Contrary to the fevered dreams of the woke, everything isn’t racism. That doesn’t mean, however, that a particular thing that the government does isn’t racist. Distinguishing between the two matters, the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe fails miserably to accomplish this critical task.
This case involves a challenge to the Trump Administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants in the US. TPS status protects from deportation migrants who entered the US from countries where conditions such as war, violence, or natural disaster make it dangerous for them to return home.
The case challenged the termination of temporary protected status on two bases. The first was procedural, but the second was that the determination was motivated by racism in violation of the Constitution. I leave the procedural issues to others more knowledgeable on the legal issue, and address Justice Sam Alito’s bizarre “whitewashing” of the underlying basis for the termination.
As some note, the first word of TPS is “temporary,” which obviously means that those enjoying protection from deportation were not guaranteed that they would be able to remain in the United States permanently. This is a given, but fails to provide much help. These immigrants were permitted to lawfully enter and remain under TPS, and authorized to live and work here, establishing lives, businesses and families.
To shout “temporary” and pull the plug essentially overnight after immigrants have relied on the government’s representations that they should put their efforts and future into establishing a life in the United States wreaks unfair havoc on the lives of immigrants as well as the welfare of their communities. What is an employer to do when some significant portion of his workforce, and his customer base, unceremoniously disappears overnight? What is a community to do when a significant portion of their housing stock comes on the market overnight? What do schools do when a significant portion of the schoolhouses built to hold students are emptied overnight? The consequences are enormous and devastating because the United States encouraged and enabled people who fled dangerous countries to make lives for themselves here with the expectation that whatever the future brought, it would not magically disappear overnight.
But why did this “magic” happen?
In support of their claim that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on race, respondents cite statements made by the President and former Secretary Noem.
The President’s comments fall into four main categories. First, many express strong objections to the immigration that this country has experienced in recent decades and to many of the immigrants who have come here, particularly those who have come to or stayed in the United States illegally. These statements associate these immigrants with crime and other social ills. Second, some statements express great displeasure with TPS. They note, among other things, that TPS designations have often been far from temporary and that aliens who are allowed to stay in the United States under the program are not vetted like other aliens who seek admission. Third, some statements broadly denigrate the countries for which TPS designations have been granted—including Haiti—portraying them as hellish places in which to live. And fourth, some statements malign Haitians who have come to the United States.
Notice anything missing from Justice Alito’s recitation of the putatively offending statements?
None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.
In dissent, Justice Kagan disagrees, providing what Justice Alito chooses to ignore.
The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print. (Indeed, one measure of the President’s way of speaking about Haitians is to compare it with the majority’s, which is unfailingly respectful.) So here are some of those statements.
Haitians are “eating the dogs . . . . They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio].”
And: Haitians are also eating “other things too that they’re not supposed to be.”
And: Haitians in the United States “probably have AIDS.”
And: Haiti is a “shithole country,” which is “filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting.”
And: Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.” And: Haitians, along with some others, are “poisoning the blood” of our country.
And: “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries” like “Haiti [and] Somalia”? “Why cannot we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?”
If the contention is that these statements aren’t overtly racist, then it was incumbent on Justice Alito to address that directly rather than sweep it under the rug by the conclusory assertion that they were not while studiously avoiding the outrageously offensive and flagrantly racist statements propounded by the president.
As Kagan notes, there is an obvious difference between Haitians and Norwegians and Swedes, not to mention South African white people who are the only refugees curently invited into the United States by this administration,
Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.)
Everything isn’t racist, but if this isn’t, then Alito failed miserably to make the case. Whitewashing Trump’s statements doesn’t make them disappear.
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After reading Alito’s decision, the Swedish Chef was heard to remark, “Vert der fork?”.
Not even if I try engaging in complete sophistry could I make any sort of seemingly sane argument that Trump’s statements aren’t racist. Any that I try to build end up so ridiculous and mockable it’s no wonder Alito didn’t try. There aren’t any that Kagan or anyone with a brain wouldn’t be able to tear apart violently. “Life is inherently meaningless, objective reality might not exist, so like what is racism really?” Not the most convincing. Does Alito know his argument leads to insane ends or has he succumbed to base ideology so fully that he believes what he wrote? Is he a charlatan or a nutjob?
This is coming from a guy who apparently has read what our enlightened founding fathers wrote and reveres it enough to give their interpretation of the world and their work precedence over all else. How do these two mindsets exist in one person? Has he actually done his homework and engaged fully with the time period he thinks he reveres? If Madison and Hamilton and as many others as needed sprung back to life and told Alito and the “originalists” they are all wrong and stupid, would they give up the chase or would they continue on regardless having fully committed to futility?
On more practical terms, Springfield’s doing better than any of 30+ years I’ve lived in SW/Central Ohio. No one I know or have spoken to here wants the feds sticking their noses in our business. The Haitian refugees have integrated into the larger community well. I fear for the future of our little corner of the world. Please don’t send ICE? Please?
Forgive the lengthy screed please. The consequences of this mindless swill will hit close to home.
Well, Haiti _is_ a sithole country. As anyone that’s honest and has been there will tell you.
Also, their culture is crime ridden, again as anyone that’s honest and been there will tell you.
Like it or not, people bring their backgrounds with them. Look at what happened in Michigan.
Why would I invite someone that has a background of crime and doesn’t share my cultural values to move in with me?
It’s not my fault your country is a garbage dump, you made it. I don’t want your values here.
And don’t call me me a racist. A bunch of Muslims are Caucasian and I don’t want their values of killing gays and Jews, and grooming gangs in my home as well.
If you had come to my country and adapted to our laws and culture I’d welcome you. If you expect me to accommodate your ways, then don’t come here.
Parts of the country are crime-ridden; the culture is not. Some knowledge of the history would tell you why. Your racist screed speaks for itself.
In May 1939, the German liner St. Louis sailed from Hamburg, Germany, to Havana, Cuba. The 937 passengers were almost all Jewish refugees. Cuba’s government refused to allow the ship to land. The United States and Canada were unwilling to admit the passengers. The St. Louis passengers were finally permitted to land in western European countries rather than return to Nazi Germany. Ultimately, 254 St. Louis passengers were killed in the Holocaust.
Your post is disugusting Hunting Guy, more than usual. Your reasoning is why those countries refused entry of white people into the united states… your fear of immigrants is unreal, and horrifying that people don’t learn from the past.
I am disappointed, that people like you still exist and are proud to post their filth on the web.
Don’t lecture me about how Jews are treated. My grandfather lost relatives and friends in the concentration camps. I lost relatives on October 7th.
And it’s called Freedom of Speech. Our host has lectured on it several times.
then, as I have said, you have learned nothing. In fact, you are even worse than others who have not lost relatives in the holocaust.
You have no compassion. Your fealty to the republican party or whatever you happen to believe in, you turn your back on those relatives.
You immediately say that every Haitian is a criminal or even worse less than human, as a starting point, and through your words, you are forcing them to prove that they are not. What kind of bullshit is that?
Just like the Cubans, Americans and Canadians ignored the Jews trying to get asylum on that boat in 1939, you view immigrants from Haiti as less than you…
Get a grip.
I really doubt that anyone commenting here, or who regularly reads Scott’s posts, would not extend sincere condolences to you over your lost relatives. I myself would not begrudge an initial, reflexively maximalist attitude about immigration if I lost a loved one on 10/7.
Taking the MAGA line on immigration—which is bundled up with openly fascist rhetoric, and carried out by a rogue’s gallery of coy-to-openly fascist policymakers and foot soliders—is incomprehensible, based on the family history you’ve cited. I wish you well, and your fellow Americans need you to reevaluate your positions.
Also, I never brought up Freedom of Speech, or tried to deny your freedom of speech, not sure where that came from. I used my speech to counter your speech…
And as well… Freedom of Speech is irrelevant on this board… our host can ban and delete any of our posts without warning. so you may want to learn more about what the Freedom of Speech means before making such a non sequitur.
I grew up in Skokie, Illinois, and I was 8 years or so, and my mom had to explain to me why the Nazis wanted to march in my hometown who had so many holocaust survivors.
So I got a lesson on Freedom of Speech pretty young.
That was the ACLU back then… defending the right for nazis to have free speech.
I’ll disagree with James. You don’t display racism here, but you are discriminating unfairly on the basis of country of origin. Perhaps also religious intolerance. I land on racist-adjacent for now. Don’t blame me. I just calls ’em as I sees ’em. Like it or not. Being kind, I attribute it not to malice but to ignorance.
Beyond pragmatism and the question of isms, your arguments also fail empirically, being that immigrants commit less crime than our fellow citizens do. The ones who spend all that effort to uproot and travel here tend to be more motivated to work and build that better life they had been dreaming about than to get themselves locked up, it would seem.
Beyond measuring and observing things, you’ve also got some flaws in the old logic department, not that you were constructing anything based on axioms. Coming all the way back around to Midwestern practicality, you mind your business and we’ll mind ours. Thanks.
Because you love quotes let’s do one by the oft misunderstood father of capitalism, Adam Smith who is well rooted in our inherited Anglo-American culture:
“By the imagination we place ourselves in his situation, we conceive ourselves enduring all the same torments, we enter as it were into his body, and become in some measure the same person with him, and thence form some idea of his sensations, and even feel something which, though weaker in degree, is not altogether unlike them.” The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Practice sympathy perhaps, like our culture counsels.
It’s been a while since I’ve commented, but I want to add to your point. There is nothing particularly novel about HG’s concerns, as they were true of the Chinese, Irish, Italians, Jews and Puerto Ricans in their days, each of whom we considered a lesser culture and were feared as diluting what then-current Americans saw as the nation they developed and loved. It’s entirely understandable that new and different people are feared to bring undesired change to a good thing.
Are the current immigrants different, worse, than their predecessors? Maybe, but probably not. In time, each has found a niche in our society and contributed significant benefits to the melting pot. That doesn’t make the concern any less real, but it should guide us to remember how we (assuming none of us came off the Mayflower) got here, survived and thrived.
God bless America!
Thanks, Miles. God bless America indeed. I love this country for what it actually stands. Hope you’ve been and continue to be well.
On sympathy, HG does deserve it too which tempers my instincts. To him: your fears are natural. No one sane wants crime and disruption and grooming gangs and violence. Who wants to raise a family in an environment like that? There’s only the realization that the majority who are here align with those values separating you from some empathy for your fellow man. Good food, good lodging, good community. If they didn’t, what we have wouldn’t have been possible.
Thanks, Hal. I really have been doing my reading lately. It infuriates more than soothes. I have no answers, let alone all of them. Always disagree with me.
I’m happy both that HG shared and everyone reacted. Otherwise the exchanges wouldn’t have, and that would have been a shame.
Well said. I largely, but not entirely, agree with you, but comment to express appreciation for for your tone and the quality of your writing (rather than to “+1!” your post).
This is contemptible. Don’t be surprised if quite a few patriots don’t find common ground with your “values”.
Let’s agree that “Haiti _is_ a sithole [sic] country.” And I agree with you that “It’s not my fault your country is a garbage dump. . ..” But you illogically add the next three words “. . . you made it.” Not true. Good people sometimes live in “sithole countries” as victims of conditions they did not create and cannot control. Ever since Lot left Sodom and Abraham left Ur there have been good people who leave “sithole countries” to escape evil to make a better life for themselves and their families. My Irish, Ukrainian and Czech ancestors left “sithole” empires for the chance of a better life in the USA for the same reason the refugees on the Saint Louis tried to flee the ‘sithole” the Nazis were making in Europe and for the same reason people are fleeing war, violence and persecution in Haiti, Somalia, Sudan, Ukraine and Palestine. If they are willing to abide by our laws and contribute to society, then they should be as welcome here as my ancestors were. Assimilation for my Ukrainian ancestors took three generations. My grandparents retained their language, religion and culture to their dying days. Ukrainian was the first language their children learned at home and it was not until the third generation that the Ukrainian side of my family was fully Americanized, although we will always keep our cultural roots to Ukraine and Ireland.
I don’t know you, Hunting Guy. But I am willing to bet that if you are white you probably have some ancestors who left a “sithole country” to come to the USA.
I totally agree that the decision to revoke TPS for Haitians is motivated by bigotry. But I can’t help but note the tension between the claims it’s racist to call Haiti a shithole country, and that it’s immoral to deport people back to Haiti because it’s such a shithole.
Nazi Germany was a shithole country. But it was immoral to send the refugees on the St. Louis back there. Haitians who want to leave a culture of violence should be welcome here as long as they obey the law and contribute to society.
Haiti is a shithole country because it’s a failed state…
Haiti is a shithole country because its people are disgusting…
One of those statements is irredeemably racist. *That* you think it’s a shithole country matters far less than *why* you think it’s a shithole country.