that as a people, without destroying our own way of life? If your country became uninhabitable, what would you do? Shrivel up and die, so as not to inconvenience any wealthy countries? Or would you hope for some compassion from your fellow human beings?
2
@Daphne
"What would they do today? Where would they go?"
They'd go where they're going now and do the jobs they're already doing--housekeepers, farm workers, restauraunt workers, baby sitters, cheap chicken factory workers....and on and on. Just think what would happen if the taxes they pay are eliminated?
"For most of American history, the country has never truly welcomed nonwhite immigrants."
That has been true since the 1790 Naturalization Act which excluded non-white people from eligibility to naturalize.
Current immigration policy stems from the quota systems installed following WWI.
The Quota Act of 1921 and the even more restrictive Immigration Act of 1924 (the Johnson-Reed Act) were blatant efforts to limit immigration from Southern and Eastern Europe. Chinese and Japanese immigrants along with other Asian peoples were fully excluded.
The emphasis was to limit immigration to not only white people but those specifically from Northwestern Europe. The 1924 quota resulted in 86% of immigrants coming from Northwestern Europe of which 80% were either German (the largest group), British or Irish. Eastern and Southern Europeans constituted 11% while all other countries constituted 2%.
For most of America's history, maintaining white supremacy from a limited area of Europe was effectively the official policy of the United States.
Emma Lazarus's poem was a vision of America that was aspirational, and only of a minority at that, and never a reflection of reality.
21
Perhaps it is time for a new statue or 2 - one in San Francisco, maybe on Alcatraz and one in Miami. But the "Lady" must face outward - that is the gesture of opening a door and welcoming people in. The compassionate words on the the Statue of Liberty still resonate. I wish all Americans would cherish them and that we had a leader who celebrates the ideal of citizens who come from all corners of the world.
16
@Margaret Fraser
That is a great idea Margaret. It crossed my mind the other day.
A statue of Guan Yin or Gwan Gung on Angel Island (not Alcatraz, although it is closer to San Francisco and the Golden Gate Bridge), and a statue of Atabey in Miami.
3
I like Andrew Shins ideas and I think we need another new colossus - to Frederick Douglas!
Thank you Mr. Blow for inspiring people to think. Margaret Fraser
1
Can we deport big foreign corporations that get tax breaks? Corporations are people, and they are a public charge (to the tune of billions in federal, state, and local tax breaks), so it seems pretty straightforward.
67
@A Nobody
Take away the tax breaks and they will find a country that offers tax breaks.
1
@John
They've already found countries with cheap labor even if their offices are in the US. Apple refuses to repatriate tens of billions of dollars of profit to avoid paying taxes.
3
Trump’s team is playing such issues like a Stradivarius...doing every single thing they can to arouse his supporters. Looks like they are succeeding.
4
Times have changed. So have American values. As policy, the poem is useless... it’s just a nice sentiment. It’s impractical and it imagines a human nature which never existed. And in 2019, it is dangerous to cling to such a fantasy.
16
@Neildsmith
Dangerous for certain people being fed by a propaganda machine that demonizes immigration.
Please if you will , tell me how this country, a country that every person in it is an x number of generation immigrant (except Native Americans and African Americans), has or is being harmed by continuing a policy of admitting refugees and immigrants. I'm genuinely interested in your answer.
1
I believe we are not defined, at least not fully, by the worst aspects and the grievous errors of our history, even those which give a lie to our highest ideals. Instead, we must also be judged by our continual reach toward the nobility embodied in our founding documents and stated ideals, a nobility that allowed Dr. Martin King and many others to challenge our society again and again toward change and improvement.
We are in the midst of the greatest immigration to American shores since the legendary historic period of the mid-19th century to the early portions of the 20th. Nearly one quarter of our population now are foreign born. People from Africa and Asia who in the past did not have the means to immigrate here are coming in large numbers.
The idea of changing the standard of who might be considered for legal immigrant status is a sop to right wingers, especially the working class, who believe that "others" are wastefully taking their tax dollars for a free ride. What impact it has on successful immigration will have to be carefully watched.
There is no doubt that America has a legal structure allowing immigration from around the world, even the nations not "approved" by Trump. The serious question going forward is how to manage it. How much is enough? How much change can we absorb as people assimilate over generations? (Press #2 for Spanish) Trump and company are not addressing these serious questions in a reasonable way but rather going for political cheap shots.
7
The Statue of Liberty shifted meaning even before it was erected. The sculptor, Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi, originally envisioned the monumental statue of a woman to stand at the entrance of the Suez Canal. It was to be named, “Egypt Brings Light to Asia.” That was never realized. So, Bartholdi repurposed it and sold the idea to the French. In a way, we got leftovers.
10
It’s all going to be irrelevant soon, Charles.
Hang on to your hat: the next Global Depression is in the way.
We’re going to need Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders at the very least to save us, not the moneybags, this time; and Kamala Harris to prosecute all the criminals of the Republican Party, Trump and McConnell foremost, at the same time (her success in that may lead to her subsequent Presidency once we’re out of this serious morass).
Beyond that: we must hope for a full, Democratic Sweep in Congress, so the stranglers of the GOP can be strangled into silence or at the least, forced into cooperation on extremely urgent, indeed emergency agendas, across the board: climate change, saving our lands, preventing useless, costly wars and arms sales, protecting the poor, elderly and sick from criminal depredations by the moneyed class once and for all; guaranteeing a living wage for anyone who wants one, heavily subsidizing science research for the future (and not for capitalist overweening pride and posturing), rebuilding a crumbled infrastructure... one can think of many more.
All of these must be pushed through rapidly. Our species, and life on earth as we know it, are out of time.
We must literally save all our children from the horrors the future holds, starting now.
Eyes on the prize, man.
82
Before I even read this article I have to share something with you. That picture above the print moved me to tears. Seeing their humble bundles and knowing from what poverty and oppression they must have come from, I see for these people, they have truly arrived in the Promised Land.
It's such a beautiful image, the reflection of the hopes and dreams of millions of people.
"Life is precious because it is so full of promise."
There is nothing more beautiful about America than being that land so full of promise.
15
As an American immigrant to France in my retirement, I was welcomed with open arms by the French government and the local people in my village.
France has been shockingly generous to my wife and I granting us a permanent visa and citizenship if we wish.
What irony that a French sculpture gifted America with the Statue of Liberty and France itself welcomes American immigrants with generosity.
Many black Americans made France their new home because of the feeling of openness to a racial minority. These include Richard Wright and James Baldwin. Also Josephine Baker.
142
Thank you, Mr. Blow, for another thought-provoking piece. Like our present, our past has always been fraught with blatant hypocrisy.
Yet I have always seen the Statue of Liberty as the representation of a fundamental value, Freedom, an ideal that we can and should collectively strive to attain, and a symbol of the strength of our diverse nation to people around the world. Her companion, of course, is Justice. I believe both are invaluable reminders for Americans today, as our core values are increasingly under attack.
Perhaps in our future, America will have a monument to Mercy.
28
@MS: We need, in our future, twin statues - Mercy and Forgiveness. We need forgiveness badly. We need to forgive ourselves, with actionable policies growing out of that forgiveness and mercy, so we can move on as one country.
4
The orientation of the Statue of Liberty is to welcome ships and their passengers entering New York Harbor. The back itself shows the strength of Bartholdi's design and concept. Among its artistic predecessors is Delacroix's painting Liberty Leading the People.
10
@Alan J. Shaw | Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!
We may not, at this time have achieved the goals set forth, but we need the inspiration as a reminder of what we should strive for...for everyone!
1
Monuments take on different levels of meaning across time. Yes. the Statue of Liberty was intended to celebrate Emancipation. In the same way, one of the first sketches of the statue of Freedom on top of the Capitol Dome in Washington would have been wearing a liberty cap, a symbol in ancient Rome of a freed slave that became a symbol of the French Revolution but also of abolition. Jefferson Davis forced that change.
The poem by Emma Lazarus is a beautiful one and captures the changing nature of America itself, celebrating a generosity of spirit and the welcome to immigrants at that point in history. This is an ideal deeply meaningful to many generations of immigrants.
Trump and Cuccinelli cannot taint the concept. America has never been perfect but has always striven to create a more perfect union. The symbol of a shining city on a hill, or the torch of liberty lifted high, or the star-spangled banner, or the eternal flame at Arlington Cemetery all matter.
At this polarized moment, all symbols and words that speak to the true soul of America should be valued.
27
Trump's driving the economy while intoxicated by ignorance may well be the undoing of his term in office. While that ghastly prospect looms large and promises to punish all but the super wealthy, it would be more than tragic if such an outcome were to overshadow his vicious rule by racism and xenophobia.
Of course, one as small minded and venal as our president has zero understanding of the historical sweep of our history of immigration, so illuminated here by Charles' narratives, particularly the racism and xenophobia that preceded Trump's.
We're in a national 5-alarm fire; Republicans are in charge of the fire department and they are following the command of mayor Trump, telling them there is no fire, only smoke blown in by angry Democrats. It may take an election 14 months away to roll the fire engines. Then we can figure out how to rebuild.
31
If Americans with little more empathy are involved, we can get solutions without being crude or cruel. And if we remember slavery as our original sin, we would be less loathe to share some of our wealth. A bit of empathy and intelligence goes a long way to actually solve problems and avoid pain and cruelty.
17
@Jain
The original sin was the slaughter of the natives and the theft of their lands and livelihood. Slavery came later--another atrocity. There's enough original sin around for us to take responsibility and resolve our national--and world--problems with empathy and intelligence, as you say.
As an expat American and immigrant to France, my wife and I were not granted a visa and admission to our new country until we could prove that we can support ourselves.
We also had to demonstrate that we had private health insurance and would not rely on the French government for financial medical assistance.
Despite these strict requirements, the treaty between France and the United States requires that we pay all our income taxes to America. America in return will not allow us to use our Medicare while we live outside the US despite the fact that we are paying for it through our taxes.
All of this is a strange mix of values and restrictions!
25
@Michael Kittle: Re the income tax thing, while my husband was in the Army stationed in Berlin (before the wall fell), I was working for the US Army as a German national. I was paid in deutsch marks (this is before the euro). I paid no income tax during that timeframe. My social security benefits for those years show that I had zero income. I'll never mention to SS that I worked out of the country those years. It's a ridiculous law to require Americans living and working overseas to pay income tax in the US. With all the huge multibillionaire corporations in this country paying virtually no taxes, that law is just another example of the inequality of our system. Vive la France!
3
Historically, you are probably correct. However, when I learned about what was written on the Statue of Liberty, I never once thought of race, religion, ethnicity or whatnot. The tired, the poor, and the huddled masses yearning to breathe free exist in all races, religions, ethnicities and whatnot. What I learned is that is that they came and come from Europe, Asia, the Far East, Africa, south of the border and various island nations, all hoping for a better life for themselves and their families. It is only recently that this American generosity of spirit has been limited to the well-rested, the rich and those whose lives were already pretty good back in their old countries. And if their lives were so great back in their old countries, why on earth would they want to come here?
21
Beautifully written. You are the conscience of the society that we seek and we are proud of. I am confident when the 2020 elections are over we will begin to restore the soul that we will be proud of. Keep reminding us of why we should vote D in 2020.
25
As it happens most permanent legal residents who arrived in the U.S. after 1996 are ineligible for public assistance (cash, Medicaid, SNAP, etc.) for at least the initial five years of their permanent residency. Apart from those who are granted refugee status, it's assumed that they're here to work or that they have a sponsor (ordinarily a spouse, parent, child, other relative or employer) who will provide for them during this period and conceivably thereafter. This rule is applicable to children, the aged, the handicapped and all other permanent residents. (Undocumented aliens aren't eligible for any such benefits and, contrary to the thinking of most Trump supporters, never were.) Trump is, in effect, prolonging the period during which legal immigrants remain ineligible for assistance- though my guess is that he's not even aware of this.
Mr. Blow's points are, as usual, well taken though it seems to me that he's gone a bit overboard with his appraisal of the Statue of Liberty's significance. Whatever its creator's original intention may have been, it's long been widely recognized that the monument is a welcoming symbol for prospective immigrants of all races, religions and ethnicities. If Lady Liberty is gazing in the direction of Europe she's also gazing in the direction of East Asia. Were she staring out in any other direction, I daresay that most of us would be wondering why.
comment submitted 8/15 at 12:43 AM
30
I went back to the Statue of Liberty when I was in NYC in mid-July. I took some photos and posted them on Flickr with a message: "Although I had been there numerous times, I decided that it was a good time to go back, particularly in light of the large number of people who are now opposed to admitting immigrants and refugees to the US. Oddly, many of those in strong opposition are themselves, first or second generation immigrants, including the person who lives in the White House and two of his three wives."
You can see the photos on Flickr, where I use the same login id as here on the NYT page.
10
The "public charge" provision has been a part of the immigration law for a while.
The Immigration and Nationality Act declares "any alien likely at any time to become a public charge" and any non-citizen who “within five years from the date of entry, has become a public charge from causes not affirmatively shown to have arisen since entry is deportable.”
As an immigrant and naturalized citizen, I was aware of the provision and did not find it unreasonable. Fortunately, I have never had ot use any sort of public assistance, including unemployment benefits.
What Trump is doing is expanding the definition of “public charge” so that people can be deported. The question is whether the courts will let him get away with it.
The man doesn't care for immigrants, especially if they are not white. He doesn't mind the type that he can marry, such as Ivana and Melania.
16
@RK
We cannot ignore the phrase "not affirmatively shown." If a non-citizen loses his job through no fault of his own, then he should not be deported..
9
I can not fully express, how much I appreciate Charles Blow for illuminating me, and educating me, a retired, white, highly educated (almost !) man. Thank you sir.
13
It's doubtful that any person, symbol or document in American history is without ambiguity, including the Declaration of Independence, the US Constitution or the Statue of Liberty . But Cucinelli's attempted gloss or amendment of Emma Lazarus's words rates an F-grade as a literary or sociological interpretation of her poem The New Colossus.
18
"For most of American history, the country has never truly welcomed nonwhite immigrants..."
It welcomed them as long as they arrived as property and not as people. Property can be bought and sold. It solved the problem of labor by turning it into capital.
19
Thank you for the education Charles - seriously, you've really enlightened me - but I think you're stance to this issue suffers from a couple of faults.
Firstly, Trump is not "fighting for their primacy, their privileges and their power", referring to his "base", but exploiting their racism and general ignorance to serve his interests and the interests of other similarly ignorant, arrogant and selfish members of the US's ultra-rich. "They" are victims of decades of neo-liberal and libertarian conservative politics and policies. Racism can't be completely eradicated, but in 1980 it was not inevitable that Donald Trump would be elected president in 2016. A different history could have seen him drop out of the race very early, if he had still run, for racism in the US could have been much less virulent.
Secondly, despair and rage at racism towards "black and brown" or simply "non-white" people all you like and I will read and listen patiently, but don't forget the lesser victims of this sad state of affairs: the "white" people removed from full comprehension of the horror and the indignity of their non-recognition of the full humanity of others, simply because of the different tone of their skin etcetera. Racism may be an inherent feature of human nature, but it is not at all an essential feature of adult human existence, just as as infants we all soil ourselves, but as adults we can have long graduated to moving our bowels when and where it is socially appropriate. Peace.
6
@GRW I meant "prevalent" not "virulent" - but "prevalent and virulent" would have been fine too.
The irony is that the massive influx of low wage workers helps keep wages from rising for minorities already in the country.
So basically anyone who longs for the return of an 1800’s immigration policy, expressed in a poem no less, is essentially supporting the ongoing suppression of U.S. minorities
That itself sounds like a form of racism.
8
Lady Liberty has always been a Hypocrite so let us stop hyperventilating because Trump is taking the covers off the great lie. From The Slavery of Africans, The Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882 to the present day race has always played a major role in America. We interned Japanese Americans and not German Americans during World War II when we were at war with both Japan and Germany. I am not a fan of Trump or his policies but he is only a symptom of the disease we have had for 400 years. We have under-funded communities and schools of color for years before Trump came on the scene. When drugs were ravaging communities of color the solution was to build more jails. Now that the majority population is being ravaged by drugs the solution is compassion and treatment. When the first Bush was in office the jail population of America was about four hundred thousand inmates and now it is over two million. Trump has taken the covers off what some of us really think about race in America and for many of us, we don't like what we see. In a strange way, Trump may be doing America a favor by forcing us to confront our demons. Trump is the champion of maintaining White Privilege and we need to stop kidding ourselves that he is not. Lady Liberty was just a tourist attraction to many Americans of Color.
12
Conservative arguments against immigration boil down to:
1. They'll be a burden on the rest of us, financially.
2. They're different than us, culturally, and they'll vote for Democrats.
3. They're doing (method of entry) or probably (imagined past history) will do, illegal things. We follow the law here.
The first argument fails because there is no actual data to support the claim, only the rantings of Conservative talk-show hosts whose minds are probably addled by drugs (at least one is a self-confessed drug addict).
The second argument fails because it is based on politics. At this point there is a lot of data to support the claim that the Republican party is the home of racists and white nationalists, neither of which is representative of what America stands for.
The third argument fails because the standard of 'illegal' is reached via decisions rendered by a court of law of applicable jurisdiction, not public comments. It might be noted the chief employee of the Executive Branch seems to have 'violated the law' numerous times, but the people making the immigration arguments do not seem to care about his 'violations of the law'. Equal Justice for All is a nice sentiment , but like the poem on the Statue of Liberty, it is more or less ignored in practice.
Since all the Conservative arguments against it fail, the question of immigration is subject to emotional arguments, not rational ones. As usual.
7
@The Observer my complaint is a larger one: we take in 1 million new immigrants each and every year. This is the bulk of our population growth. More people, more housingmore suburbs, more cities, strip malls, more highways, more pollution, more traffic. Do we keep doing this forever? No more wild spaces, just everything for our growing population? It is time that we and the world move toward population stability and reduction. If we want a world that is more than just a narcissistic mess centered on us.
2
"Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working men of the world - Unite!"
The Communist Manifesto (1848) (Engels' approved translation into English)
This is a further reason the chains were minimized in the Statue of Liberty. One of the reasons Southern plantations were not ultimately parceled out to the freedmen despite proposals by Thaddeus Stevens and other so-called "radical" Republicans (completely different from any Republicans today) was that it would have been a taking of private property without "just compensation" (see: Foner, Reconstruction). Northern property owners (white, of course) didn't want to set such an example - even when the dispossessed were clearly traitors.
8
"What we are witnessing is an all-out, every-avenue strategy to maintain America as a white majority country."
- But no one would want to live in a white-minority country. Such a country would be precisely where everyone wants to immigrate *from*.
4
Yes, I imagine that if the Statue of Liberty had stayed true to her original intent - to memorialize emancipation of slaves - that it would have been long gone by now.
5
The United States promises much more than it delivers and has dice the country was founded. It really does not welcome immigrants so much as it tolerates them. It is slow to admit wrong doing which contradicts it’s professed values. Nearly all of it’s heroes have been hypocrites. The majority of white European descent tended to see itself as moral even when racism was common, so common that those who believed it were often kind and generous to he people seen to be inferior. Yet, over two and a half centuries the country has changed greatly for the better. The patience of many generations of people who hoped that it would become the place it asserted to be has paid off.
But the unprecedented treatment of Obama by Republican leaders and Trump’s appeal to racist sentiments among those in his base is raising a lot of anxiety. People who fear a return of a racist system, are not afraid but furious. They are retaliating by accusing all white people of intending to join in an effort to disenfranchise all non-white Americans.
2
For a person so enamored of European progressive socialism, it's a bit disingenuous to carp about a rule that is in place in every country in the Europe.
18
Another trenchant opinion piece, Mr. Blow - thanks for holding our feet to the fire so that we continuously examine our beliefs, that our compassionate humanity may shine through.
And just one final thought - what is the genesis of the assumption, on the part of this administration, and the GOP generally, that people want to immigrate to America for the express purpose of collecting safety-net benefits? Seriously - who would undertake a long, grueling, physically and spiritually and emotionally exhausting journey, uprooting themselves from home and kin, knowing, presumably, that this country is in a not-particularly welcoming mood right now, hoping to do nothing upon arrival but slack on the public dole? No rational person would think that; the rational person knows that people work for what they want. So, I guess this is just another veiled example of racism, much like Reagan’s “welfare queen” trope.
9
“What we are witnessing is an all-out . . . strategy to maintain America as a white majority country — and, by extension, to extend white power and white supremacy . . . This is why President Trump’s base loves him. He is fighting for their primacy, their privileges and their power.”
Pretty much what Trump wants them to believe. But whether you say it as a condemnation of Trump’s racism, or he says it to sell his “MAGA” snake oil to his voters, it’s a lie. Trump fights for no one’s privilege & power but his own and that of his fellow billionaires. He needs gullible poor white people to rip off just as much as he needs people of color to demonize. Economic power is the point; racism is simply one of his cynical political tools.
16
Lazarus abridged:
". . . and her name, Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; . . . "
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she . . ."
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,"
The poem, like our constitution, is aspirational. The statue's name is not "Lady Liberty." The poem names her "Mother of Exiles." It clearly asks not for the accomplished- "your storied pomp." It asks for the wretched and homeless." The yearning peoples who have built this country.
Yes it was erected in a dark time, but I think it was erected to shine a light pointing the way. As the Orange Mandolin song asks her, "Turn around, turn around, turn around, turn around. The wolves are here."
5
Which of you has proudly announce to the world, "My grandparents came to this country with nothing but the clothes on their backs, and they manged to change their future for the better"... Irish, Italian, Polish, German, Greek, the list goes on and on.
Own it. Accept that, unless you are native american, we ALL descend from inmigrants..
10
Words mean different things to different people. I am sure TS Eliot did not write The Hollow Men about Republicans, but it sure rings true with me...
III
This is the dead land
This is cactus land
Here the stone images
Are raised, here they receive
The supplication of a dead man's hand
Under the twinkle of a fading star.
Is it like this
In death's other kingdom
Waking alone
At the hour when we are
Trembling with tenderness
Lips that would kiss
Form prayers to broken stone.
IV
The eyes are not here
There are no eyes here
In this valley of dying stars
In this hollow valley
This broken jaw of our lost kingdoms
In this last of meeting places
We grope together
And avoid speech
Gathered on this beach of the tumid river
Sightless, unless
The eyes reappear
As the perpetual star
Multifoliate rose
Of death's twilight kingdom
The hope only
Of empty men.
5
@Chad. This is powerful
1
Cujccinelli (and Miller) both recast the Statue of Liberty as giving the world the bird.
6
Trump isn't targeting Hispanic migrants to deter illegal immigration. He's targeting them because they are brown-skinned. Remember the Trump supporter who said, "He isn't hurting the people he's supposed to be hurting."
It is all about skin color. Trump and his base have never seen Hispanic migrants as people, and the vicious descriptions of them - vermin, animals - show their racism and hatred. Trump has demonized some of the most vulnerable people in this hemisphere, for only one reason. They aren't white. And this is why his base screams "illegals", new code for "brown skinned".
And I'm tired of these screeds I hear from Trump voters - first, that I support "open borders". I do not. I support a humane, decent immigration process, and legal protections for those who prove they are asylees. We have none of these things under this Trump.
And second - the tired trope that Trump supporters aren't racist. If the past three years have taught me anything, it's taught me that this is a stone cold lie. One cannot get any better proof of Trump supporters' viciousness than El Paso. The shooter there was nothing more than a proxy for the exercise of their race hatred.
If the refugees coming to our southern border were all whites with blonde hair and blue eyes, Trump voters would be the ones clamoring for open borders. Their "evangelical" churches would support these people.
Enough with the lies. Trump and his voters should know that we see them for who they truly are.
23
@Cordwainer Smith
Great post. Yes, it's important to counter the lies with facts:
--Democrats do not support open borders
--Democrats are not socialists
--Democrats support capitalism, but a compassionate one
3
Charles,
You write a very sad commentary on the progress (or lack thereof) of acceptance of people of color since the Civil War. It’s a shameful past that still attracts people who find it easier or more convenient to keep their privilege than to try to assimilate people that don’t look like them.
Don’t kid yourself, we may have come a long way, but with 45 spouting his racist rhetoric and using code words like infestation and rapists, etc., he is stoking the fire of white nationalists.
I’m frightened, sad and mad about the message he’s sending to our children, especially those that have to hear that hate directed at them. Where does this lead, and what is the end game? I’m looking forward to putting this moment in history behind us in 15 months.
8
As an African American growing up in the South during the Jim Crow era, some friends and I quickly learned to interpret our country’s ideals and icons differently.
After the lynching of African Americans Emmett Till and Mack Parker in the 1950s, we sometimes changed the line in the Star-Spangled Banner from “the land of the free and the home of the brave” to “the land of the tree and the home of the grave.”
37
@A Southern Bro
If slavery is America's worst hypocrisy to freedom, lynching is America's worst hypocrisy to justice. America has many sins to atone for.
5
I assume the Cuccinelli clan did not come over on the Mayflower. Nor did they come with their pockets full of money. Are we really so ignorant of our own history that we cannot see the idiocy of the Trump position on immigration? He thinks everyone who comes here should start at the top like he did. Heaven help us if this nonsense is allowed to continue. We will all be on public assistance because no one will be able to afford the price of food or clothing since there will be no low income wage earners to work in the fields and factories. 2020 can’t come soon enough.
8
To keep America a white majority country and so to preserve white power and white supremacy.
Mr. Blow joins the chorus of racial stereotyping and hyperbolic assertions to express outrage over four centuries of oppression only recently relieved, but not necessarily gone for good.Sometimes people need to yell, but beware of yelling at the wrong people.
Trump is playing a racist card with people who do fear that a white minority would harm their well being, but they are hardly all of European descent. They are the bigots. White power and white supremacy are history, now. Keep accusing all white people with European history of racism, and instead of begging forgiveness for other people’s bad acts, they will simply dismiss you as one too angry to converse in a reasonable way.
3
The complete second verse:
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
"Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!" - does that mean that even Emma Lazarus understood that there are some things you want to leave behind?
Immigrants are great, but the countries they come from are usually not - otherwise, the immigrants would not be leaving.
It is of the utmost importance that things like MS13 are left behind, which implies that the careful and orderly vetting of immigrants entering our country is essential. Anyone who thinks otherwise may have a heart, but they certainly have no brain.
3
Emma Lazarus wrote the poem The New Colossus in 1883 as a donation to raise money for the construction of a pedestal in the Statute of Liberty. A friend of hers found the poem in a bookstore 17 years after her death and organized a civil effort to publish the lost work in 1901. The poem contains the oft cited language of “Give me your tired, your poor …” It was written by a poet at a time when the United States had about 50 million people. No reasonable person would think that 14 lines of poetry, written over 130 years ago, were meant to set in stone the national policy of the United States for legal (and illegal) immigrants for eternity.
3
The Immigration Act of 1882 was in effect when the Statue of Liberty was dedicated in New York harbor in 1886. The law blocked the entry of “idiots, lunatics, convicts, and persons likely to become a public charge.”
Emma Lazarus, who wrote the poem inscribed on the Statue of Liberty, was a born in New York City in 1849. She was a descendant of Sephardi Jews, who fled the Inquisition and arrived in New Amsterdam before the American Revolution. She wrote the sonnet (The New Colossus) in 1883 and donated it to an auction held to raise mopey to build a pedestal for the Statue of Liberty. The "huddled masses" the poem refers was the large numbers of European immigrants arriving in the United States in the 1880s.
Lazarus was an activist and advocate for Jewish refugees fleeing persecution in Czarist Russia.
10
@William Case - and the prior United States Naturalization Law of March 26, 1790 was limited to immigrants who were "free White persons of good character", FWIW.
1
@William Case
Yes, a minority that faced discrimination. What makes you think she wouldn't stand up for the refuges coming here today?
@Skip Moreland
She would stand up for refugees, but not necessarily for all immigrants or illegal immigrants.
Immigration should be based on merit period. If the boarders will be sealed tight to uneducated migrants and illegals the problems of detention camps and dividing families will disappear.All illegals should be deported swiftly. They know the risks of the illegal status, and do not do anything about it until caught. I have no empathy to illegals who in essence break the law by being here. Americans children, homeless and poor come first.
4
@lieberma: Well,maybe we should include proper spelling in that 'merit' category. It's 'borders', not boarders.
The people coming to the 'borders' are presenting themselves and asking for asylum. You may disagree with asylum laws but the people are operating legally.
2
@lieberma.
Have you ever heard of the word "asylum" or the US laws determing how people fleeing oppression around the world can legally seek asylum here? Most asylum seekers came here with little more than the clothes on their backs. The fact is that most illegal immigrants in this country don't enter at our southern border. They typically are students and visitors from all over the world who flew into the country legally but then over stayed their visas.
But if we get back to your notion that people should not be allowed here unless they don't need cash or jobs or the right to vote, then virtually no immigrants should be here. Just look at the history of Jews fleeing Nazi annihilation or the Irish fleeing devestating famine or others who came here just seeking a better life.
If you could somehow understand this history and have some empathy, maybe you can see how impoverished women and their children fleeing a place like El Salvador and it's drug gangs and murder threats should be able to seek asylum here.
@Sophia
Well Borders-Happy? Did not change my mind
How is it that we automatically assume a merit-based immigration policy is targeting white people when currently the most educated and prosperous immigrants are coming from Africa, and then Asia?
Talk about the soft bigotry of low expectations, wow.
3
“What we are witnessing is an all-out, every-avenue strategy to maintain America as a white majority country — and, by extension, to extend white power and white supremacy — for as long as possible.”
Charles Blow is advocating for the opposite, to make America a white minority country. I see no virtue in that, and I wonder why more people don’t call him out. Most of his readers just humor him though, seeing little harm in his silly outbursts.
2
@NorthernVirginia
People are temporarily afraid, in some less diverse places.
Do you remember the Black Power demand days of the late 60s and early 70s? Black threats of violence had a lot of white people fleeing and afraid.
But you can only demand so much, by force and alleged grievances alone. When he opportunities come, if you don't, can't or won't take them, no one fears your demands or thinks your cause just anymore.
Especially if one group's progress comes at the expense of innocent others. (I wonder how many black descendants of slaves understand that it was black tribes in Africa who captured, enslaved and sold other tribesmen to white slavetraders.)
1
@NorthernVirginia
Why should white people have the privilege of keeping others out when they were immigrants in the 1st place and killed the native population in order to seize the land from the people you object to.
Why are white people scared of becoming a minority? Is it because of the history of this land they have enslaved and discriminated against minorities?
Whites were the minority when they came here. Then they slaughtered the people living here to steal the land. That is how they became the majority.
1
America was built with the blood, sweat and tears of immigrants. Lady Liberty is in tears after the racist, anti-immigrant campaign that Trump and his MAGA hat crowd have made their first priority.
4
I was also misquoting the intent of the poem according to Charles. In fact, we all know that the idea of America is believing in an idealistic version. I will push back even at this nearly convincing argument that from the white house to statue of liberty, we can view everything tainted by slavery. I think the poem has done tremendous good in giving many of us an image of kindness which exists in every community now standing up against ICE. I think we are a much better country if we believe in the best of our values and work for a future where we have the power to right the wrong. I have nothing against millions of immigrants who reached our shore and also believed in this welcoming values enshrined in these marvelous words.
4
@Sunny
"Well, I'm proud to be an American,
where at least I know I'm free.
And I won't forget the men who died
who gave that right to me.
And I'll gladly stand up, next to you,
and defend her, still today..."
~Lee Greenwood.
2
I cannot believe it's 2019 and we're having a debate about what the Statue of Liberty means or represents... I had seriously thought I couldn't be astonished anymore by the current social and political climate... but here we are.
4
You misrepresent the Statue of Liberty's history. Édouard de Laboulaye had, to put it mildly, an overly-idealized view of America, wrongly believing the Civil War transformed America into an egalitarian utopia.
Laboulaye identified with what he thought was American liberty, while despising French Revolution liberty. He believed the French Revolution far too radical and violent, and remarkably considered the Civil War far superior because of a lack of violence.
Laboulaye, an insulated white aristocrat from Europe's ruling class, convinced himself that the victory of the North in the Civil War not only abolished slavery and racism in America, but everywhere in the world.
After Laboulaye's proposal in 1865, Lincoln was assassinated, so Laboulaye decided to use the statue to attack the French government by arguing how perfect American liberty was, and by implication, how inferior French liberty was.
However, the statue was not dedicated until 1886, and by then none of the original abolitionist symbolism remained. It was more than 20 years after the end of the Civil War, and Laboulaye was devastated by the reality of post-Civil War America.
Laboulaye decided to make the statue about reunification and a general idea of liberty. It without question took place at the expense of African Americans, yet what Laboulaye originally imagined in 1865 has nothing to do with the actual Statue of Liberty dedicated in 1886, nor the fundamental reality of America in 1865, 1886, or 2019.
4
@Robert B
Laboulaye died in 1883, only 3 years before the dedication of the Statue of Liberty in 1886, but he'd already abandoned all of his beliefs about American liberty, what the Civil War had accomplished, or how it supposedly created a Utopian egalitarian society.
It is why the Statue of Liberty was about reunification and liberty, not abolition. The plaque and "poem", which you notably refuse to even acknowledge, written by Emma Lazarus, is wholly consistent with Statue of Liberty as dedicated in 1886.
You can argue that it's inconsistent with Laboulaye's original abolitionist ideals of 1865, but he also originally imagined it as a critique of the French Revolution, and French democracy and liberty, as compared to an idealized America.
However, by 1886 any of the original abolitionist symbolism was deliberately removed with Laboulaye's consent as most of what he believed about both the Civil War and America was untrue. Therefore the Statue of Liberty was made to represent some sort of fundamental, though totally unspecified, (and hence unrealized) idea of liberty.
Emma Lazarus's sonnet "The New Colossus" was composed in 1883, the same year Laboulaye died, and it gives realization to that general idea of liberty. It is therefore wrong to pretend, (as you do while refusing to even name it or speak of it other than as some "poem"), that it's somehow inauthentic, when it is in fact it's wholly authentic and consistent with the Statue of Liberty as dedicated in 1886.
3
Charles, thank you for educating me. I agree with one of the commenters that many of us liberal but unenlightened white folks (e.g. Ms. Warren) take the words to genuinely mean what they say and are inclined, at this remove of a couple hundred years, to blindly defend them. But the light you shed on the alterations to the original Statue and the exclusionary interpretation of the poem is resoundingly meaningful and telling.
You have calmed me down about this whole drama vis a vis the poem, yet I find myself still stubbornly clinging to its ideals in spite of the sobering reflection on their provenance. No matter how originally hollow or perennially unrealized, ideals are merely a standard of perfection, something to strive for. They are literally "ideas," and the ideas enshrined in that poem have taken root in the minds of many successive generations. This should give us hope, because these ideals are the only things strong enough to carry us through this perilous time in the life of our young and dreadfully fractured country.
4
The Statue of Liberty is located in New York Harbor. In the late 19th century, huge numbers of immigrants arrived in the United States from Europe. A great many of them entered the country through New York Harbor.
Because of its location, the Statue greeted immigrants from Europe, not black sharecroppers from South Carolina or Mississippi. The project’s promoters, I presume, thought it should be made into a symbol of welcome for immigrants, because of where it was located.
Surely Mr. Blow understands that. How can he live in New York of all places and not understand it? This country obviously does have a history of prejudice against black people. But it has a history of other things as well, for example, attracting immigrants.
He remarks that “It is poetically telling and meaningful that the statue stands with her back to America and her face toward Europe.” That strikes me as a fancy way of announcing that he will make the Statue signify anything he pleases.
16
@David Todd And besides, Lady Liberty has to face somewhere, preferably outward, looking across the sea, to welcome the immigrants, no matter where they came from. So she faces toward Europe, but the alternative would be for her to be placed on a rotating island so that she could alternatively face east, south, west, north and then east again, and that would just look horribly cheesy, not to mention be prohibitively expensive.
1
The rule is meant to restrict legal immigration based on solvency and the likelihood of requiring public assistance, irrespective of the applicant's skin tone or origin. It's an old idea, as the phrase itself betrays, and it's open to criticism on some grounds, particularly having INS bureaucrats making judgments about someone's prospects without clear standards and also the fact that these matters should be legislated rather than done by Executive fiat, but focusing the opposition to it as a skin color penalty is not the best argument.
12
Those who benefit from both legal and illegal immigration are very educated and the rich, i.e., upper middle class and up the wealth ladder. Bringing more poor people increases income inequality and reduces the bargaining power of the local labor. I would think that it would be racist to be for an immigration policy that reduces the living standards of already struggling people.
8
The U.S. constitution is a few centuries old and is a noble document espousing emancipation. However it is still an evolving nation struggling with its social and cultural norms. It is also the wealthiest nation but the truism that money can't buy happiness is so aptly true about this country.
1
The financial requirement for entry isn't new. When we (Jews) arrived from Holland in 1939, we were able to emigrate because my grandfather signed an affidavit vouching for us i.e for our financial independence i.e. lack of need for state aid/ He would support us if need be i.e. we would not be dependent on state support. We also were lucky enough to use my parents' Russian (by birth) entry quota which was hardly in use because most Russians weren't allowed out of the Soviet Union at the time. The Dutch quota filled fast, especially for German-born Jews who'd migrated there earlier.
Apparently, what Trump has added is even further requirements for proof of financial "adequacy". I don't think it's law yet, though.
10
Thank you for this, I didn't know this history. There is a similar history regarding the Statue of Freedom atop the capital building in DC. It was originally going to have a figure with the liberty cap, which was a symbol of manumission, the granting of freedom to slaves in Rome. The slaveholder, Jefferson Davis, Secretary of War and future President of the Confederacy insisted that instead of a liberty cap the figure wear a military helmet.
Despite the Statue of Liberty's hypocritical beginnings she stands for a powerful idea that has come to represent to most of us a symbol of welcoming all immigrants. Just like the constitution, she has become more perfect with time. Let's protect the symbol she has become even though she had an imperfect beginning.
10
@Charles
I am speaking as a nonwhite immigrant, the public charge law seems to be fair. You can't get into any country without proving a degree of self-reliance and that you won't be a burden in their system. Refugees, asylum-seekers are still exempt from this public charge rule. The view needs to be balanced. If people like you take it to the extreme, it will be tough for the Democrats to win in 2020.
55
@Vijay
Economic refugees are not the same as asylum seekers. That is why they likely will not show up to court hearings to claim that -- many of those who are now "in" will be deported when it becomes clear they passed through several countries to escape to America. ICE will be busy throughout the country in the coming years locating and deporting those who have crossed the border illegally this summer. We're not an open borders, sanctuary country, thank heavens.
6
I think you've missed the point: this is about keeping out certain people (non-white). In a Trump future, you too may well have been prevented from coming here.
3
Yes, the US has always had racism as part of its history but it also had a discussion of the evil of slavery and racism as part of its history. Numerous founders were not comfortable with slavery despite owning slaves. It was simply too difficult to separate themselves from the institution. But, now, white leaders can definitely separate themselves from racism since they are not slaveholders in slaveholding society, yet our political leaders choose to resurrect the horrors of the past. Thus, I hold that the current leaders are worse than the original slaveholders that founded the country. In addition, Alexander Hamilton never was in favor of slavery and did not hold slaves. For modern politicians to bring back horrors that even Founding Fathers questioned is simply unfathomable.
9
@Anthony How could you be not comfortable about Slavery and still own Slaves? That's is like saying Thomas Jefferson had a love affair with his slave Sally Hennings and the four children he fathered by her were made in love.
1
The words in the poem were written with a certain original intent. But if we now make the choice to interpret those words in a broader context -- enriching them with greater meaning through our embrace of global diversity and inclusion -- then why should we feel bad about doing so? Why should we allow ourselves forever to be bound by the shackles of our past?
21
@Blue Moon I could explain why, but I'd rather just advise you to re-read Charles' article again and again until you can answer your own questions readily and adequately.
2
"...people coming from Europe..."--Kenneth Cuccinelli.
I would assume--perhaps it's a reach--that Mr. Cuccinelli's surname points to Italian immigrants, to Italian roots, to Italian, well everything. And isn't it rather rich that he would bastardize the statue's poem to make a pointed, deliberate reference to "people coming from Europe?"
Most of us who have seen "The Godfather," particularly the magnificent sequel to the splendid original, recall the scene at Ellis Island where the boy Vito Andolini was forced to take the name of the town of his birth in Sicily: Corleone.
I have always wondered why penniless immigrants from Europe, who hadn't much more than their passage in steerage on those ships that bore them to America, found it quite acceptable to scorn and denigrate the citizens of a nation to which they, from Europe, were interlopers. Black folks took ship for America, too, but under vastly different circumstances. The Trumps, upon arrival, posed as Swedes; they feared to be identified as the Germans they were when they arrived. White vs white racism? My!
But Mr. Cuccinelli will probably trot out the conservative talking point about family; neighborhood; education; struggle; church; sacrificing parents laboring to hoist upon their sagging shoulders a scion who would stand and grab the golden medal of wealth and acceptance. That was always a dream of African-Americans but rarely a reality.
Mr. Cuccinelli talks the talk but doesn't walk it. He doesn't have to.
72
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18
I think too of all the Irish-Americans who are or have been in the Trump White House (Mike Pence, Steve Bannon, Kellyanne Conway, Sean Spicer) and support xenophobia and even scapegoating of immigrants. They have to know better, but yet...
Thanks for what you wrote. Take care.
14
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18 Trump's mother could not have been admitted under Cucinelli's standards. She emigrated from Scotland at 18 with 50 pounds in her pocket and listed her skills as a domestic. Look how much better off we would have been if Tsar Ken had been in charge then. Who knows, perhaps Tsar Ken's ancestors could not have been admitted either. The world would be a much better place if Ken's ancestors and Trump's mother had not been admitted. What a richly ironic situation! But it shows you these two are horrible to the core.
5
@Red Sox, ‘04, ‘07, ‘13, ‘18 Great comment as usual. I loved your shout out to The Godfather, both 1 and 2. My paternal grandparents were from Sicily, maternal from Calabria. Yes, they were poor; and, yes, with their Catholic belief, olive skin, and dark curly hair, were discriminated against. But it is ludicrous to place in the same basket their challenges in America with those of African slaves and now Mexicans, Central Americans, and immigrants from the Middle East. I am glad that my parents and grandparents are no longer here to witness this country of ours. They are in a far, far better Place.
7
Point well taken. I appreciate this paper is delving into the 1619 project to bring us the less whitewashed telling of history.
Two things can be true at once. We can recognize the buried flaws behind past ideals ("all men created equal" comes to mind) while finding inspiration in poetry and aspirational words themselves. But I would understand if the bitter history makes the poem ring hollow.
6
Mr. Blow, you always educate and frequently use eloquent and righteous language to expose what too many overlook or actively avoid seeing. Thank you for helping me to understand more of the history of this statue and its role (or lack thereof) as a symbol of freedom and welcome. This country continues to disappoint me, but please never stop your efforts to educate, rile, and confront.
40
The "Public Charge" issue has been used since the Immigration Act of 1882 (which of course has undergone many changes) and many of those kept out or returned (!!) were from Europe (each minority in its turn).
Public policy is rarely determined by poetry.
27
It may have been on the books, but it was never really used as a way to keep green card holders from renewing their green cards or becoming my citizens, until now.
9
@Game Wazny Tell that to my great grandmother, e.g., who stood alone as a 14 year old and was coached as to how to get through and not be returned as a public charge. She made it. Plenty of people were denied entry and as I wrote, for two years one could be returned. Each group and its public charge issues.
13
The President doesn't really care what the poem says on the Statue of Liberty. He doesn't like non-white immigrants. No matter what the history of the Statue is, I believe that the majority of America reads that poem and interprets it as welcoming all who come to America seeking Freedom irrespective of their wealth or poverty. The history of the statue is obscure and for the most part forgotten, we should reinterpret to our liking. Just think of all the actions justified by the Bible that were never the intentions of the writers.
30
@Independent One
I believe that the majority of America reads that poem and interprets it as welcoming all who come to America seeking Freedom irrespective of their wealth or poverty.
----------
Clearly, you don't rent in Minneapolis.
Newcomers are driving up costs, no two ways about it. They put more cars on streets, pupils in public school districts and mouths to feed on public relief.
I wouldn't mind if the wealthy were stepping up with charity programs to house, feed, clothe and assimilate the newcomers, but they're not. Taxpayers are footing their costs, and our own. Sad!
4
@Independent One
' Just think of all the actions justified by the Bible that were never the intentions of the writers.'
Not to mention the Constitution.
5
Your column is a tad misleading. It forgets to note that LBJ, supported by others like RFK, was able to get enacted the immigration act of 1965. This law prohibits discrimination in legal immigration based on race, religion or country of origin. In other words it opened legal immigration to people from Trump's "s_ithole countries" in Asia, Africa, Latin America and Eastern Europe. It is this law which the First Lady was able to utilize to eventually become a legal immigrant and then a citizen. She did not know Trump then. She owes a debt to LBJ and everyone in Congress who voted in favor of the immigration act of 1965.
LBJ was personally invested in this law. He grew up in a small town in Texas near the Mexican border. His first job was as a teacher in a school for the children of Mexican migrant workers. To those of us who believe the diverse US which has arisen in the 55 years since this law, LBJ is the one person most responsible for this diversity. So you can quote MLK, Jr from 1967, but if you do then you need to tell the story of the immigration act of 1965, as well.
202
@James Ricciardi Teddy Kennedy among others reassured Americans that the demographics of the US would not be changed by the 1965 Act. That should be remembered as well.
3
@James Ricciardi I don't think you're being fair to Charles. He is correct and entitled to suggest Trump is trying to move the US back to more like it was, with its immigration policies as they were, after 1890 and before 1965.
17
@James Ricciardi
Not everybody applauds the quota-based, bring-in-your-whole family revamped immigration policies that Teddy Kennedy and LBJ gave us in 1965.
What Trump is trying to do is bring in more young, self sufficient workers who are committed to building new lives in a new country. No quotas. Come through the door speaking the language where you intend to work, and don't bring babies or make them until you are able to support them...
Anchor babies and birthright citizenship make it beneficial to breed the women as soon as they cross the border -- no encouragement to become financially stable first, with a job or even citizenship and a house before starting a new American family.
1
It's fine and dandy to have a public safety net.
It's fine and dandy to have a liberal immigration system - and America's is the most liberal in the world.
The problem comes when we allow those who have circumvented the latter to receive the benefits of the former.
I didn't vote for 45 but I'm all for anything to stop the exploitation of American citizens by those whose first step onto American soil was an illegal one.
38
@Charles it works both ways. For decades the US, through direct and covert military and intelligence operations, and through destructive trade deals have destroyed the social safety net of the people fleeing Central America. Until reparations are made to their societies their refugees at the very least are entitled to our safety nets. To deny them that would be immoral.
117
Actually, if you really look at what undocumented workers contribute in terms of cheap labor and taxes, you would understand that they are the ones being exploited.
182
@Charles I believe the exploitation works both ways. Employers like the companies that were raided last week actively recruit undocumented workers, who work long hours with no benefits, pay payroll taxes, and are virtually at the mercy of their employers. You can just imagine how happy those companies were to forego paying 600+ salaries. And the same goes for workers in agriculture, landscaping, construction, hospitality, etc. The truth is that our economy depends on these undocumented workers, and has for many decades. That is why you don't see the government pursuing employers in order to end illegal immigration. It's all talk, all distraction, to get people like you to believe in hordes of immigrants stealing benefits, instead of asking why this administration is failing to offer any real immigration reform policy proposals including a functional guest worker program.
27
I have noticed in the US you conflate the words 'immigrant' and 'asylum seeker' alot.
Where I come from these terms are kept separate.
I say this so you President and his honchos do not confuse you.
In countries like Australia and Canada where there are merit-based IMMIGRANT programs - there are ALSO very significant ASYLUM programs. There are both.
Immigrants do go through a vetting that includes some wealth aspect. Assylum seekers do not have as many hoops. So an asylum seeker - say something fleeing war - may be well off, or not. It doesn't matter.
I say this because those coming across the US southern border, who do fall in the asylum seeker should STILL be able to be credibly considered to enter the US - EVEN IF THERE IS A MERIT BASED IMMIGRATION SYSTEM.
That would be keeping with comparable world standards.
Ask the President what is happing to the asylum program.
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@EC We also accept immigrants based on family reunion - there is a quota for each category. Immigration has been occurring to Australia at a higher rate this century than even the US has experienced in that time - but currently that rate is under review, with reduction of it likely. The problem is mainly due to the overwhelmingly majority of immigrants wanting to settle in our only two metropolises of Sydney and Melbourne, and them being suburban car-based cities like Los Angeles and Houston: rapidly increasing congestion is a huge problem.
Personally I am respectful of many Americans wish for immigration to their country to be less and only "legal" - as long as they also wish it to remain non-ethnically (or "racially") discriminatory. However I believe the method to counter "illegal" immigration should be aid to encourage prospective "illegal" migrants to stay where they are - not to build a wall at the border between them and the US. Australia is advantaged by having a very broad natural crocodile and shark-infested "moat" around it though, I must admit.
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@GRW
I appreciate your thoughts. Though nothing you said takes away from the probability that quite a number of people coming across the US southern border would fit neatly into an 'asylum' category. And Trump should honour that.
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@EC Yes, but they can apply officially to seek asylum in the US - not just cross the border "illegally". Is the US (or Australia or any other country) obliged to take all that wish asylum within its borders? I certainly hope the situation is correctable, but don't you think the US is currently heading towards being a source of refugees and not a destination?
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