Judge Asks If 'America First' Is Code for Racial Hostility

[DonViejo]

Source: Bloomberg News



By Kartikay Mehrotra

September 25, 2018, 8:27 PM EDT

The same day President Donald Trump spoke to the United Nations in New York about “America First,” a federal judge in San Francisco wondered aloud whether the slogan was being used by the president’s lieutenants to camouflage discriminatory immigration policies.

U.S. District Judge Edward Chen heard arguments for more than two hours over whether he should block the Trump administration from overturning portions of a George H.W. Bush-era humanitarian policy that offers U.S. residency to nationals from countries in perilous conditions. At stake are protections for about 300,000 people from El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua and Sudan who could be deported en masse if those countries’ Temporary Protected Status is scrapped by the Department of Homeland Security. While Chen didn’t make a decision at the end of the hearing, he did flag a memo written by former DHS Deputy Secretary Elaine Duke. In it, she posited that TPS “must end for these countries soon” in order for U.S. immigration policy to be compliant with Trump’s “America first” agenda.

Chen asked a Justice Department attorney at the hearing if the phrase was code for Trump’s racial animus, referring to a January Twitter rant in which the president dubbed the African continent and Haiti “shithole countries.”

“The inference plaintiffs make is that this is code for ending immigration status for those who are non-white. What do you make of that?” Chen asked.

Read more: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-09-25/judge-asks-if-america-first-is-code-for-racial-hostility?srnd=premium

[dembotoz]

1. bingo

[calimary]

3. Indeed.

[keroro gunsou]

2. at the risk

of being rude and maybe breaking some rules around here....

DUH!

[ginnyinWI]

4. White Male America First.

As a white woman I have never felt like anyone was putting my priorities first.

[Lonestarblue]

5. Snopes has an interesting history of the term "America First."

“In sum, the political slogan “America First” has a pedigree stretching back more than a hundred years, with connotations ranging from anti-expansionism and trade protectionism to outright racism and anti-Semitism. Although it has been trumpeted over time by hate groups such as the Ku Klux Klan, its use does not automatically confer the most heinous of those attitudes on the user — although given its less savory associations, one wonders why any informed person would embrace it today.”
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/america-first-ku-klux-klan-slogan/

Snopes traces the use of this slogan as far back as 1896. In all its uses, though, it has represented policies that have never benefitted the U.S. I suspect that few Trump supporters would know (or care about) what this slogan communicates to the rest of the world in all of its connotations, but they are missing a resulting conundrum: if you want to be the world leader, then you must be a part of that world. If you hide behind protectionisn and rejection of all non-white people, then you are not part of the world and cannot thus be its leader. Trump’s policies are obviously taking us down the path of lost prestige and leadership in our world. I would like to see polls asking questions of his supporters about why they want the U.S. to become just another has-been leader.

[erronis]

12. Thanks for the link to the snopes article. The term does seem to imply a right-wing protectionist

anti-immigrant dog whistle. (I only understood what a dog whistle meant in the last couple of months....)

This is all part of the scheme to Make America Subservient Slaves - slaves to the landed gentry and foreign interests.

[ancianita]

15. That's what my libertarian relatives tell me. They say there are true and fake libertarians.

[ancianita]

6. IF racist codes elsewhere, say Germany, & 45 echoes those codes, lawyers must ADMIT IT

as part of Trump foreign policy.

Trump, Stephen Miller and Duke have shown patterns of speech and action that make this administration's racist foreign policy evident.

[SWBTATTReg]

13. Very obvious that these folks suffer from massive self delusional concepts and beliefs ...

that they alone has what it takes to solve the ages old problems affecting this country, and that no one else is worthy of even listening to or responding to (beyond all arguments).

This is pathetic arrogance to the extreme, and what's amazing to me about it, is that (1) by no means are they even remotely physically or mentally attractive to anyone. I mean, really, if you're pushing your superiority on others, at least try and look better, or act smarter than the rest of us. I could walk down the streets of any of our cities and immediately find 3 people that look and act a thousand times better looking than rump, miller, duke (you couldn't have picked worse then these 3 persons, amazing!).

No wonder rumps pays off all of his one night stands (better yet, the one niter probably gives her money back to rump for a refund!), or that (2) Darth Vader / Stephen Miller is a joke waiting to be finished somehow, and the comedian gave up (3) Duke, if I'm not mistaken as to the person here being talked about here, looks like sun dried, already cooked pasta, left out way too long.

And these guys are claiming racial superiority? Anyone can claim anything, but as to the tag that they will be always known by, they have no control over what society calls them. I'll start by calling them pathetic in the extreme, and the biggest losers of all time. And racist.

[ancianita]

14. It's not looks (though you're right) that the country is concerned with, but immigration policy.

That they want 300,000 humans to be deported over "Make America Great Again" or "America First," which completely opposes everything the undocumented immigrant Founders stood for.

They are using the Constitution's lack of specificity to undermine the meaning of the other founding documents of this country; e.g., the Declaration of Independence:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of happiness.

While everyone else says the Declaration is pro-immigrant, the Kochs' Heritage Foundation pronounces that it doesn't. Because the word isn't in it, apparently.

Even the use of "naturalized" implies that once the undocumented immigrant Founders set up this country, we could set up laws that pick and choose, afterward, who of all the other undocumented immigrants to let in.

Remember when Italians and others were too "swarthy"? Color has always been the issue. Whites' eurocentric view of their names, language, looks and attributes have been that standard for centuries.

[Pepsidog]

7. Start with tossing Ivana and Melania out with their dubious stories of how they came to America.

Show us their paperwork. Prove they entered the country legally.

[geardaddy]

9. And posthumously stripping Trump's mother of her citizenship. n/t

[SWBTATTReg]

11. Agree. They sure quieted all of this down when it initially came up...funny how things seem ...

to disappear from the public's view, eh?

[peekaloo]

8. A poll of bears copping a squat in the woods says "Yes".

[onetexan]

10. America First is dog whistle for racial bias for sure

We have an ignominious, misogynist, racist DOTUS pushing his agenda of hate.

[ck4829]

16. K&R

[RobinA]

17. The Bigger Question

is, why would you talk to the United Nations about "America First," no matter what it meant? U-N-I-T-E-D NationS get it? Of course he doesn't.

[Doc_Technical]

18. "Country first"

I don't think the 2008 Republican campaign slogan was referring
to a type of music.