Opinion | White Extinction Anxiety - The New York Times

This is the fear that White liberals have a tremendous difficulty facing and what makes their strategies for dealing with Trumpism doomed for failure.



"Last week Pat Buchanan was on “The Laura Ingraham Show” to discuss the humanitarian crisis Donald Trump has created at the border by ripping children away from their parents.



He was not particularly sympathetic to these families’ plights, instead choosing to focus on the demographic danger facing whiteness: “This is the great issue of our time. And, the real question is whether Europe has the will and the capacity, and America has the capacity to halt the invasion of the countries until they change the character — political, social, racial, ethnic — character of the country entirely.”



He continued: “You cannot stop these sentiments of people who want to live together with their own and they want their borders protected.” Make no mistake here, Buchanan is talking about protecting white dominance, white culture, white majorities and white power.



A few days earlier on his blog, he expanded on this point: “The existential question, however, thus remains: How does the West, America included, stop the flood tide of migrants before it alters forever the political and demographic character of our nations and our civilization?”



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In describing Western liberals’ aversions to instituting racist, xenophobic immigration policies, he wrote: “We are truly dealing here with an ideology of Western suicide.” He ended with this: “Trump may be on the wrong side politically and emotionally of this issue of separating migrant kids from their parents. But on the mega-issue — the Third World invasion of the West — he is riding the great wave of the future, if the West is to have a future.”



Strip all the other rationales away from this draconian immigration policy. This is at the core: White extinction anxiety, white displacement anxiety, white minority anxiety. This is the fear and anxiety Trump is playing to. Politico Magazine dubbed Trump “Pat Buchanan With Better Timing.”



White people have been the majority of people considered United States citizens since this country was founded, but that period is rapidly drawing to a close.



As Brookings reported last week:



“First, for the first time since the Census Bureau has released these annual statistics, they show an absolute decline in the nation’s white non-Hispanic population — accelerating a phenomenon that was not projected to occur until the next decade.”



The report continued: “Second, the new numbers show that for the first time there are more children who are minorities than who are white, at every age from zero to nine. This means we are on the cusp of seeing the first minority white generation, born in 2007 and later, which perhaps we can dub Generation ‘Z-Plus.’”



The Applied Population Lab at the University of Wisconsin-Madison also issued a report last week that pointed out: “In 2016, more non-Hispanic whites died than were born in twenty-six states; more than at any time in U.S. history. Some 179 million residents or roughly 56 percent of the U.S. population, lived in these 26 states.”



The report also noted that, “When births fail to keep pace with deaths, a region is said to have a ‘natural decrease’ in population,” and that: “A finding from previous research on natural decrease, which is consistent with our findings, is that once an area begins to experience natural decrease, the trend is likely to continue. Only California, New Mexico, and West Virginia have experienced natural increase after the initial onset of decrease, and in each case it was only for a year.”



This is happening. America will soon be a majority-minority country.



White America is growing older, there are fewer white women of childbearing age, and the white fertility rate is lower than that of Hispanics and blacks.



All manner of current policy grows out of this panic over loss of privilege and power: immigration policy, voter suppression, Trump economic isolationist impulses, his contempt for people from Haiti and Africa, the Muslim ban, his rage over Black Lives Matter and social justice protests. Everything.



Trump is president and is beloved by his base in part because he is unapologetically defending whiteness from anything that threatens it, or at least that’s the image he wants to project. It is no more complicated than that. These immigrant children crying out for their mothers and fathers are collateral damage, pawns in a political battle to wring strict legislation out of Congress — medieval torture displays meant to serve as deterrents.



As Buchanan wrote in his book, “Suicide of a Superpower,” which got him fired from MSNBC because of its racist overtones: “White America is an endangered species.” And he chided any white person who might cheer this nation’s changing demographics:



“Ethnomasochism, the taking of pleasure in the dispossession of one’s own ethnic group, is a disease of the heart that never afflicted the America of Andrew Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, or Dwight Eisenhower. It comes out of what James Burnham called an ‘ideology of Western suicide,’ a belief system that provides a morphine drip for people who have come to accept the inevitability of their departure from history.”



These immigration policies are for people who conflated America with whiteness, and therefore a loss of white primacy becomes a loss of American identity."



Opinion | White Extinction Anxiety - The New York Times

Opinion | It’s Time to Integrate New York’s Best Schools - The New York Times

"Across the country, local efforts are at last underway to integrate schools that remain profoundly segregated more than half a century after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Brown v. Board of Education. Nowhere is that work more important than New York City, where the school system is not only the nation’s largest but also its most segregated.
After largely ignoring this reality for four years, Mayor Bill de Blasio has now taken an important step: He has put forward a plan to integrate eight of the city’s specialized high schools, storied institutions like Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech. These schools have, for generations, set those lucky enough to attend on paths to success, to middle-class security, to rewarding careers and even to Nobel Prizes.
These schools have a vital mission, to challenge the city’s sharpest young minds. But they are failing in that endeavor, because they all but shut out black and Latino students, leaving untold numbers of New York’s brightest children behind.
Black and Latino students make up nearly two-thirds of the city’s 1.1 million school children. Yet, of the 5,067 offers of admission to specialized schools this year, 51.7 percent went to Asian students and 26.5 percent to white students. Latino and black students received 6.3 and 4.1 percent of the offers, respectively. At Stuyvesant, the most sought-after of the schools, just 10 of the 902 students offered admission were black.
A single, three-hour test known as the Specialized High Schools Admissions Test is the sole screen for admission to the eight schools. This system arose from efforts to integrate these schools back in 1971. Opponents of those efforts lobbied for a state law, known as Hecht-Calandra, that requires the three largest schools — Stuyvesant, Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech — to use only the exam. Over the past four decades, the exclusionary process spread as the five smaller specialized schools also adopted the exam as the sole admissions criterion.
New York’s elementary and middle schools do not prepare children for the test, all but ensuring that students seek out extensive test preparation. Many Asian and white students have done so for thousands of dollars apiece. Black and Latino students are likely to walk in with little or no test preparation.
That was the experience of Wyatt Perez, who was valedictorian of his Bronx middle school but didn’t do well enough on the test to attend a specialized school. Mr. Perez, now 17 and headed to the University of Pennsylvania in the fall, said he remembered being given a book on the exam and left to study on his own. “I couldn’t find anyone to help me with it,” he said. “I had to look at videos on YouTube.”
Epiphane Lokossou, who emigrated to the United States from West Africa in 2010, said he couldn’t afford test preparation for his 13-year-old son Boris, who attends Lafayette Academy, a middle school in Manhattan.
Brian Zager, Lafayette Academy’s principal, described Boris as a standout student. But when he took the exam last year, he didn’t receive an offer from a specialized high school. Mr. Lokossou said the admissions process had failed to capture his son’s true potential. “It’s just one test,” he said. “It does not define who he is.”
Of all elite public high schools in the country, only New York’s use a single exam for admission. Researchers and others have said this approach is less predictive of success than grades, particularly for black and Latino students.
Mayor de Blasio has vowed to replace the test with a system, to be phased in over three years, that would eventually admit the top 7 percent of students from every middle school, based on a combination of grades and performance on state exams. City officials say that if the plan is implemented, the specialized high schools would be about 45 percent black and Latino.
The plan is far from radical. The University of Texas used a similar approach to maintain diversity when a court struck down its use of affirmative action years ago. New York City education officials estimate that students who would be admitted under the plan would have an average state test score of 3.9 out of 4.5, compared to 4.1 for students currently enrolled in the specialized schools. The average GPA, 94, would be the same.
Opposition has been swift and fierce, much of it from some alumni of the specialized schools, who have said the mayor’s plan would somehow lower the quality of education or “set kids up for failure.” The very intensity of the response underscores how formative an experience it is to attend a specialized high school — an experience that for years has been unfairly denied so many black and Latino New Yorkers.
Some alumni — black alumni — have described in painful detail their isolated experiences in the schools. They include Mr. de Blasio’s son, Dante, who attended Brooklyn Tech. In a Daily News op-ed article earlier this month, he said his experience was marred by racial slurs and slights that included a teacher laughing at a black student who said she wanted to be a doctor.
In recent weeks, some Asian groups have protested outside City Hall and in Brooklyn, saying that Asian students will lose seats. Asian children are about 16 percent of the district’s student body but a majority at schools like Stuyvesant. Many come from families that have scrimped on essentials like food to pay for test prep. Such objections are understandable, but they don’t change the fact that the admissions policy is flawed and unfair to other children.
Some opponents of the plan have also said the city should focus on improving education at schools already attended by black and Latino students. (Of course, the city ought to do that, too.) This argument underscores that the current testing regime is not “race-blind,” since it can’t be separated from the reality of unequal schools and the disadvantages of generations of poverty and racism.
In an interview, the city’s new schools chancellor, Richard Carranza, argued that relying on a single test harmed all New Yorkers, including Asian families who spend scarce resources on test prep. “I’m sorry that the system has forced you to spend your time, your treasure on preparing your kids for that test,” he said. “Help is on the way.”
The city has said that it’s considering adding seats in the schools, to mitigate some concerns. It might also consider increasing outreach to show families other excellent options, including schools like Edward R. Murrow High School and Midwood that draw students from around the city through competitive admissions.
For the plan to succeed, the city will surely need to increase remedial and enrichment programs at the specialized high schools, to serve students who were at the top of their classes but whose middle schools may not have prepared them for the rigor of a Stuyvesant.
Perhaps the biggest challenge to the mayor’s full plan is political, since it will require overturning Hecht-Calandra. That would take forceful lobbying from Gov. Andrew Cuomo, who has so far signaled only lukewarm support.
In the meantime, there’s nothing to stop the mayor from implementing those parts of his plan that don’t require state action. He could begin with the five specialized high schools not covered by the 1971 state law.
Mr. de Blasio could also consider applying the plan, or something similar, to the city’s other competitive high schools, many of which are also failing to admit significant numbers of black and Latino students.
It is a bitter irony, or just a deeply damning fact, that the spirit of Jim Crow would prove so stubborn in a city whose leaders pride themselves on their enlightened politics. Without aggressive action, New York will continue to fail its black and Latino students, a waste of their potential and its own.
Follow The New York Times Opinion section on Facebook and Twitter (@NYTOpinion), and sign up for the Opinion Today newsletter.

Note: Detailed data on schools with fewer than six offers, many of which have a higher share of black and Hispanic students, is not made available. The average grade among students offered admission from those schools was 93.9 percent. Source: N.Y.C. Department of Education.
Opinion | It’s Time to Integrate New York’s Best Schools - The New York Times: ""
(Via.)

Supreme Court Says Texas Political Map Is Largely Not A Racial Gerrymander : NPR

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

"In a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court said that Texas' legislative and congressional maps are not a racial gerrymander and that all districts are OK, except for one, which it determined is a racial gerrymander — House District 90.

Conservative Samuel Alito has the majority opinion of the court and writes, 'Except with respect to one Texas House district, we hold that the court below erred in effectively enjoining the use of the districting maps adopted by the Legislature in 2013.'

In a one-page concurrence, joined by Neil Gorsuch, Clarence Thomas, one of the most conservative (in philosophy and use of words) justices, reiterates that his view is Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act 'does not apply to redistricting,' per SCOTUSBlog.

The court's liberals dissented, led by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. (Sotomayor's 46-page opinion is five pages longer than the majority opinion.)

Sotomayor writes, 'The Court today goes out of its way to permit the State of Texas to use maps that he three-judge District Court unanimously found were adopted for the purpose of preserving the racial discrimination that tainted its previous maps.'"

(Via.) Supreme Court Says Texas Political Map Is Largely Not A Racial Gerrymander : NPR:

A New York election: the battle to prove who's the Trumpiest of them all | US news | The Guardian

Home is where the hatred is. --Gil Scott Heron



"New York spawned Donald Trump, but since his rise to the presidency, the city has come to feel like an independent state, a world away from the obsessions of the man in the Oval Office.



But cross a bridge from hipster Brooklyn or take a free ferry ride from the toe of Manhattan and Trumpland is right there on the doorstep.



Staten Island, the forgotten fifth borough, overlooked by tourists and ignored by most New Yorkers, is a conservative stronghold. Traditionally home to cops and firefighters, Irish and Italians, it voted heavily for Trump in 2016 and will have its say on Tuesday in a Republican primary which can make undisputed claim to be the Trumpiest race of the 2018 midterms.





Michael Grimm and Dan Donovan at an election debate. Photograph: David Taylor for the Guardian

In one corner is Dan Donovan, a sitting congressman who has fallen so perfectly into line with the Trump agenda that he has won the president’s “full endorsement” on Twitter. His campaign signs, popping up on lawns along the 14-mile length of the borough, have been updated with the Trump line, almost as if they are running mates.



In nearby Long Island in May, Donovan joined Trump on Air Force One for a strange presidential fact-finding field trip meant to highlight violence involving the MS-13 gang. He further ingratiated himself by introducing a bill which would order all post offices to display a picture of Trump. Days later, his endorsement arrived.



But Donovan is not sure thing for re-election. His opponent is Michael Grimm, a man formerly known to the US federal prison system as inmate 83479-053.



The former marine and FBI undercover agent has already served as representative for New York’s 11th congressional district, which covers Staten Island and the southern end of Brooklyn. But his last term ended in disgrace after he pleaded guilty in 2015 to aiding and assisting the preparation of a false tax return.



He served seven months in prison, after admitting hiring undocumented migrants and hiding $1m in receipts from a now defunct Manhattan restaurant, Healthalicious.



Grimm also gained notoriety during his time in Washington when he was caught on camera threatening to throw a television reporter off a balcony inside the Capitol building. “I will break you in half, like a boy,” he threatened, after taking exception to being ambushed with a question about his campaign finances.





Now Grimm is back, emboldened by the support of former White House aide Steve Bannon and determined to prove, endorsement or not, that he is the true ally to Trump.



For a man attempting a dramatic political makeover, Grimm has picked a perfect location. His campaign headquarters in a mall on Hylan Boulevard is sandwiched between a Beach Bum Tanning salon and the European Wax Center, where “our experts will have you walking in and strutting out”.



Inside, volunteers are busy in a windowless basement office, with only a few days to go until the vote to decide which Republican will defend the district in November. A campaign T-shirt with the logo “Michael Grimm 2018 All Aboard The Trump Train” is pinned to the wall alongside a glittery red, white and blue God Bless America. At a desk below, four women are hitting the phones.





Volunteers hit the phones for Grimm at his campaign headquarters. Photograph: David Taylor for the Guardian

A volunteer, who gave her name as Maryann, said: “Some people say they like Donovan but covertly, once they are in that election booth, they say they are going to vote for Grimm.”



One poll from the end of May showed Grimm winning by 10 points. After the Trump endorsement, the latest poll gives Donovan a seven-point lead.



Grimm, who had a moderate record as a congressman in the age before Trump, seems to be reinventing himself, taking a hardline position on immigration, condemning the Mueller investigation into the Trump campaign’s possible collusion with Russia and decrying his opponent for voting to support the Affordable Care Act.



Despite his past misdemeanours, there is tremendous loyalty for Grimm in Staten Island. From Tottenville, a waterside neighbourhood where Main Street seems to have as many Italian and Irish flags as stars and stripes, to Midland Beach on its eastern Atlantic coast, locals remember what he did for them after superstorm Sandy hit in 2012, killing 24 people and bringing devastation.



Grimm was there serving food and helping with the clean up. Crucially, for people rebuilding their lives, he authored a bill to keep down the cost of flood insurance.



Veronica Petersen, a retired educator, was one of 12 volunteers making calls on behalf of Grimm on Thursday. She said she first met him after Sandy: “My house was gone. He came to my yard and offered his assistance – food, anything I needed. He’s a hands-on congressman, not an out-of-touch bureaucrat.”



Sitting alongside an image of a beaming Grimm with the slogan “He’s got our back!” she said: “I want a congressman who gets his hands dirty and represents us.”





Retired bus mechanic Joey Brunetti, 69. Photograph: David Taylor for the Guardian

In Tottenville, retired bus mechanic Joey Brunetti, 69, said: “This guy Donovan – first time I heard of him! I talked to Grimm, he’s a down to earth guy, means what he says. What I can say, he’s a stand-up guy.”



What about his record as a felon? “That’s bullshit. He just happened to get caught, most of them do it.”



Outside the LA Fitness gym where Grimm trains, Santo Curatolo, 49, said: “I knew him as someone in the gym. I was hitting the bag and he was next to me, then I saw his ad and said, ‘That guy from the gym is running for Congress’. He’s a regular guy, he’s a gentleman.”



Curatolo said he didn’t vote, but supported Trump: “He’s doing well, right? They say he is the best president ever, he’s making peace with other countries.”



‘I put people like him in prison’

On stage together at a nasty debate this month, Grimm, 48, and Donovan, 61, stood at lecterns inches apart and tore into one another.



Grimm claimed his opponent had offered to help him get a pardon from Trump, but went cold when he discovered he intended to run against him. He called Donovan an “alleged Republican”, condemned him for supporting Obamacare and said “he doesn’t believe in deporting people”.



Donovan, a former district attorney, shot back: “I was a prosecutor for 20 years, I put people like him in prison.”



Both men are falling over themselves to demonstrate their populist credentials and loyalty to Trump – and while many Republicans were critical of the policy of splitting children from their families at the border, both candidates last week staunchly defended Trump as the outcry grew.



Grimm even rejected concern over distressing audio of children in detention crying for their mothers, comparing the sound to any nursery when a child has been left behind. On Thursday, at a low-key press conference, he insisted he had no regrets over what he said, blaming a journalist instead for the framing of the question.



Trump is looming over the candidates, and with good reason: Staten Island’s commitment to the president is largely undimmed. Retired detective Lou Telano, president of the New York Veteran Police Association, said his organisation was the first to endorse Trump, so the president’s endorsement of Donovan was now an important factor.



Telano was also the real-life inspiration for Starsky, one half of television’s most famous cop double act, Starsky & Hutch. He said: “We like Grimm, I like him personally. Donovan was endorsed by Trump, so that puts us in a little predicament. We may stay neutral until the election ends.



“Some of the membership are saying we can’t support him because he’s got a prison record. So that goes back and forth. At this moment, I guess we’ll probably stay neutral. Right now, it looks like we’re gonna do Pontius Pilate.”



A New York election: the battle to prove who's the Trumpiest of them all | US news | The Guardian

Trump officials don't get to eat dinner in peace – not while kids are in cages | Jessica Valenti | Opinion | The Guardian

"Republicans are very worried about ‘civility’ these days. They’re mad that Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen was forced to leave a Washington DC restaurant after being confronted by protesters, upset that Stephen Miller was called a fascist when the White House adviser was eating Mexican food, and horrified that press secretary Sarah Sanders was asked to leave a Virginia restaurant by the establishment’s owner. Some young Trump supporters in DC are even down in the dumps that they can’t seem to get a date.

We’re told that the left is being intolerant at best, and at worst - as one Fox News contributor put it - a ‘mob’ that is ‘approaching near anarchy.’

They haven’t seemed to consider the simplest answer: that when you do and defend terrible things, people don’t really want to be around you.

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There’s a reason that actor Seth Rogan, for example, declined to take a picture with Paul Ryan recently; or why Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi was met by protesters when she left a showing of the Mr Rodgers documentary. Americans are horrified by what Republicans are doing to this country, and most urgently, what they’re doing to children.

As I wrote soon after the election when the right was inflamed about soon-to-be Vice President Mike Pence getting booed at a Hamilton performance, there’s nothing wrong with being made to feel ashamed for doing something shameful.

Still, it’s not just conservatives who claim that ostracizing Trump-supporters or enablers is ‘uncivil.’ On Sunday, for example, David Axelrod tweeted that he was ‘amazed and appalled by the number of folks on [the] Left who applauded the expulsion of [Sanders] and her family from a restaurant.’ And the editorial board at The Washington Post, says Americans should ‘let the Trump team eat in peace.’

Sign up for Guardian Today US edition: the day's must-reads sent directly to you Read more The recent protests, they wrote, ‘have blurred the line between work hours and private time.’

But when you’re talking about the kind of human rights violations the Trump administration has unabashedly enacted and defended, there is no public/private line worth honoring. When it comes to kids in cages, you’re not just accountable for your actions from 9 to 5.

If you’re responsible for the jailing of Latino toddlers, you do not have the right to enjoy Mexican food free from protest. If you are defending internment camps where children are leaving with bed bug bites, lice and irreparable emotional trauma, you don’t get to have a fun dinner out without servers and restaurant owners taking umbrage. You are not entitled to pose with celebrities, or take in a movie about the power of kindness and neighborly love when you are stripping millions of their health care. And when you support all of the above, no one is going to feel bad for you when you can’t get a date.

One of the foundational parts of building a community is drawing boundaries about what is considered acceptable and unacceptable behavior; it’s normal for people to decide that certain actions have no place in a civil society. What is happening to Republicans right now is just that - community members sending a clear message about what they’re willing to tolerate, and what none of us should have to. There’s nothing more ‘civil’ than that.

Jessica Valenti is a Guardian US columnist Since you’re here… … we have a small favour to ask. More people are reading the Guardian than ever but advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. And unlike many news organisations, we haven’t put up a paywall – we want to keep our journalism as open as we can. So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

The Guardian’s independent, investigative journalism takes a lot of time, money and hard work to produce. With investigative reporting, we often don't know at the beginning how a story will unfold and how long it might take to uncover. This can mean it is costly – particularly as we often face legal threats that attempt to stop our reporting. But we remain committed to raising important questions and exposing wrongdoing. And we do it because we believe our perspective matters – because it might well be your perspective, too.

I appreciate there not being a paywall: it is more democratic for the media to be available for all and not a commodity to be purchased by a few. I’m happy to make a contribution so others with less means still have access to information. Thomasine, Sweden If everyone who reads our reporting, who likes it, helps to support it, our future would be much more secure. For as little as $1, you can support the Guardian – and it only takes a mi"

(Via.). Trump officials don't get to eat dinner in peace – not while kids are in cages | Jessica Valenti | Opinion | The Guardian:

Expert: Sarah Sanders broke ethics rules with tweet about restaurant ejection | US news | The Guardian

"A tweet by White House press secretary Sarah Sanders about her ejection from a Virginia restaurant on Friday broke federal ethics rules, a leading expert said.





'All I hear is my daughter, crying': a Salvadoran father's plight after separation at border

 Read more

On Saturday, Sanders posted: “Last night I was told by the owner of Red Hen in Lexington [Virginia] to leave because I work for POTUS and I politely left. Her actions say far more about her than about me. I always do my best to treat people, including those I disagree with, respectfully and will continue to do so.”



Walter Shaub, federal ethics chief under Barack Obama and briefly Donald Trump and now a fierce critic of the administration, responded: “Sanders used her official govt account to condemn a private business for personal reasons … she can lob attacks on her own time but not using her official position.”



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The controversy came at the end of a week of fierce debate over a Trump policy which mandated the separation of children from their parents when such families entered the US illegally.



Between April and early June, according to federal statistics, more than 2,300 children were taken. On Wednesday, amidst international condemnation and with even Republican supporters in Congress beginning to waver, Trump signed an executive order nominally – but not conclusively – stopping the practice.



On Saturday, groups of Democrats visited federal facilities, seeking details about how the children will be reunited with their families. The Department of Homeland Security said it knew where all the children were and was working to reunite them.



On Sunday, Trump returned to the attack on Twitter, advocating the end of due process. “We cannot allow all of these people to invade our ountry,” the president wrote. “When somebody comes in, we must immediately, with no Judges or Court Cases, bring them back from where they came. Our system is a mockery to good immigration policy and Law and Order.”



Amidst the controversy over immigration, and mixed messages from the president about congressional efforts at reform, there has been no White House press briefing since Monday. Then, Kirstjen Nielsen, the homeland security secretary, addressed reporters on the separations policy.



 The Red Hen Restaurant in downtown Lexington, Virginia.

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 The Red Hen Restaurant in downtown Lexington, Virginia. Photograph: Daniel Lin/AP

Nielsen and policy adviser Stephen Miller both found themselves confronted by protesters in Mexican restaurants in Washington. The Red Hen sits 26 and serves “inspired Shenandoah cuisine” a three-hour drive from DC. Its owner told the Washington Post Sanders was served with a selection of cheeses before she decided, following a consultation with staff members, to ask her to leave the premises.





From El Salvador to the US: handcuffed at the border, separated for months

 Read more

“I was babbling a little,” Stephanie Wilkinson said, “but I got my point across in a polite and direct fashion. I explained that the restaurant has certain standards that I feel it has to uphold, such as honesty and compassion and cooperation. I said, ‘I’d like to ask you to leave.’”



Sanders, Wilkinson said, replied: “That’s fine. I’ll go.” Others at her table followed. Wilkinson said: “They offered to pay. I said, ‘No. It’s on the house.’”



The owner added: “I would have done the same thing again. We just felt there are moments in time when people need to live their convictions. This appeared to be one.”



The story set off a Twitter battle between Trump supporters and opponents, many on both sides comparing it to a recent supreme court ruling that said the owner of a Colorado cake shop was right to refuse service to a gay couple, based on his religious beliefs.



Sanders’ father, former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, waded in, writing: “Bigotry. On the menu at Red Hen Restaurant in Lexington VA. Or you can ask for the ‘Hate Plate’. And appetizers are ‘small plates for small minds’.”



Newt Gingrich, a former Republican House speaker who many blame for US politics’ descent into vitriol and schism in the 1990s, wrote: “The increasing personal nastiness toward people who work for President Trump reflects the left’s understanding that they are losing. Nastiness reflects desperation, not strength. They can’t win the argument so they use nastiness. Sad and dangerous.”



Shaub launched a series of tweets of his own.



“Sarah,” he began. “I know you don’t care even a tiny little bit about the ethics rules, but using your official account for this is a clear violation … It’s the same as if [a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives] agent pulled out his badge when a restaurant tried to throw him/her out.



Slaves knew 'the fearful anguish of broken hearts'. In Trump's America, migrants do too



“Sanders used her official gov[ernmen]t account to condemn a private business for personal reasons. Seeks to coerce business by using her office to get public to pressure it. Violates endorsements ban too.”



The Red Hen found itself at the centre of online efforts to boost or damage its customer reviews, hoax booking calls and differing opinions locally. Amidst a media scrum, Tom Lomax, a local business owner, brought flowers as a show of support.



He called Wilkinson a “force of nature” and “one of the biggest drivers of the downtown” and told the Associated Press: “We support our own here, great little community we have.”



Stephen Russek, a former restaurant owner, said: “You have your political opinions, you don’t throw somebody out of your restaurant. They ought to be shut down.”



Shaub added: “There’s no ethics rule against Sarah Sanders fans being cartoonish hypocrites in defending merchants discriminating against gay people but howling when a merchant rejects a human rights violator based on her involvement in harming babies & children. Ridicule will have to suffice.”



Expert: Sarah Sanders broke ethics rules with tweet about restaurant ejection | US news | The Guardian

Trump wants 'no judges or court cases' before deporting illegal immigrants | US news | The Guardian

Trump wants 'no judges or court cases' before deporting illegal immigrants | US news | The Guardian

America's refusal to accept refugees of color has been a consistent, American policy, - REAGAN ORDERS ALIENS STOPPED ON THE HIGH SEA - The New York Times

America's refusal to accept refugees of color has been a consistent, American policy,



"President Reagan issued an executive order today directing the Coast Guard for the first time to intercept and turn around ships on the high seas that are suspected of carrying illegal immigrants.



Although the order did not name any country, officials indicated that it was aimed at Haitians. ''It's an agreement worked out with Haiti and the U.S.,'' a White House spokesman said, explaining that the Coast Guard could previously challenge vessels suspected of carrying illegal aliens only after they entered United States territorial waters, not on the high seas.



Not Aimed at Cubans



A spokesman in the office of Senator Paula Hawkins, Republican of Florida, said the measure ''is aimed at the Haitians'' because ''Cubans aren't coming in.''



The President said in the White House proclamation: ''The entry of undocumented aliens from the high seas is hereby suspended and shall be prevented by the interdiction of certain vessels carrying such aliens.''



A Justice Department spokesman said the new Coast Guard authority included permission to fire weapons if a Haitian vessel did not respond to a call to halt for inspection. But a spokesman, Thomas Stewart, said it was doubtful the weapons would be needed.



A White House official said no ''refugees'' fleeing political persecution in their homelands would be turned back on the high seas. The Coast Guard is directed by the President's order to ask the Haitians whether they are political refugees and examine any documents they may have. Details to Come Later



A State Department spokesman was unable to identify what type of document a refugee could give the Coast Guard to establish that he was fleeing the country for political reasons. He said a news briefing was scheduled tomorrow to explain details of the order.



The Presidential proclamation said that the orders had been released ''in accordance with cooperative arrangements with certain foreign governments.'' It said that the Government was issuing the order after finding that ''the entry of undocumented aliens arriving at the borders of the United States from the high seas is detrimental to the interests of the United States.''



White House and Justice Department officials have been negotiating for months with the Haitian Government to curb the flow of illegal immigrants into Florida.



Mr. Stewart said at the Justice Department hearing that one Coast Guard cutter would be stationed near Haiti at all times. Two Immigration officers will be on board, along with two interpreters who can speak the Haitian Creole dialect. Most Said to Want Jobs



''We have discovered by talking to thousands of Haitians that they are very frank in saying they want to come to the U.S. to get a job,'' Mr. Stewart said. ''It's a very rare one who says he's coming because he wants to escape the Government of Haiti.''





REAGAN ORDERS ALIENS STOPPED ON THE HIGH SEA - The New York Times

Trump is simply part of a long history of America fascism. The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics | History News Network

"Hitler and his henchmen victimized an entire continent and exterminated millions in his quest for a co-called "Master Race."



But the concept of a white, blond-haired, blue-eyed master Nordic race didn't originate with Hitler. The idea was created in the United States, and cultivated in California, decades before Hitler came to power. California eugenicists played an important, although little known, role in the American eugenics movement's campaign for ethnic cleansing.



Eugenics was the racist pseudoscience determined to wipe away all human beings deemed "unfit," preserving only those who conformed to a Nordic stereotype. Elements of the philosophy were enshrined as national policy by forced sterilization and segregation laws, as well as marriage restrictions, enacted in twenty-seven states. In 1909, California became the third state to adopt such laws. Ultimately, eugenics practitioners coercively sterilized some 60,000 Americans, barred the marriage of thousands, forcibly segregated thousands in "colonies," and persecuted untold numbers in ways we are just learning. Before World War II, nearly half of coercive sterilizations were done in California, and even after the war, the state accounted for a third of all such surgeries.



California was considered an epicenter of the American eugenics movement. During the Twentieth Century's first decades, California's eugenicists included potent but little known race scientists, such as Army venereal disease specialist Dr. Paul Popenoe, citrus magnate and Polytechnic benefactor Paul Gosney, Sacramento banker Charles M. Goethe, as well as members of the California State Board of Charities and Corrections and the University of California Board of Regents.



Eugenics would have been so much bizarre parlor talk had it not been for extensive financing by corporate philanthropies, specifically the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Harriman railroad fortune. They were all in league with some of America's most respected scientists hailing from such prestigious universities as Stamford, Yale, Harvard, and Princeton. These academicians espoused race theory and race science, and then faked and twisted data to serve eugenics' racist aims.



Stanford president David Starr Jordan originated the notion of "race and blood" in his 1902 racial epistle "Blood of a Nation," in which the university scholar declared that human qualities and conditions such as talent and poverty were passed through the blood.



In 1904, the Carnegie Institution established a laboratory complex at Cold Spring Harbor on Long Island that stockpiled millions of index cards on ordinary Americans, as researchers carefully plotted the removal of families, bloodlines and whole peoples. From Cold Spring Harbor, eugenics advocates agitated in the legislatures of America, as well as the nation's social service agencies and associations.



The Harriman railroad fortune paid local charities, such as the New York Bureau of Industries and Immigration, to seek out Jewish, Italian and other immigrants in New York and other crowded cities and subject them to deportation, trumped up confinement or forced sterilization.



The Rockefeller Foundation helped found the German eugenics program and even funded the program that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.



Much of the spiritual guidance and political agitation for the American eugenics movement came from California's quasi-autonomous eugenic societies, such as the Pasadena-based Human Betterment Foundation and the California branch of the American Eugenics Society, which coordinated much of their activity with the Eugenics Research Society in Long Island. These organizations--which functioned as part of a closely-knit network--published racist eugenic newsletters and pseudoscientific journals, such as Eugenical News and Eugenics, and propagandized for the Nazis.



Eugenics was born as a scientific curiosity in the Victorian age. In 1863, Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of Charles Darwin, theorized that if talented people only married other talented people, the result would be measurably better offspring. At the turn of the last century, Galton's ideas were imported into the United States just as Gregor Mendel's principles of heredity were rediscovered. American eugenic advocates believed with religious fervor that the same Mendelian concepts determining the color and size of peas, corn and cattle also governed the social and intellectual character of man.



In an America demographically reeling from immigration upheaval and torn by post-Reconstruction chaos, race conflict was everywhere in the early twentieth century. Elitists, utopians and so-called "progressives" fused their smoldering race fears and class bias with their desire to make a better world. They reinvented Galton's eugenics into a repressive and racist ideology. The intent: populate the earth with vastly more of their own socio-economic and biological kind--and less or none of everyone else.



The superior species the eugenics movement sought was populated not merely by tall, strong, talented people. Eugenicists craved blond, blue-eyed Nordic types. This group alone, they believed, was fit to inherit the earth. In the process, the movement intended to subtract emancipated Negroes, immigrant Asian laborers, Indians, Hispanics, East Europeans, Jews, dark-haired hill folk, poor people, the infirm and really anyone classified outside the gentrified genetic lines drawn up by American raceologists.



How? By identifying so-called "defective" family trees and subjecting them to lifelong segregation and sterilization programs to kill their bloodlines. The grand plan was to literally wipe away the reproductive capability of those deemed weak and inferior--the so-called "unfit." The eugenicists hoped to neutralize the viability of 10 percent of the population at a sweep, until none were left except themselves.



Eighteen solutions were explored in a Carnegie-supported 1911 "Preliminary Report of the Committee of the Eugenic Section of the American Breeder's Association to Study and to Report on the Best Practical Means for Cutting Off the Defective Germ-Plasm in the Human Population." Point eight was euthanasia.



The most commonly suggested method of eugenicide in America was a "lethal chamber" or public locally operated gas chambers. In 1918, Popenoe, the Army venereal disease specialist during World War I, co-wrote the widely used textbook, Applied Eugenics, which argued, "From an historical point of view, the first method which presents itself is execution… Its value in keeping up the standard of the race should not be underestimated." Applied Eugenics also devoted a chapter to "Lethal Selection," which operated "through the destruction of the individual by some adverse feature of the environment, such as excessive cold, or bacteria, or by bodily deficiency."



Eugenic breeders believed American society was not ready to implement an organized lethal solution. But many mental institutions and doctors practiced improvised medical lethality and passive euthanasia on their own. One institution in Lincoln, Illinois fed its incoming patients milk from tubercular cows believing a eugenically strong individual would be immune. Thirty to forty percent annual death rates resulted at Lincoln. Some doctors practiced passive eugenicide one newborn infant at a time. Others doctors at mental institutions engaged in lethal neglect.



Nonetheless, with eugenicide marginalized, the main solution for eugenicists was the rapid expansion of forced segregation and sterilization, as well as more marriage restrictions. California led the nation, performing nearly all sterilization procedures with little or no due process. In its first twenty-five years of eugenic legislation, California sterilized 9,782 individuals, mostly women. Many were classified as "bad girls," diagnosed as "passionate," "oversexed" or "sexually wayward." At Sonoma, some women were sterilized because of what was deemed an abnormally large clitoris or labia.



In 1933 alone, at least 1,278 coercive sterilizations were performed, 700 of which were on women. The state's two leading sterilization mills in 1933 were Sonoma State Home with 388 operations and Patton State Hospital with 363 operations. Other sterilization centers included Agnews, Mendocino, Napa, Norwalk, Stockton and Pacific Colony state hospitals.



Even the United States Supreme Court endorsed aspects of eugenics. In its infamous 1927 decision, Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes wrote, "It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind…. Three generations of imbeciles are enough." This decision opened the floodgates for thousands to be coercively sterilized or otherwise persecuted as subhuman. Years later, the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials quoted Holmes's words in their own defense.



Only after eugenics became entrenched in the United States was the campaign transplanted into Germany, in no small measure through the efforts of California eugenicists, who published booklets idealizing sterilization and circulated them to German officials and scientists.



Hitler studied American eugenics laws. He tried to legitimize his anti-Semitism by medicalizing it, and wrapping it in the more palatable pseudoscientific facade of eugenics. Hitler was able to recruit more followers among reasonable Germans by claiming that science was on his side. While Hitler's race hatred sprung from his own mind, the intellectual outlines of the eugenics Hitler adopted in 1924 were made in America.



During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In Mein Kampf, published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception [of immigration] are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."



Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."



Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenic leader Madison Grant calling his race-based eugenics book, The Passing of the Great Race his "bible."



Hitler's struggle for a superior race would be a mad crusade for a Master Race. Now, the American term "Nordic" was freely exchanged with "Germanic" or "Aryan." Race science, racial purity and racial dominance became the driving force behind Hitler's Nazism. Nazi eugenics would ultimately dictate who would be persecuted in a Reich-dominated Europe, how people would live, and how they would die. Nazi doctors would become the unseen generals in Hitler's war against the Jews and other Europeans deemed inferior. Doctors would create the science, devise the eugenic formulas, and even hand-select the victims for sterilization, euthanasia and mass extermination.



During the Reich's early years, eugenicists across America welcomed Hitler's plans as the logical fulfillment of their own decades of research and effort. California eugenicists republished Nazi propaganda for American consumption. They also arranged for Nazi scientific exhibits, such as an August 1934 display at the L.A. County Museum, for the annual meeting of the American Public Health Association.



In 1934, as Germany's sterilizations were accelerating beyond 5,000 per month, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe upon returning from Germany ebulliently bragged to a key colleague, "You will be interested to know, that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by American thought.…I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million people."



That same year, ten years after Virginia passed its sterilization act, Joseph DeJarnette, superintendent of Virginia's Western State Hospital, observed in the Richmond Times-Dispatch, "The Germans are beating us at our own game."



More than just providing the scientific roadmap, America funded Germany's eugenic institutions. By 1926, Rockefeller had donated some $410,000 -- almost $4 million in 21st-Century money -- to hundreds of German researchers. In May 1926, Rockefeller awarded $250,000 to the German Psychiatric Institute of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute, later to become the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Psychiatry. Among the leading psychiatrists at the German Psychiatric Institute was Ernst Rüdin, who became director and eventually an architect of Hitler's systematic medical repression.



Another in the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute's eugenic complex of institutions was the Institute for Brain Research. Since 1915, it had operated out of a single room. Everything changed when Rockefeller money arrived in 1929. A grant of $317,000 allowed the Institute to construct a major building and take center stage in German race biology. The Institute received additional grants from the Rockefeller Foundation during the next several years. Leading the Institute, once again, was Hitler's medical henchman Ernst Rüdin. Rüdin's organization became a prime director and recipient of the murderous experimentation and research conducted on Jews, Gypsies and others.



Beginning in 1940, thousands of Germans taken from old age homes, mental institutions and other custodial facilities were systematically gassed. Between 50,000 and 100,000 were eventually killed.



Leon Whitney, executive secretary of the American Eugenics Society declared of Nazism, "While we were pussy-footing around…the Germans were calling a spade a spade."



A special recipient of Rockefeller funding was the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics in Berlin. For decades, American eugenicists had craved twins to advance their research into heredity. The Institute was now prepared to undertake such research on an unprecedented level. On May 13, 1932, the Rockefeller Foundation in New York dispatched a radiogram to its Paris office: JUNE MEETING EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE NINE THOUSAND DOLLARS OVER THREE YEAR PERIOD TO KWG INSTITUTE ANTHROPOLOGY FOR RESEARCH ON TWINS AND EFFECTS ON LATER GENERATIONS OF SUBSTANCES TOXIC FOR GERM PLASM.



At the time of Rockefeller's endowment, Otmar Freiherr von Verschuer, a hero in American eugenics circles, functioned as a head of the Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity and Eugenics. Rockefeller funding of that Institute continued both directly and through other research conduits during Verschuer's early tenure. In 1935, Verschuer left the Institute to form a rival eugenics facility in Frankfurt that was much heralded in the American eugenic press. Research on twins in the Third Reich exploded, backed up by government decrees. Verschuer wrote in Der Erbarzt, a eugenic doctor's journal he edited, that Germany's war would yield a "total solution to the Jewish problem."



Verschuer had a long-time assistant. His name was Josef Mengele. On May 30, 1943, Mengele arrived at Auschwitz. Verschuer notified the German Research Society, "My assistant, Dr. Josef Mengele (M.D., Ph.D.) joined me in this branch of research. He is presently employed as Hauptsturmführer [captain] and camp physician in the Auschwitz concentration camp. Anthropological testing of the most diverse racial groups in this concentration camp is being carried out with permission of the SS Reichsführer [Himmler]."



Mengele began searching the boxcar arrivals for twins. When he found them, he performed beastly experiments, scrupulously wrote up the reports and sent the paperwork back to Verschuer's institute for evaluation. Often, cadavers, eyes and other body parts were also dispatched to Berlin's eugenic institutes.



Rockefeller executives never knew of Mengele. With few exceptions, the foundation had ceased all eugenic studies in Nazi-occupied Europe before the war erupted in 1939. But by that time the die had been cast. The talented men Rockefeller and Carnegie financed, the institutions they helped found, and the science it helped create took on a scientific momentum of their own.



After the war, eugenics was declared a crime against humanity--an act of genocide. Germans were tried and they cited the California statutes in their defense. To no avail. They were found guilty.



However, Mengele's boss Verschuer escaped prosecution. Verschuer re-established his connections with California eugenicists who had gone underground and renamed their crusade "human genetics." Typical was an exchange July 25, 1946 when Popenoe wrote Verschuer, "It was indeed a pleasure to hear from you again. I have been very anxious about my colleagues in Germany…. I suppose sterilization has been discontinued in Germany?" Popenoe offered tidbits about various American eugenic luminaries and then sent various eugenic publications. In a separate package, Popenoe sent some cocoa, coffee and other goodies.



Verschuer wrote back, "Your very friendly letter of 7/25 gave me a great deal of pleasure and you have my heartfelt thanks for it. The letter builds another bridge between your and my scientific work; I hope that this bridge will never again collapse but rather make possible valuable mutual enrichment and stimulation."



Soon, Verschuer once again became a respected scientist in Germany and around the world. In 1949, he became a corresponding member of the newly formed American Society of Human Genetics, organized by American eugenicists and geneticists.



In the fall of 1950, the University of Münster offered Verschuer a position at its new Institute of Human Genetics, where he later became a dean. In the early and mid-1950s, Verschuer became an honorary member of numerous prestigious societies, including the Italian Society of Genetics, the Anthropological Society of Vienna, and the Japanese Society for Human Genetics.



Human genetics' genocidal roots in eugenics were ignored by a victorious generation that refused to link itself to the crimes of Nazism and by succeeding generations that never knew the truth of the years leading up to war. Now governors of five states, including California have issued public apologies to their citizens, past and present, for sterilization and other abuses spawned by the eugenics movement.



Human genetics became an enlightened endeavor in the late twentieth century. Hard-working, devoted scientists finally cracked the human code through the Human Genome Project. Now, every individual can be biologically identified and classified by trait and ancestry. Yet even now, some leading voices in the genetic world are calling for a cleansing of the unwanted among us, and even a master human species.



There is understandable wariness about more ordinary forms of abuse, for example, in denying insurance or employment based on genetic tests. On October 14, America's first genetic anti-discrimination legislation passed the Senate by unanimous vote. Yet because genetics research is global, no single nation's law can stop the threats.



This article was first published in the San Francisco Chronicle and is reprinted with permission of the author."



The Horrifying American Roots of Nazi Eugenics | History News Network

America's Brutal History of Eugenics - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

"Eugenics in America took a dark turn in the early 20th century, led by California. From 1909 to 1979, around 20,000 sterilizations occurred in California state mental institutions under the guise of protecting society from the offspring of people with mental illness.



Many sterilizations were forced and performed on minorities. Thirty-three states would eventually allow involuntary sterilization in whomever lawmakers deemed unworthy to procreate.



In 1927, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that forced sterilization of the handicapped does not violate the U.S. Constitution. In the words of Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes, “…three generations of imbeciles are enough.” In 1942, the ruling was overturned, but not before thousands of people underwent the procedure.



In the 1930s, the governor of Puerto Rico, Menendez Ramos, implemented sterilization programs for Puerto Rican women. Ramos claimed the action was needed to battle rampant poverty and economic strife; however, it may have also been a way to prevent the so-called superior Aryan gene pool from becoming tainted with Latino blood.







According to a 1976 Government Accountability Office investigation, between 25 and 50 percent of Native Americans were sterilized between 1970 and 1976. It’s thought some sterilizations happened without consent during other surgical procedures such as an appendectomy.



In some cases, health care for living children was denied unless their mothers agreed to sterilization.



ADOLF HITLER AND EUGENICS



As horrific as forced sterilization in America was, nothing compared to Adolf Hitler’s eugenic experiments during World War II. And Hitler didn’t come up with the concept of a superior Aryan race all on his own. In fact, he referred to American eugenics in his 1934 book, Mein Kampf.



In Mein Kampf, Hitler declares non-Aryan races such as Jews and gypsies as inferior. He believed Germans should do everything possible, including genocide, to make sure their gene pool stayed pure. And in 1933, the Nazis created the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Offspring which resulted in thousands of forced sterilizations.



By 1940, Hitler’s master-race mania took a terrible turn as Germans with mental or physical disabilities were euthanized by gas or lethal injection. Even the blind and deaf weren’t safe, and hundreds of thousands of people were killed..."

Eugenics - Facts & Summary - HISTORY.com

Piecing Together Stories Of Families 'Lost In Slavery' : NPR

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How Boarding Schools Tried to ‘Kill the Indian’ Through Assimilation - HISTORY

How Boarding Schools Tried to ‘Kill the Indian’ Through Assimilation - HISTORY

American Indian Boarding Schools Haunt Many : NPR

McAuliffe on Trump’s family separation policy: A dark moment in American history

McAuliffe on Trump’s family separation policy: A dark moment in American history

What Japanese-American internment camps and family separations have in common — Quartz

"The forcible relocation and internment of some 120,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II is a shameful episode in US history. It also provides a necessary yet unsettling primer on how separation and internment affect families’ health in the long term.



In the wake of Japan’s December 1941 bombing of Pearl Harbor, president Franklin Roosevelt signed an executive order that allowed the US government to establish internment camps for people of Japanese descent on the grounds of national security. As a result, entire families—most born and raised in the US—were ordered to leave their homes, take only what they could carry, and report to one of 10 internment centers dotting the western half of the US from northern California as far east as Arkansas.



Families were not separated as a matter of policy, though there were cases of individuals imprisoned for “sedition”—speaking out against internment—or other offenses, and, as a result, held separately from their families. Yet internment still profoundly disrupted family life. In addition to losing their homes, careers, and livelihoods, fathers lost their sense of identity as breadwinners. Homemaker mothers forced into barrack-style housing were stripped of control of their homes. Family meals were replaced with mess-hall dining. Camp governance displaced cultural hierarchies, placing English-speaking second generation internees in positions of authority over older generations whose English was sometimes limited.





As the horrifying reality comes to light of the thousands of children the US government has forcibly removed from their parents with no plan for reunification—more than 2,300 since early May—doctors are speaking out on the long-term health and psychological impacts of the intense trauma that can be caused by such seperation. As Quartz’s Annabelle Timsit and Jenny Anderson have reported, children’s prolonged exposure to stress hormones can have profound long-term consequences, from learning and behavioral problems to reduced immune functioning.



“Separation from parents is the most traumatic thing a child can experience,” says Satsuki Ina, a professor emeritus of California State University-Sacramento who is now a psychotherapist based in Oakland, California. “Every day they are altering the neurology of the child.”



Ina was born in an internment camp. Hers was among the families unwillingly torn apart: her father was arrested for protesting conditions at a camp and sent with other protestors to an all-male detention center run by the US Department of Justice, she says. Ina has been visiting family detention centers along the US side of the US-Mexico border and speaking out against the detainment of children there for several years now.



Trauma in children can lead to behavioral outbursts, Ina says, but it can also manifest in ways that can be mistaken for compliance: numbness, silence, a detachment from surroundings. When Ina visited one border detention center in 2016, she observed child detainees refusing to eat.



The trauma of family incarceration does not only affect and stay with the young. As a therapist, Ina has worked with many Japanese-American clients who were interned, and has seen how trauma manifests decades later as depression, strained family relationships, and a lifelong sense of undeserved guilt and fear of authority.



“It’s a fear-based approach to life, the fear that we may suffer a horrible consequence for no just reason,” she says. “That’s part of the trauma.”



There are physical consequences as well. When doctoral candidate Gwendolyn Jensen revisited survivors of the internment camps some 50 years after the end of World War II, she found that former internees of all ages had 2.1 times the rate of cardiovascular disease and premature death compared with non-interned peers. Though Jensen’s work wasn’t peer-reviewed, anecdotal reports support her findings of a higher rate of premature death among former internees. When, in the early 1990s, researchers interviewed nearly 500 third-generation Japanese-Americans with at least one parent incarcerated during the war, they found twice as many of the incarcerated fathers had died before age 60 compared to fathers who were not interned.



Small wonder, then, that former Japanese-American internees have been some of the most outspoken opponents of the US policy of separating and detaining families at the border."



What Japanese-American internment camps and family separations have in common — Quartz

The history of separating slave and Indian children from their parents in America - The Washington Post

"A mother unleashed a piercing scream as her baby was ripped from her arms during a slave auction. Even as a lash cut her back, she refused to put her baby down and climb atop an auction block.



The woman pleaded for God’s mercy, Henry Bibb, a former slave, recalled in an 1849 narrative that is part of “The Weeping Time” exhibit at the Smithsonian’s Museum of African American History and Culture, which documents the tragic U.S. history of enslaved children being separated from their enslaved parents. “But the child was torn from the arms of its mother amid the most heart-rending shrieks from the mother and child on the one hand, and the bitter oaths and cruel lashes from the tyrants on the other.”



Her mother was sold to the highest bidder.



Enslaved mothers and fathers lived with the constant fear that they or their children might be sold away.



“Night and day, you could hear men and women screaming … ma, pa, sister or brother … taken without any warning,” Susan Hamilton, another witness to a slave auction, recalled in a 1938 interview. “People was always dying from a broken heart.”



The Trump administration’s current crackdown on families that cross the border illegally has led to hundreds of children, some as young as 18 months, being separated from their parents. The parents are being sent to federal jails to face criminal prosecution while their children are being placed in shelters operated by the Department of Health and Human Services. Often, the children have no idea where their parents are or when they will see them again.



[Trump’s ‘zero tolerance’ at the border is causing child shelters to fill up fast]



The policy has generated outrage among Democrats and immigration advocates. And it has conjured memories of some of the ugliest chapters in American history.



“Official US policy,” tweeted the African American Research Collaborative over the weekend. “Until 1865, rip African American children from their parents. From 1870s to 1970s, rip Native American children from their parents. Now, rip children of immigrants and refugees from their parents.”



Henry Fernandez, co-founder of the collaborative and a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, said he drafted the tweet based on his research into several periods in U.S. history when government officials sanctioned the separation of children from their parents, including during slavery.



[Missouri v. Celia, a Slave: She killed the white master raping her, then claimed self-defense]



Another period of family cruelty, Fernandez said, began in the late 1800s and lasted well into the 1970s, when indigenous children across the country were forcibly separated from their families and sent to “Indian schools.” At the boarding schools, the children were required to assimilate. They were stripped of their language and culture. Often they were physically and sometimes sexually abused.



“In each case, we look back at the programs as barbaric,” Fernandez said. “History will similarly consider the Trump administration’s ripping children from their parents as an unconscionably evil government action.”



According to the Smithsonian’s National Museum of the American Indian, beginning in the late 1800s, thousands of American Indian children were sent to government-run or church-run boarding schools.



“Families were often forced to send their children to these schools, where they were forbidden to speak their Native languages,” according to the museum.



The exhibit includes a quote from Richard Henry Pratt, founder of the Carlisle Indian Industrial School: “In Indian civilization I am a Baptist,” Pratt wrote, “because I believe in immersing the Indian in our civilization and when we get them under, holding them there until they are thoroughly soaked.”





A teacher and students at the Carlisle Indian Industrial School in Pennsylvania in 1901.

Photo by: Library of Congress



At boarding schools, “children were forced to cut their hair and give up their traditional clothing,” according to the museum. “They had to give up their meaningful Native names and take English ones. They were not only taught to speak English, but were punished for speaking their own languages. Their own traditional religious practices were forcibly replaced with Christianity. They were taught that their cultures were inferior. Some teachers ridiculed and made fun of the students’ traditions. These lessons humiliated the students and taught them to be ashamed of being American Indian.”



“They tell us not to speak in Navajo language. You’re going to school. You’re supposed to only speak English. And it was true. They did practice that, and we got punished if you was caught speaking Navajo,” John Brown Jr., a Navajo who served in World War II as a code talker, using his Navajo language for tactical communications the Japanese could not decode, told the National Museum of the American Indian in a 2004 interview.



“When we got talking, ’cause we’re not allowed to talk our tribal language, and then me and my cousin, we get together and we talk in Indian, we always hush up when we see a teacher or faculty coming,” Charles Chibitty, a Comanche code talker, told the museum in 2004. “And then we always laughed and said, ‘I think they’re trying to make little white boys out of us.’ ”





Government Indian school on the Swinomish Reservation in La Conner, Wash., in 1907.

Photo by: Library of Congress



Until the end of the Civil War, it was common for slave owners to rip families apart by selling the children or the parents to other slave owners.



“Along with ongoing rape and the use of the whip to discipline human beings,” Fernandez said, “destroying families is one of the worst things done during slavery. The federal government maintained these evils through the fugitive slave laws and other rules which defined African Americans as property with which a slave owner could do whatever they wanted.”



Each of these U.S. policies, Fernandez said, begins with the assumption “that the idea of family is simply less important to people of color and that the people involved are less than human. To justify ripping families apart, the government must first engage in dehumanizing the targeted group, whether it is Native Americans, African Americans or immigrants from Central America fleeing murder, rape, extortion and kidnapping.”



Trump, he noted, dehumanized immigrant children by saying, “ ‘They look so innocent. They’re not innocent.’ ”



“There is no question these children are innocent,” Fernandez said, “but Trump associates them with the idea that these are not like your children and thus less than human.”



Slave narratives reveal the heart-wrenching stories of children taken from families.



According to the Maryland State Archives:  “For most slave children, the separation from their parents and the siblings was the hardest aspect of being sold. Slaves went to great lengths to keep their family together, but there was often limits to what they could do.”



[Hunting down runaway slaves: The cruel ads of Andrew Jackson and ‘the master class’]



The report includes a narrative from Charles Ball, who was enslaved as a child and remembered the day he was sold away from his mother.



“My poor mother, when she saw me leaving her for the last time, ran after me, took me down from the horse, clasped me in her arms, and wept loudly and bitterly over me,” Ball recalled. “My master seemed to pity her and endeavored to soothe her distress by telling her that he would be a good master to me, and that I should not want anything.”



Still, his mother would not let go. She walked beside the horse, begging the slave owner to buy her and the rest of her children.



“But whilst thus entreating him to save her and her family,” Ball recalled, “the slave-driver, who had first bought her, came running in pursuit of her with a raw hide in his hand. When he overtook us, he told her he was her master now and ordered her to give that little Negro to its owner and come back with him. My mother then turned to him and cried, ‘Oh, master, do not take me from my child!’ Without making any reply, he gave her two or three heavy blows on the shoulders with his raw hide, snatched me from her arms, handed me to my master, and seizing her by one arm, dragged her back towards the place of sale.”



After the end of the Civil War, thousands of former slaves looked for lost relatives and children who had been sold away from their families. They placed thousands of ads in newspapers.





Mary Bailey searches for her children, Nancy, Ben, Polly, Tempa and Isham Bailey. The ad ran in the Daily Dispatch newspaper in Richmond on Nov. 24, 1866.



Those ads are now being digitized in a project called “Last Seen: Finding Family After Slavery,” which is run by Villanova University’s graduate history program in collaboration with Philadelphia’s Mother Bethel AME Church.



[‘My mother was sold from me’: After slavery, the desperate search for loved ones in ‘last seen ads’]



The ads started appearing about 1863. By 1865, when the Civil War ended, they were coming out in streams, thousands of “Information Wanted” notices in black-owned newspapers across the country, seeking any help to find loved ones.



Mothers looked for their children; children looked for their mothers; fathers placed ads for lost sons; sisters looked for sisters; husbands sought their wives; wives tried to find their husbands.



The ads often gave detailed physical descriptions of the missing, names of former slave owners, locations where family members were last seen, and sometimes maps, tracing how many times they were sold from one owner to the next until they were so far from family members all they had to cling to were sketchy memories.



Elizabeth Williams, who had been sold twice since she last saw her children, placed a heart-wrenching ad in the Christian Recorder newspaper in Philadelphia:



“INFORMATION WANTED by a mother concerning her children,” Williams wrote March 17, 1866.



In four column inches, the mother summed up her life, hoping the details would help her find the children. She listed their names — Lydia, William, Allen and Parker — and explained in a few words that she last saw them when they were “formerly owned together” by a man named John Petty, who lived about six miles from Woodbury, Tenn.



She explained how her family was split apart when she was sold again and taken farther south into captivity.



“She has never seen the above-named children since,” the ad said. “Any information given concerning them, however, will be gratefully received by one whose love for her children survives the bitterness and hardships of many long years spent in slavery.”



The history of separating slave and Indian children from their parents in America - The Washington Post