Black jobs, Hmong jobs and snow jobs
Donald Trump last week declared that millions and millions of immigrants “happen to be taking Black jobs.” He said this on stage at the convention of the National Association of Black Journalists in Chicago, to three Black women whose job it was to question the Republican presidential candidate. He said the questions were rude.
Tote that barge, lift that bale. That’s what Black folk must do.
“I love my Black job,” said Simone Biles after winning her umpteenth gold medal at the Olympics.
Suni Lee loves her Hmong job, too, a daughter of refugees who landed in Minnesota. She stood next to Biles on the Paris podium with the bronze medal in gymnastics. Biles does not begrudge Lee one moment for competing for a Black job.
Around here, immigrants primarily work in meatpacking, of course mainly Latino but some Hmong as well. If they are taking Black jobs, we are not aware. We have not heard of a Black woman being aced out of a position on the kill floor by Karin women, but it could have happened. Sudanese people work at Tyson alongside Salvadorans.
Immigrants take the lowest rung on the economic ladder, which is supposed to be where the White Boss Man puts the Blacks. Roofing. Laying sod. Scooping manure. Not winning gold. Certainly not running for president!
Trump said in St. Cloud: “No person who deliberately releases these kinds of savage criminals to prey on our youth and our people ... not just youth, elderly people too ... should ever be trusted with power. Again, she has no clue, she has no clue, she’s evil.”
Immigration. Evil.
That dog won’t hunt this time. Just who is the criminal?
Kamala Harris raised $300 million in only two weeks while Trump was insulting Blacks, Asians and Latinos. His lead in key swing state polls evaporated.
Border crossings now are lower than when Trump was in office. Harris helped convince Mexican and other Latin American officials to stem the tide. Mexico’s new president, Claudia Sheinbaum, studied at Berkley and promises to be a partner in managing refugee flows. Actually, it is working.
Pitting Blacks against immigrants and working-class Whites has always been Trump’s game. "I didn't know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now she wants to be known as Black," Trump said at the NABJ convention. "So I don't know. Is she Indian? Or is she Black?"
Harris is the daughter of immigrants, like Suni Lee. She worked her way up from Oakland to attorney general in Sacramento to the US Senate. Along the way, she attended Howard University and hooked up with the Black sorority system whose sisters will make sure she wins Georgia fair and square.
Immigrants should hope so. Trump will deport more than 10 million undocumented immigrants, his maestro Stephen Miller insists. That is impossible even in a dictatorship but they intend to give it a solid try. Biden deported more immigrants than Trump did, and helped President Obama deport more immigrants than the Clinton and Bush Administrations combined.
Harris claims she will get passed a bipartisan border security bill negotiated by the Biden Administration but squelched by Trump’s order in the House. Harris is closing off Trump’s principal argument — that she is soft on the border — and she will have plenty of money to drive the point home.
Biden and Harris campaigned for the Democratic nomination in Iowa with sympathy for immigrants, but they governed by cutting off refugees from asylum. Dreamers remain in legal limbo. Immigrants remain afraid.
At least Harris has an immigration story to tell. She is not a blatantly ignorant racist like Trump, who thinks that Blacks are destined to shingle roofs or throw turkeys or pick cotton. The Biden/Harris administration has been a disappointment on human rights, but as an heir to immigrants Harris might finally be able to rationalize our awful system.
We need immigrants.
There are jobs in Storm Lake for Blacks, Whites, Asians and Latinos. Denison, Marshalltown and Worthington, too. Doubtful that the Tyson employment office in Waterloo will be overrun by laid-off John Deere union members, Black or White, whose jobs were shipped to Mexico. Trump would like you to think that a Mexican did that, when the call was made by a White guy at corporate in the Quad Cities. It’s one of those White jobs, you know.
Art Cullen is the editor of the Storm Lake Times Pilot in Northwest Iowa, where this column appeared. For more columns and editorials, please consider a subscription to the Times Pilot. Or, if you wish, you can make a tax-deductible gift to the Western Iowa Journalism Foundation to support independent community journalism in rural Iowa. Thanks.
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Iowans had an immigration history we could be proud of--Governor Ray invited plane loads of refugees of the Vietnam war. We have an even more astounding anti-racist history--desegregating schools in the late 1800s.
I'm embarassed at who we've become. We refuse federal funds because our governor would prefer that poor people's children suffer. I think that says a lot.
Thanks Art, for the good and honest reflection on a complicated situation where bad guys are plentiful and even the good guys have issues. We need to keep our focus on immigration, even as we are thrilled at the apparent change in our election hopes. As you always say, WE NEED IMMIGRANTS. And that is only one reason to do the right thing.