Made in the USA: The Real History of the MS-13 Gang Trump Talked About in State of the Union

 

Transcript:

AMY GOODMAN: In his State of the Union address, President Trump mentioned the MS-13 gang four times by name and told the story of the two young teenage girls who were murdered by members of the gang in Long Island. Let’s go to that part of the State of the Union.

PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: For decades, open borders have allowed drugs and gangs to pour into our most vulnerable communities. They’ve allowed millions of low-wage workers to compete for jobs and wages against the poorest Americans. Most tragically, they have caused the loss of many innocent lives.

Here tonight are two fathers and two mothers: Evelyn Rodriguez, Freddy Cuevas, Elizabeth Alvarado and Robert Mickens. Their two teenage daughters, Kayla Cuevas and Nisa Mickens, were close friends on Long Island. But in September 2016, on the eve of Nisa’s 16th birthday—such a happy time it should have been—neither of them came home. These two precious girls were brutally murdered while walking together in their hometown. Six members of the savage MS-13 gang have been charged with Kayla and Nisa’s murders. Many of these gang members took advantage of glaring loopholes in our laws to enter the country as illegal, unaccompanied alien minors, and wound up in Kayla and Nisa’s high school. …

Tonight I am calling on Congress to finally close the deadly loopholes that have allowed MS-13 and other criminal gangs to break into our country.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump last night, as he talked about young people coming over the border and joining MS-13. Daniel Denvir is with us from Providence, Rhode Island, writer-in-residence at Harvard Law School’s Fair Punishment Project. Last year, he wrote an article for The Washington Post headlined “Deporting people made Central America’s gangs. More deportation won’t help.”

Daniel, welcome to Democracy Now! Talk about one his—

DANIEL DENVIR: Thanks, Amy.

AMY GOODMAN: —one of his central focuses last night, MS-13.

DANIEL DENVIR: I mean, political rhetoric around immigration so often functions to obscure the reality and history of immigration—though Trump is a rather extreme case. And what his obsessive focus on MS-13 does, aside from scapegoating and facilitating the mass criminalization of Latino immigrants in this country, is obscure the origins and reality of gangs like MS-13.

MS-13 was born in Los Angeles amidst the refugees fleeing President Reagan’s dirty wars in El Salvador, and became a transnational gang that ultimately did so much to destabilize El Salvador precisely because of deportation policies pursued by President Trump’s predecessors. This is a problem that’s American-made through and through. So, to treat it as though it’s some external threat being foisted on Americans, it not only entirely takes out of proportion and exaggerates the criminal threat that MS-13 poses to Americans, it obscures the fact that it’s our foreign policies, our military interventions and our long history—that, unfortunately, well precedes Donald Trump—of mass deportations and criminalization of immigrants, that created MS-13 in the first place.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk more about that, as you fully develop it in your piece, in your work, even why it’s called MS-13, but to explain that history, Daniel.

DANIEL DENVIR: Yeah. So, Mara Salvatrucha was formed in L.A. in the 1980s. Older viewers are probably fully aware, and many younger ones, as well, that in the 1980s President Reagan was backing a right-wing government in El Salvador that was waging a brutal dirty war against leftist revolutionaries in that country, that sent huge numbers of refugees fleeing to the U.S. He also had similar dirty wars in Guatemala, as well as a Contra war against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. But in the case of Salvadoran refugees fleeing to the U.S., Reagan made a point of denying that they were refugees, because how could his friendly government in El Salvador be sending refugees fleeing from their country if they weren’t committing massive human rights abuses? Which they were. And so, coming into segregated neighborhoods in the U.S., where, like many poor people of color in this country, they were denied access to good jobs and good schools, people gravitated—young people gravitated towards gangs, gangs that were a thoroughly American phenomenon at the time, not one that they were bringing with them from El Salvador.

And then, in the 1990s, Bill Clinton’s harsh anti-immigrant policy, which he was using as part of his general strategy of triangulation, attempting to placate rising right-wing, anti-immigrant sentiment, to ward off the right and consolidate white support in advance of—to advance his own political ambitions, launched a mass crackdown on so-called criminal aliens. And those same policies were followed by George W. Bush and also by Barack Obama. And the result was that enormous numbers of people have been deported to Central America, including El Salvador, some of them alleged gang members, many of them not. But those people being deported back into El Salvador brought Mara Salvatrucha and other gangs to that country and turned what was a homegrown L.A. phenomenon into a transnational criminal empire.

Again, Trump entirely exaggerates the criminal threat that MS-13 poses to the U.S., but those gangs have played a major role in wreaking incredible violence and destabilization in Central America, in El Salvador. And that violence, that destabilization, along with U.S.-backed mano dura crackdowns in the region, have pushed a new generation of refugees to come to the U.S. And now Trump has the gall to say that it’s this new generation of refugees, young, unaccompanied minors, who are a threat to us as Americans. I mean, it’s absurd. It’s offensive. And it’s, you know, an insult to history, because U.S. policy has created MS-13 through and through. I think, for Trump, it’s just a convenient way to scapegoat and facilitate the criminalization of ordinary immigrants, which is something that he has been doing since he announced his campaign and said that Mexican immigrants were rapists and criminals.

AMY GOODMAN: And, Maru Mora Villalpando, your response to that trajectory he made, the thread that wove through the fabric of his speech last night, young people coming over the border, MS-13, killing young women in Long Island, New York?

MARU MORA VILLALPANDO: Again, it’s just plain racist, hate rhetoric, that is trying to blame us for what [Daniel] just explained. There’s many different reasons why there’s violence in this country. He obviously left aside all the other violence that white people have generated in this country, a lot of terrorist acts, but a majority of them being done by white people in this country.

To me, it’s really, really offensive, too, that he—even the way he described children. We actually are working with a young man in the detention center in Tacoma. He’s being detained. He came from El Salvador precisely escaping gang violence. He came as a minor. And as soon as he turned 18, he was sent to the detention center. He already won his case. And the government, the U.S. government, decided to appeal his winning in court, in immigration court. And they still kept him in detention.
He’s still detained, along with another young man that we’re working with, Manuel Abrego, that won his case, also from El Salvador, under the Convention Against Torture. The U.S. government appealed his case. He won back in November. He’s still detained right now in the detention center.

So, this is just another way of keeping us in detention, making sure that our bodies, our brown and black bodies, are being used for profiteering, for, in this case, GEO Group to make more money, and for ICE to claim that they are supposedly creating a safe environment for us, when what they’re doing is continuing destroying our communities.

AMY GOODMAN: As you talk about violence, I wanted to turn back to Ilhan Omar, a Minnesota state representative, the only Somali-American Muslim legislator in the country. Back in 2016, State Representative Omar, in Washington, D.C., you were attacked by a cab driver, who called you “Isis” and threatened to rip off your hijab as you were leaving a policy training at the White House. Shortly after the attack, you wrote on Facebook, quote, “the most hateful, derogatory, islamophobic, sexist taunts and threats I have ever experienced. … I am still shaken by this incident and can’t wrap my head around how bold [people] are becoming in displaying their hate towards Muslims.”

If you can talk about the atmosphere in this country over the last year? Of course, I couldn’t help noticing last night, in the chamber, as President Trump spoke, many of the African-American legislators, congressmembers, were wearing African kente cloth, whether it was scarves or bowties, whether it was ties. Ilhan Omar, your response?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: I mean, the rhetoric surrounding Muslims and Islam in this country has become a very dangerous one. When you sort of dehumanize and you normalize people’s ability to take a violent action against individuals because they don’t agree with the god they pray to or they don’t, you know, where a clothing that you might approve, it sort of—it starts us down a path that becomes very dangerous. And for our a lot of our young kids, in the schools, in workplaces, and just like I was, roaming around the streets in D.C., trying to do the work I was elected to do, you are faced with not only hate that comes in the form of verbally, but it gets very physical at times. And a lot of our communities are living in fear.

It’s the same thing with what’s happening around the conversation with immigrants. With all the lies that are being told by the president and the Republicans, we are forgetting that immigrants, in a lot of our communities, are contributing economically. They are making the cultures of those communities thrive. And they, you know, are not in that category of criminals, solely the contributors to criminal activity in this country, as the president makes it seem. I mean, if we think about our prison system, you know, over 10 percent of the American population is imprisoned, and it’s less than 5 percent of them are immigrants.

We don’t see a conversation, an outcry, about what to do when it comes to white men who are being radicalized, who are going into our schools, in our churches in our movie theaters, terrorizing our communities. There isn’t a plan. There isn’t a conversation. There isn’t an outrage. I didn’t hear a peep from the president last night about what he plans to do to keep Americans safe, so that they are able to go see a concert, so that they are able to feel comfortable sending their 5-year-olds, 7-year-olds and 10-year-olds to school.

And so, when we are thinking about what makes America great, what keeps our country safe, it’s about having a principled leader who is seen as someone who cares about and is going to work in collaboration with other world leaders and really talk about the values of this country. Far too long, I feel like, we’re letting fear drive our foreign policy. We’re letting fear drive our domestic policy. And that makes us away from the actual values and the leading with our morality that has gotten us to be the greatest nation in the world.

AMY GOODMAN: State Representative Ilhan Omar, the Virginia Democratic Congressman Bobby Scott tweeted, “Wearing kente cloth to the #SOTU with my fellow @OfficialCBC Members”—you know, Congressional Black Caucus members—”to stand in solidarity with people from you-know-what countries.” And I’m wondering if you, very quickly, before we go to break, could respond to that comment, as a Somali refugee, when President Trump made that comment about the continent of Africa, talking about these “s—hole countries,” and if it—what kind of blowback did you feel?

REP. ILHAN OMAR: Yeah, my home country is included in that bleep-hole countries. And I am proud, have never been ashamed, of where I come from. And I know that so many people have appreciated the fact that Africa and many of the countries within Africa are considered the birth of civilization. And we bring so much culture and enrichment to this world. And it is really important for people to have conversations about that and to not only stand in solidarity, but to also speak up and speak out about those kind of vulgar words that the president might use.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, we’re going to go to break and come back to this roundtable discussion in response to President Trump’s State of the Union. Stay with us.

Want Geniuses? Welcome Immigrants

By  Frank Bruni

Maybe “some are rapists,” in Donald Trump’s nasty words. But many are geniuses. Just ask the MacArthur Foundation, which responded to our president’s frequent demonization of immigrants, including that infamous phrase, by doing a little math.

Every year since 1981, the foundation has bestowed so-called genius grants on more than 20 of the country’s most accomplished and promising scientists, scholars, artists and writers. These awards are a huge deal, trumpeted in the media and worn with pride forevermore. And the winners, typically in the middle of their careers, get $625,000 each.

Of the 965 geniuses (or, more properly, MacArthur fellows) to date, 209 were born outside the United States, according to Cecilia Conrad, who leads the fellowship program. That’s 21.7 percent. The 2010 census determined that less than 13 percent of the American population is foreign-born.

Conrad wondered whether MacArthur fellows are anomalies. They’re not. She looked back over the past three and a half decades — which is the life span of the fellowships — to see who’d received other top honors given only to United States citizens and residents.

She found that immigrants were overrepresented among the winners of the Pulitzer Prize for music, of the National Humanities Medal and especially of the John Bates Clark Medal, which recognizes brilliant American economists under the age of 40. Thirty-five percent of these economists were foreign-born, including people from India, Turkey and Ukraine.

The far-right paranoiacs and scaremongers who pressured Trump to end DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) hate to acknowledge what we reality-moored types understand:

 

 Many of our country’s finest minds and brightest ideas are forged when dreamers from elsewhere encounter an unfamiliar place with unimagined possibilities. There’s a creative spark in that convergence. It has powered American greatness.

 

That’s the moral of the MacArthur Foundation’s math, which it shared first with The Times. That’s also the moral of the Nobel Prizes. According to an analysis late last year by Adil Najam, a Boston University professor: “Since its inception in 1901, the Nobel Prizes and the Prize in Economic Sciences have been awarded 579 times to 911 people and organizations. The U.S. alone has had more than 350 Nobel winners. More than 100 of these have been immigrants and individuals born outside of the United States.” If immigrants to the United States were considered their own country, Najam wrote, their tally of Nobels would exceed that of every country but the United States.

 

An article about immigrants in The Atlantic just a few years ago noted that the four United States-based physicists who sounded the 1939 warning about nuclear weapons that led to the Manhattan Project were born outside the United States. The article went on to point out that “immigrants or the children of immigrants have founded or co-founded nearly every legendary American technology company, including Google, Intel, Facebook, and of course Apple (you knew that Steve Jobs’s father was named Abdulfattah Jandali, right?).”

 

And Jennifer Hunt, a professor of economics at Rutgers University, has done research showing that among graduates of American colleges, immigrants are twice as likely to receive patents as native-born Americans. Her research further suggests that this doesn’t come at the expense of native-born Americans but in fact stimulates their innovation, too. “You’re bouncing ideas off each other,” Hunt told me.

Her findings speak to the oft-charted success of American immigrants in STEM (science, technology, economics and math) fields. The MacArthur grants cover the humanities, too; the past decade’s winners include such celebrated writers as Junot Díaz, born in the Dominican Republic; Edwidge Danticat, born in Haiti; and Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, the author of “Americanah,” born in Nigeria.

José Quiñonez, named a genius last year for his pioneering work in financial services, was born in Mexico, the country vilified in Trump’s “rapists” remark. He told me that he and his siblings immigrated illegally in 1980, after their mother died, to live with relatives in San Jose, Calif. He was 9.

He studied hard and got a master’s degree from Princeton. He said that his four siblings, like him, have good jobs, two as high school teachers. Long before Trump’s campaign, he heard and cringed at complaints that Mexican immigrants were criminals, freeloaders. “Especially early on, I began to believe: Maybe I was lazy, maybe I was broken?” said Quiñonez, 46, who now lives in Oakland, Calif. “But there was something in our family that helped us reject that narrative. We fought back against that narrative. I never allowed it to seep into my soul.”

It’s possible that the bounty of immigrants who’ve won MacArthur grants demonstrates some predisposition among foundation executives toward certain life stories and a desire to promote people who have been overlooked and underappreciated. Some critics of the foundation have asserted that.

But it’s worth noting that if the foundation took into account children of immigrants as well as immigrants themselves, the percentage of its geniuses that reflects the benefits of immigration would be higher than 21.7. It’s also worth noting that for most of the grant’s history, foreign-born people constituted less than 10 percent of the United States population.

The immigrants who’ve won MacArthur grants include refugees, and I spoke with one, An-My Lê, 57, who fled Saigon as a teenager at the end of the Vietnam War. She finished high school in Sacramento, went to college at Stanford, got graduate degrees there and at Yale, and drew acclaim for photography with war and military themes. Her work has been exhibited at the country’s most prominent museums. She lives in Brooklyn and teaches at Bard College in upstate New York.

 I asked her what she made of immigrants’ prevalence among MacArthur geniuses. “I think most of us feel very lucky to be here, so we work extremely hard,” she said. “I think maybe trauma is part of what drives us.” She added that in terms of innovation, “Having the different perspectives, having the different life experiences, makes you see things differently.” Fresh ideas and great art are often born that way.

Conrad, the MacArthur Foundation executive, said that in all the debate lately about how many immigrants our country needs for jobs of varying skill levels, she hears too little about the ambient impact of immigrants on America’s creative climate. “They have certain attributes,” she told me. “They are risk takers.” And their thinking and discoveries are nourished by “the experience of dislocation, of navigating a new culture and a new set of norms,” she said.

They come with a sort of hunger and a kind of gaze that don’t subtract from what those of us already here have but, instead, add to it. They give us insights, inventions, art. Embracing their genius is the genius of America.

The Democrats should rethink their immigration absolutism

By Fareed Zakaria

In 1992, the Democratic Party faced a challenge on the issue of abortion. Pennsylvania’s governor, Robert Casey, a Democrat dedicated to the working class, asked to speak at the national convention in New York City. He wanted to propose a pro-life plank for the party platform, mostly as a way of affirming his Catholic beliefs. 

He fully understood that the motion would be voted down, but the Democratic Party refused to permit him even to air his views, so great was his heresy. “That sent a strong signal to working-class Catholic and evangelical voters that if they did not fall into line on this one issue they were no longer welcome in the party,” writes Mark Lilla in “The Once and Future Liberal,” his brief but brilliant book that comes out later this month.

I wonder if today the Democrats are making the same mistake on immigration. To be clear, I think the bill that the Republicans rolled out this week is bad public policy and mean-spirited symbolism. But that’s beside the point. Lilla acknowledges that he is a pro-choice absolutist on abortion, but he argues that a national party must build a big tent that accommodates people who dissent from the main party line on a few issues.

In Lilla’s view, there is a larger crisis within American liberalism. When he visited the online home page of the Republican National Committee, he found a statement of broad principles that guide the party, starting with the Constitution and ending with immigration. On the Democrats’ website, by contrast, he noticed a set of links to “People,” and when he clicked on them he got to pages specifically designed to appeal to one group or another — women, Hispanics, Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans. Alluding to Lebanon’s system of power-sharing among religious and ethnic groups, Lilla writes, “You might think that, by some mistake, you have landed on the website of the Lebanese government — not that of a party with a vision for America’s future.” (The Democratic National Committee’s home page now features the party’s platform more prominently.)

There have been two different agendas for American liberalism, according to Lilla. The first was Franklin D. Roosevelt’s — a collective, national effort to help all Americans participate in the country’s economic and political life. Its symbol was two hands shaking, an affirmation of the binding strength of national unity. The more recent liberal project has been centered on identity, affirming not unity but difference, nurturing and celebrating not national identities but sub-national ones. “A recurring image of identity liberalism is that of a prism,” Lilla notes, “refracting a single beam of light into its constituent colors, producing a rainbow. This says it all.”

Immigration is the perfect issue on which Democrats could demonstrate that they care about national unity and identity — and that they understand the voters for whom this is a core concern. Look at the Democracy Fund’s voter study done in the wake of the 2016 election. If you compare two groups of voters — those who voted for Barack Obama in 2012 and Hillary Clinton in 2016, and those who voted for Obama in 2012 and Donald Trump in 2016 — the single biggest divergence on policy is immigration. In other words, there are many Americans who are otherwise sympathetic to Democratic ideas but on a few key issues — principally immigration — think the party is out of touch.

And they are right. Consider the facts. Legal immigration in the United States has expanded dramatically over the last five decades. In 1970, 4.7 percent of the U.S. population was foreign-born. Today, it’s 13.4 percent. That’s a large shift, and it’s natural that it has caused some anxiety.

The anxiety is about more than jobs. In his 2004 book “Who Are We?,” Harvard University scholar Samuel Huntington pointed out that the scale, speed and concentration of Mexican migration into America after 1965 were without precedent in the country’s history and could provoke a backlash.

He asserted that America had more than just a founding ideology; it had a culture that had shaped it powerfully. “Would America be the America it is today if in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries it had been settled not by British Protestants but by French, Spanish, or Portuguese Catholics?” Huntington asked. “The answer is no. It would not be America; it would be Quebec, Mexico, or Brazil.” He advocated some modest limits on immigration and, more important, a greater emphasis on assimilation.

Democrats should find a middle path on immigration. They can battle President Trump’s drastic solutions but still speak in the language of national unity and identity. The country’s motto, after all, is “out of many, one” — not the other way around.

"Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor": Trump Admin Attacks Emma Lazarus's Iconic Poem on Statue of Liberty

Transcript

AMY GOODMAN: Opposition is growing to the Trump administration’s new plan to radically overhaul U.S. immigration law and slash the number of immigrants allowed into the United States by half. The RAISE Act, or Reforming American Immigration for Strong Employment, would create a so-called merit-based immigration system that would favor applicants who speak English, have advanced degrees or can demonstrate job skills.
Since President Trump and Republican senators introduced the proposal on Wednesday, many commentators have noted the proposed policy would have likely blocked Trump’s own grandfather, Friedrich Drumpf, from immigrating to the United States, had it been in place in 1885. At the time of his arrival, Drumpf did not speak English, and his immigration record says he had no identifiable skill—or "calling," as they called it. The great-grandparents of senior policy adviser Stephen Miller would have also likely been refused entry under the proposed plan, since they spoke only Yiddish. Kellyanne Conway’s great-grandfather, too, would have likely been barred for speaking only Italian.
Well, on Wednesday, CNN’s Jim Acosta, who is the son of immigrants, pressed senior policy adviser Stephen Miller over President Trump’s push to admit English-speaking, only, immigrants in a back-and-forth that lasted for several minutes. This is an excerpt.

STEPHEN MILLER: I mean, you really don’t know that.

JIM ACOSTA: My father was a Cuban immigrant. He came to this country in 1962, right before the Cuban missile crisis, and obtained a green card. Yes, people who immigrate to this country can eventually—

STEPHEN MILLER: OK. So, Jim—

JIM ACOSTA: People who immigrate to this country through—

STEPHEN MILLER: So, Jim, as a factual question, Jim—

JIM ACOSTA: —not through Ellis Island, as your family may have—

STEPHEN MILLER: Jim, as a factual—Jim, as a factual question—

JIM ACOSTA: —but in other ways, do obtain a green card at some point. They do it through a lot of hard work. And, yes, they may learn English as a second language later on in life. But this whole—

STEPHEN MILLER: So, but, Jim—

JIM ACOSTA: This whole notion that, well, they could learn—you know, they have to learn English before they get to the United States, are we just going to bring in people from Great Britain and Australia?

STEPHEN MILLER: Jim, actually, I have to honestly say I am shocked at your statement that you think that only people from Great Britain and Australia would know English, as, actually, it reveals your cosmopolitan bias to a shocking degree, that in your mind—no, this is an amazing—this is an amazing moment. This is an amazing moment. That you think only people from Great Britain or Australia would speak English is so insulting to millions of hard-working immigrants who do speak English from all over the world.

JIM ACOSTA: My father came to this country not speaking any English.

STEPHEN MILLER: Jim, have you honestly—Jim, have you honestly never met an immigrant from another country who speaks English, outside of Great Britain and Australia? Is that your personal experience?

JIM ACOSTA: Sir, of course there are people who come to this country from other parts of the world.

STEPHEN MILLER: But that’s not what you said! And it shows—it shows your cosmopolitan bias. And I just want to say—

JIM ACOSTA: It just sounds like you’re trying to engineer—

STEPHEN MILLER: And I just want to say—

JIM ACOSTA: —the racial and ethnic flow of people into this country through this policy.

STEPHEN MILLER: Jim, that is one of the most outrageous, insulting, ignorant and foolish things you’ve ever said. And for you, that’s still a really—the notion that you think that this is a racist bill is so wrong and so insulting.

JIM ACOSTA: I didn’t say it was a racist bill.

AMY GOODMAN: That was President Trump’s senior policy adviser, Stephen Miller, some might say accosting CNN’s Jim Acosta on Wednesday over President Trump’s push to admit only English-speaking immigrants. Well, Acosta also asked Stephen Miller about the iconic poem "The New Colossus" by Emma Lazarus that’s inscribed at the base of the Statue of Liberty, which reads: "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free."

JIM ACOSTA: What you’re proposing, or what the president is proposing here, does not sound like it’s in keeping with American tradition when it comes to immigration. The Statue of Liberty says, "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free." It doesn’t say anything about speaking English or being able to be a computer programmer. Aren’t you trying to change what it means to be an immigrant coming into this country, if you’re telling them you have to speak English? Can’t people learn how to speak English when they get here?

STEPHEN MILLER: Well, first of all, right now, it’s a requirement that to be naturalized, you have to speak English. So the notion that speaking English wouldn’t be a part of our immigration systems would be actually very ahistorical. Secondly, I don’t want to get off into a whole thing about history here, but the Statue of Liberty is a symbol of liberty enlightening the world. It’s a symbol of American liberty lighting the world. The poem that you’re referring to was added later. It’s not actually a part of the original Statue of Liberty.

AMY GOODMAN: But who was the poet Emma Lazarus? Why did she write the poem "The New Colossus"? And how did it end up being one of the most iconic verses about the United States?

For more, we’re joined by Esther Schor, author of the biography, Emma Lazarus, professor of English and acting chair of the Humanities Council at Princeton University. She’s joining us from London.

Welcome to Democracy Now!, Professor Schor.

ESTHER SCHOR: Thank you.

AMY GOODMAN: So, first, respond to what the senior Miller—what the senior adviser to President Trump, Stephen Miller, said about this poem.

ESTHER SCHOR: Well, you know, I was appalled to hear it, but not surprised, Amy. You know, I follow Emma Lazarus’s poetry and its use in the public sphere quite closely, and I get Google alerts every time "huddled masses" is mentioned in the press. So, I know that what Miller was doing was taking a page from the alt-right playbook, where this poem is dismissed, it’s been called graffiti, and it’s been said that the poem is simply a distraction, that’s not what the statue ever meant. And it goes—it degenerates from there, this rhetoric. Emma Lazarus has been called the Jewess who’s trying to destroy the U.S., etc. So, you know, it wasn’t shocking to me.

I think what happened was—you hear Miller’s, you know, his tone becoming more shrill. When he dismissed the poem, the press room suddenly was full of people with rolling eyes and shaking heads, and it really, I think, put Miller off his game. You could see that he intuited that the nation watching this briefing would be doing much the same thing, as I was.

AMY GOODMAN: Now, Emma Lazarus, the poet who wrote this, has long been a target of white nationalists. Trump supporter and former imperial wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke, writes about Emma Lazarus in his 2003 book Jewish Supremacism. In a chapter titled "The Jewish Led Alien Invasion," David Duke quotes lines from Lazarus’s "New Colossus"
and writes, quote, "As I looked into the American fight over immigration laws during the last 100 years, the driving force behind opening America’s borders became evident: It was organized Jewry, personified by the poet Emma Lazarus whose lines I quoted to begin the chapter," unquote. Well, in January, white nationalist Richard Spencer tweeted, "It’s offensive that such a beautiful, inspiring statue was ever associated with ugliness, weakness, and deformity." So, Professor Schor, talk about this, this poem, and Emma Lazarus herself, the poet, as a target of white nationalists.

ESTHER SCHOR: Well, I’m happy to do that, and it means going into a whole thing about history, obviously.

So, on one point, Miller was factually correct: The poem was not part of the original design or installation or dedication of the statue. But, in fact, the poem predates the advent of the statue on America’s shores. Emma Lazarus wrote it in 1883 to raise money for the pedestal for the Statue of Liberty.

Now, just to back up a bit, the statue was the brainchild of a liberal French statesman, historian, named Édouard de Laboulaye. And Laboulaye, his idea was to celebrate the return of France to Enlightenment values with the fall of the Second Empire and the rise of the Third Republic in 1870. So, he had the idea of, to commission the statue, it would be dedicated to Franco-American friendship, but it would really be designed to place the American emancipation of slaves in the context of the French Enlightenment and to do some good PR for the French people.

The Americans saw the statute as a very French thing. I mean, they were not at all identified with it. They didn’t reach into their pockets and give to the pedestal fund. Hence, an auction was set up, to auction artworks and documents written for this occasion, for this purpose.
Now, Lazarus had been very active on behalf of Jewish refugees from Russia, who were fleeing persecution, fleeing to pogroms and coming to the United States in great numbers, in 1881, ’82.
And so she was known for her work with the immigrants. She herself was not an immigrant. She was a fourth- or fifth-generation American, the daughter of a Sephardic Jewish family, a very wealthy family in New York. She had no need to roll up her sleeves and work for these immigrants, but that is exactly what she did. She advocated for them in the press. She taught them English. She tried to get them jobs and job training. And she was, in general, one of their fiercest advocates. Most of her advocacy was to the Jewish community at that point. And I have to say that her efforts were met with some disappointment. But it was very typical of Lazarus not to back up, but to forge ahead.
And what she did, in writing this sonnet, was to take her plea for the support of immigrants to the nation. And what she did in the sonnet is quite astonishing. I mean, she completely recast the meaning of the statue, which, by the way, she never saw, she hadn’t seen at this time—it was lying in a warehouse in Paris. So it was really a kind of prophetic intuition, a prophetic envisioning, of this statue as America’s announcement to the world that it was renouncing imperialism, that it was renouncing tyranny and that it was going to accept those who had been cast out, who had been "refused." That’s the word, "refuse," really, is from the French refusé, people who had been refused by their own native shores. So that’s the genesis of the poem.

And it was taken notice of at the time, briefly, when there was a reception for the sculptor Bartholdi in New York. There was a long speech, of course, about Franco-American friendship, but the speech began by saying, "Here is a statue that will welcome the stranger to these shores." However, Lazarus became ill. The poem was published to a very small reading audience in Art Amateur magazine. And the poem faded from sight, such that when the statue was dedicated by Grover Cleveland in 1886, it was not recited, it was not printed in the press. And when Lazarus died a year later, tragically, at the age of 38, only one of her eulogists even mentioned the poem at that time.

So, it wasn’t until 1903—and this is what Miller was referring to. You know, obviously, he’s gone to Wikipedia and read the National Park Service website. You know, he’s up on his information here. But in 1903, a private donation was made by a friend of Lazarus as a tribute to her 15 years after her death. And the poem still didn’t catch on until the 1930s, when it was embraced by pro-immigrationists, a man named Louis Adamic, Slovenian immigrant. And he saw in this poem a most eloquent statement for his cause. And he quoted it. His co-workers quoted it. They introduced it in schools. Children began to memorize it. It was set to music, etc.
And since the 1930s, the poem and the statue have really been inextricably linked—through many vicissitudes and many debates about immigration reform, I might add, which has certainly not been static since the 1930s.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, Esther—

ESTHER SCHOR: So, I think—yeah.

AMY GOODMAN: Go ahead, your conclusion.

ESTHER SCHOR: Well, you know, when Miller says, "Because the poem wasn’t planted on the statue when it was dedicated, it has nothing to do with the statue," I think, is just a very blinkered and false statement.

AMY GOODMAN: Especially because it’s now been on the Statue of Liberty, at the base, for over 120 years—rather, 114 years.

ESTHER SCHOR: Yes, and—yes, exactly. And people, you know, aging immigrants, when they’ve written their memoirs, have reported that they sailed past it and read the words of the sonnet emblazoned on the outside of the statue. It was never on the outside of the statue. So, this is a memory that comes from this deep sense that the American public has that this sonnet is linked to the statue.

AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much, Esther Schor, for joining us, professor of English and acting chair of Humanities Council at Princeton University. She wrote the biography, Emma Lazarus.

President Barack Obama Weekly Address December 5, 2015 (Video/Transcript)

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
The White House
December 5, 2015

Hi, everybody.  This weekend, our hearts are with the people of San Bernardino—another American community shattered by unspeakable violence.  We salute the first responders—the police, the SWAT teams, the EMTs—who responded so quickly, with such courage, and saved lives.  We pray for the injured as they fight to recover from their wounds.

Most of all, we stand with 14 families whose hearts are broken.  We’re learning more about their loved ones—the men and women, the beautiful lives, that were lost.  They were doing what so many of us do this time of year—enjoying the holidays.  Celebrating with each other.  Rejoicing in the bonds of friendship and community that bind us together, as Americans.  Their deaths are an absolute tragedy, not just for San Bernardino, but for our country.

We’re also learning more about the killers.  And we’re working to get a full picture of their motives—why they committed these revolting acts.  It’s important to let the investigators do their job.  We need to know all the facts.  And at my direction, federal law enforcement is helping in every way that they can.  We’re going to get to the bottom of this.

It is entirely possible that these two attackers were radicalized to commit this act of terror. And if so, it would underscore a threat we’ve been focused on for years—the danger of people succumbing to violent extremist ideologies.  We know that ISIL and other terrorist groups are actively encouraging people—around the world and in our country—to commit terrible acts of violence, often times as lone wolf actors.  And even as we work to prevent attacks, all of us—government, law enforcement, communities, faith leaders—need to work together to prevent people from falling victim to these hateful ideologies.

More broadly, this tragedy reminds us of our obligation to do everything in our power, together, to keep our communities safe.  We know that the killers in San Bernardino used military-style assault weapons—weapons of war—to kill as many people as they could.  It’s another tragic reminder that here in America it’s way too easy for dangerous people to get their hands on a gun.

For example, right now, people on the No-Fly list can walk into a store and buy a gun.  That is insane.  If you’re too dangerous to board a plane, you’re too dangerous, by definition, to buy a gun.  And so I’m calling on Congress to close this loophole, now.  We may not be able to prevent every tragedy, but—at a bare minimum—we shouldn’t be making it so easy for potential terrorists or criminals to get their hands on a gun that they could use against Americans.

Today in San Bernardino, investigators are searching for answers.  Across our country, our law enforcement professionals are tireless.  They’re working around the clock—as always—to protect our communities.  As President, my highest priority is the security and safety of the American people.  This is work that should unite us all—as Americans—so that we’re doing everything in our power to defend our country.  That’s how we can honor the lives we lost in San Bernardino.  That’s how we can send a message to all those who would try to hurt us.  We are Americans.  We will uphold our values—a free and open society.  We are strong.   And we are resilient.  And we will not be terrorized.

Racial Divide: The Tragedy of America's First Black President

By Markus Feldenkirchen and Holger Stark
Source: Der Spiegel

Police killings of black youth in Ferguson and Cleveland have outraged many in the US. The tragic events show how deep the societal divide remains between blacks and whites. Many have given up hope that President Obama can change anything.

On the evening after the city burned, a man in a black leather jacket and white clerical collar is standing on the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. He shakes his head and looks as though he is fighting back tears. Once again, young black men and women are standing across from older, slightly pudgy white policemen in front of the local station. They look like armies, like they are at war.

 "It won't ever stop," says the man, a black pastor named Alvin Herring. He has been accompanying the protests since the beginning of August, ever since white police officer Darren Wilson shot an unarmed, 18-year-old black man named Michael Brown. "A deep, festering wound has opened up in the heart of American culture and society," Herring says.

The systematic racism that these young people are confronted with each day has made them deeply angry, Henning continues. "It is impossible for them to feel loved, or even respected. They no longer believe they are needed or that their lives are worth anything."

At exactly this moment, eight police officers rush over to a black man and pull him out of a group, accusing him of throwing an empty plastic bottle. They jump on top of him, press his cheek to the asphalt and handcuff him with zip ties before dragging him into the station.

Ever since the protests began all those months ago, Pastor Alvin Herring has hoped that Barack Obama, the country's first black president, would visit Ferguson. Henning says Obama could have sent a powerful message that he understood the frustrations of young black people by making the trip.

High Hopes Dashed
 
On this evening, one which would see this town north of St. Louis sink into violence yet again, Herring misses Obama particularly acutely. "The president is much too careful, much too hesitant," he says. "The president should be here in Ferguson tonight. He should demonstrate more commitment."

Herring is merely putting into words what many African Americans think about their president -- and not just since the predominantly white grand jury that decided against prosecuting the policeman who shot Michael Brown. And not just since the jury's decision propelled thousands of black people to take to the streets of 170 US cities in protest.

The black population of America had high hopes for "their" president. They had the feeling, when they cast their ballots in 2008 and 2012, that something momentous was taking place. Never before had so many blacks voted as in those two elections. When one of ours ends up in the White House, they seemed to hope, then things will finally improve for us as well.

In March 2008, when Barack Obama, then a candidate for president, gave his big speech on racism, he sounded like the one who could unite the country. But in November of this year, Obama is -- contrary to his intentions -- the president of a country that is more divided than ever before. And one of the deepest divisions runs between blacks and whites.

That is the real tragedy of America's first African-American president.

When Obama delivered a statement last Monday evening at the White House about the grand jury decision, he seemed more helpless than at almost any other time during his presidency. Even as he called on blacks in Ferguson to remain calm and peaceful, the first shops were being looted and set on fire. His comments seemed strangely uninspired and apprehensive -- as though he had already succumbed to resignation.

Many of the causes of the day-to-day discrimination experienced by blacks, of course, are far outside of Obama's control. Federalism in America means that he has little influence over the behavior of local police or over the judiciaries in individual states. In such areas, Obama can only resort to appeals -- something that many blacks believe he has done too little of. From the perspective of the White House, however, such speeches are often counterproductive.

Less Money, Less Education, Less Influence
 
"Ferguson marks the end of the Obama era," says Cornel West, professor emeritus at Princeton University and a leading African American intellectual. It is "a very sad ending," West says. "We began with immense hopes and we are ending with deep disappointment." Obama, he says, did nothing to fix a justice system that denies any form of fairness to young people with black or brown skin. He adds that the president shares some of the blame for the "race and class warfare" that is being waged against black people.

The shots fired in Ferguson have become a danger for societal peace in a country that once celebrated itself for being a cultural melting pot -- a mixture which whites in America decreasingly see themselves as being a part of. Instead, the US is a divided land with a primarily white elite and an African-American population that tends to have less money, less education and less influence. In many areas, blacks are also now being overtaken by the growing Hispanic population.

To be sure, the US has plenty of black pop stars, black sports icons and, since 2009, even a black president. Nevertheless, most people with dark skin are far away from enjoying true equality. Fifty years after the widespread reforms pushed through by President Lyndon B. Johnson, which established formal equality for blacks, the social gap remains glaring.

Institutional Racism
 
Making matters worse is the discrimination practiced by state institutions such as law enforcement. The chances that a young black man will be shot dead by the police, for example, is 21 times greater than it is for young white males. The death of 18-year-old Michael Brown is far from abnormal. Just 10 days ago, a 12-year-old boy was shot and killed by a police officer in Cleveland because he was playing with a toy pistol at a playground.

The country-wide protests of the African-American minority demonstrate just how deep the distrust between blacks and whites remains despite the 51 years that have passed since Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech. Many white police officers see young black men primarily as a danger to public safety that must be stopped, with a firearm if necessary. In the eyes of many blacks, by contrast, white police officers like Darren Wilson are nothing more than racist murderers.

When the grand jury last Monday decided not to press charges against the 28-year-old Wilson, many African-Americans saw it as proof that they could not expect justice from the state and its judiciary. The case was led by a white public prosecutor who has a reputation for defending police at all costs. Instead of being professionally cross-examined, Wilson was allowed to spend four hours telling his version of the story. If the goal was to definitively destroy the last vestiges of faith blacks may have had in the justice system, the grand jury in the Brown case did excellent work.

On the evening after the grand jury decision was announced, more than a dozen shops in Ferguson were set on fire, with over 1,000 blacks engaging in street battles with the police. The scenes were repeated on subsequent evenings. Last Tuesday, South Florrissant Road was the dividing line, symbolic of a line -- sometimes clearly visible, other times hidden -- that runs through all of America.
On the one side of the street, both in front of and behind a fence surrounding the police station, are police and National Guard troops, almost all of them white.
They are outfitted with riot shields, batons and all manner of firearms, looking not unlike an army preparing to defend Ferguson from the Taliban. The governor of Missouri has ordered 2,100 National Guard troops to St. Louis for the evening.
On the other side of South Florrissant Road are the young blacks of Ferguson. They hold signs up reading "Black Lives Matter" and "No Justice, No Peace." Few of them are over 30 years of age.

Their expressions reveal hate and the word "fuck" is everywhere, in combination with words such as police, system, judiciary, government and power. In August, such faces looked different: distraught but also full of hope that something good might come out of Michael Brown's death. There was hope that change might be on the way.

'If We Don't Destroy ... They Won't Pay Attention'
 
One of the demonstrators on this Tuesday evening is wearing a scarf pulled up over his nose with his cap pulled down low. He is stomping on the asphalt and yelling, "They order us around and kill us like we were dogs!" The 25-year-old asks to be quoted as "Mike Monster," saying he wants to remain anonymous because he has decided this evening to turn his back on the system of rules and laws that he no longer identifies with. In August, he says, he demonstrated peacefully. But now he is ready for violence. "If we don't tear anything down, if we don't destroy anything, if we don't set fire to anything, they won't even pay attention," he yells. "We need a revolution!"

"You can't stop the revolution," the crowd around him replies.

A quote from Thomas Jefferson is scratched into the asphalt in front of the South Florrissant police station: "When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty." It is a slogan that many in Ferguson have taken to heart.

Marley's Bar & Grill, the only restaurant in the area that has remained open despite the protests, is just 500 meters away from the police station, but it is a totally different world. All 15 people sitting at the counter are white. Three of the televisions inside are showing ice hockey, while just one is tuned to CNN. Suddenly, "Breaking News" begins flashing on the screen: "Police car attacked in Ferguson."

Voices become raised at the counter. "They are crazy. They need to finally learn how to behave," one woman shrieks. "Like animals," her partner adds.
In the history of America, violence has occasionally paved the way for political improvements for the country's black population. When the escaped slave Shadrach Minkins was captured in Boston in 1851 under the Fugitive Slave Act, for example, slavery opponents stormed the courthouse, assaulted the court marshals and freed Minkins. The incident marked the beginning of a shift in attitudes toward slavery.

Yet peaceful movements, and the courts, have also played a role. Rosa Parks' refusal to move to the back of a public bus on Dec. 1, 1955 -- which led to a Supreme Court ruling that segregation on public transport was unconstitutional -- is just one example. But it was the civil rights movement led by Martin Luther King Jr. that achieved perhaps the greatest victory for racial equality in the form of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, using peaceful protests and civil disobedience. Even so, there was a threat of violence in the background, in the form of Malcolm X and his followers.

Little Change under Obama
 
At the beginning of his term, Barack Obama likely never imagined that a new wave of violence would take place during his presidency. But it is not an accident. After all, he himself raised hopes that progress would be made. Yet after six years in office, little has changed for blacks in the US.
Obama held the speech that raised the hopes of black Americans on March 18, 2008 as a candidate in Philadelphia. It was a reaction to comments made by his Chicago pastor and friend Jeremiah Wright, who had accused the US government of crimes against blacks. "God damn America ... for killing innocent people," he intoned from the pulpit in a sermon that threatened to derail Obama's candidacy.

"The profound mistake of Reverend Wright's sermons is not that he spoke about racism in our society," Obama said in his speech. "It's that he spoke as if our society was static; as if no progress has been made; as if this country … is still irrevocably bound to a tragic past."

Obama was referring to a time when blacks were forced to serve whites as slaves; a time when they weren't even second-class citizens, instead being treated as commodities to be raised and sold at market. But he also was referring to the decades leading up to the 1960s when blacks were not allowed to use the same park benches as whites and were forced to sit at the back of the bus.

In that speech, Obama promised to create "a more perfect union," in reference to the preamble of the US Constitution. He sought to finally fulfill the promise made 50 years earlier by fellow Democrat Lyndon B. Johnson. In remarks at the signing of the Civil Rights Bill on July 2, 1964, Johnson said he hoped to "eliminate the last vestiges of injustice in our beloved country" and to "close the springs of racial poison."

Many observers believe that Obama's speech was a decisive factor in his becoming the first black president in American history half a year later. It is still widely considered to be one of his best.

But the final push to realize Johnson's dream has still not taken place. The situation today gives the impression that African-Americans are adequately represented "without giving them the possibility to really take advantage" of that representation, says Kareem Crayton, a law professor at the University of North Carolina. Eduardo Bonilla-Silva, sociology professor at Duke University, agrees. "Having a black president doesn't mean much in our day-to-day lives."

Part 2: King's 'Island of Poverty' Still Exists Today

ix years after Obama's race speech, more than a quarter of blacks in American live below the poverty line. Among whites, that figure is 12.8 percent. According to the Pew Research Center, the median annual income of a white household was about $27,000 higher than that of a black household in 2011, with the difference having grown over the course of the last several decades. The black "island of poverty in the midst of a vast ocean of material prosperity," which Martin Luther King complained about 50 years ago, still exists in 2014. Every third African-American child born between 1985 and 2000 grew up in a neighborhood marked by extreme poverty.

"Today, racial segregation can be seen in social mobility," argues Richard Reeves from the Washington think tank Brookings Institution. Last year, the US Education Department released a study that analyzed data from 97,000 schools across the country. According to its results, black students were suspended and expelled at three times the rate of their white peers. Every fourth school with a high proportion of blacks and Latinos did not offer advanced courses in mathematics.

"It's the age of Obama, and yet civil rights have gone backwards. What went wrong? asked the New Republic on its cover in August. The issue, which appeared after Michael Brown's death in Ferguson, spoke of a "new racism." Indeed, the kinds of deadly events that took place in Ferguson and Cleveland have now convinced many blacks that it wasn't Obama who was right back in the spring of 2008. Rather, it was his angry pastor, Jeremiah Wright.

On the Saturday before last, 12-year-old Tamir Rice wandered into Cudell Park at 3:12 p.m. The park is in a section of western Cleveland that is poor and primarily black. Paint flakes off the homes in the area, empty lots are overgrown and shops are secured with heavy padlocks. Tamir was black, and he was carrying a toy pistol. The combination was akin to a death sentence.

Tamir lived across the street in a grim brick building, his mother, the single parent of four children, unable to afford a better apartment. In the park, a bored Tamir wandered back and forth, throwing snow. He was carrying the plastic pistol in his right hand when a passerby saw him and called 911.

'Is He Black or Is He White?'
 
"There's a guy here with a pistol … and he's like pointing it at everybody," the caller says. He's "probably a juvenile," the caller continues, adding that the pistol is "probably fake," a suspicion the caller later repeats. The officer taking the call wants to know what the person with the pistol looks like, asking "Is he black or white." She repeats the question three times.

The dispatcher alerted Timothy Loehmann, 26, and Frank Garmback, 46, who were in a patrol car in the area, notifying them of a black male with a firearm. The officers were not told of the possibility that the firearm was a toy.
At 3:30 p.m., the police car flew across the grass at high speed toward where the boy was playing. Tamir comes toward the car as it screeches to a halt, as though he is curious. The surveillance video of the shooting shows that he had stuffed the pistol under his jacket.

Loehmann jumps out of the passenger door and, according to the two officers, yelled "hands up!" three times. It isn't clear from the surveillance video of a nearby youth center how, exactly, Tamir responded. The police say he didn't put his hands up, grabbing instead toward his belt.

One shot hit Tamir in the breast and he collapsed. Between the arrival of the patrol car and the firing of the deadly shots, only seconds had elapsed.
The police officers could have carefully approached the boy, or they could have asked social workers at the youth club, who knew Tamir, to speak with him. But instead, they simply opened fire. Tamir Rice, who dreamed of one day becoming a professional basketball player, died in the hospital.

The American problem has many different facets, but it is accurate to say that it is mostly white men who shoot young African-Americans in the service of the state. The actor Morgan Freeman recently told German newsmagazine Stern that the color of the law is white.

Almost half of all murder victims and about 40 percent of the US prison population are black, even though the African-American share of the population is just 12.6 percent. And in many states, those with a criminal record forfeit many rights, such as access to welfare, for example. In 10 states, those who have been convicted of a criminal offense lose their right to vote for life.

'You Kill Our Children'
 
Since that deadly Saturday in Cudell Park, Cleveland Police Chief Calvin Williams has tried several times to explain why the officers opened fire on Tamir Rice. Williams, who is black himself, is standing in the gymnasium of the Cudell Park recreation center, a radio dangling from his lapel and a firearm affixed to his belt. Williams has come to answer questions -- and to try and calm local nerves. Three hundred people have crammed into the hall to hear him speak.
Williams says that the city's officers are trained to stop anyone carrying a weapon. Just shooting someone in the arm or the leg to stop them may happen in the movies, he argues, but not in real life. In a society with as many firearms as citizens, it seems the police feel like they're in a constant state of war. Police deal every day with people potentially carrying firearms, and that's how they approach every call.

Calista Cottingham, 37, is also at the Cudell Park Recreation Center, and she wants to share her story. She has six children, including four sons. One day, she says, she drove one of her sons to football practice. Cottingham says she took him to the playing field and left the other children in a parked car, an act that is illegal in some US states. She was then confronted by two police officers who ordered her to put her hands on the steering wheel and not move. When Cottingham told the officers she hadn't done anything wrong -- given that her oldest son had been sitting in the car -- she claims the police threatened her with a Taser. When she got out of the car, she says one of the policeman hit her so hard she had to be taken to the hospital.

Robin Andrews has also shown up at the recreation center this evening. She happens to be Tamir's aunt. "You guys are trained not to trust us," she says, with her comments directed at the police chief. "You kill our children and your behavior makes us sick." Andrews later explains that her own son wants to go on to study medicine, but each day she fears for his life. "The man who murdered my nephew needs to go to prison," Andrews says. "No justice, no peace." The sentence has become the slogan of these protests, one that can be heard in this recreation center in Cleveland, in Ferguson and on the streets of Washington, DC and New York.

Barack Obama has heard the rallying cry, which protestors have also been chanting during the past week in front of the White House. But the president is in a Catch 22 situation. On the one side he knows African-Americans have great expectations for him. On the other, he's prone to attacks every time he speaks out on the issue of race-linked incidents.

White Conservatives View Obama as Threat
 
Since Obama became president, opinions have become sharply divided within the American population when it comes to events with potentially racist backgrounds. More than two-thirds of Democrats disapproved of the acquittal of neighborhood watch volunteer George Zimmerman, who shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed teenager, in Florida in February 2012. But only 20 percent of people identifying as Republicans had a problem with the verdict. And whereas more than half of Democrats surveyed said they thought the anti-slavery film "12 Years a Slave" was worthy of an Oscar, only 15 percent of Republicans thought it deserving of the award.

During Obama's time in office, Republicans have increasingly become a party of the white elite and rural regions. The party's most radical supporters viewed Obama's speeches and proposed legislation as nothing more than a black man's attempt to exact revenge against the country's white majority. Even if they don't always say so, Obama's opponents have always felt that his actions represent a threat to white people, whether he launched a federal investment programs aimed at economic stimulus or proposed making the healthcare system a little fairer.

Some white conservatives actually still believe today that they are discriminated against due to the color of their skin because African-Americans, on average, profit more from Obama's healthcare reforms. The extreme resistance to "Obamacare" wasn't motivated by economic concerns alone.

Some of his detractors even believe that Obama is seeking not only to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor, but also from whites to blacks. That helps to explain some of the vehemence behind their attacks.

Obama actually has sought to help the bottom third of American society with his social and economic reforms. "The plain fact is there are some Americans who, in the aggregate, are consistently doing worse in our society," he said in February as he announced a $200 million program to improve education for African-American and Hispanic boys. "And by almost every measure, the group that is facing some of the most severe challenges in the 21st century in this country are boys and young men of color," he said.

Backlash against Obama
 
His fight to establish a higher minimum wage is likewise one of the projects that the Republicans have fought with the same kind of fervor evident in their battle against healthcare reform. Obama signed an executive order to raise the minimum wage from $7.25 to $10.10 for people working on new federal service contracts, but he failed to get an increase in the national minimum wage through the Republicans in Congress, who view themselves as the defenders of the white middle and upper classes.

At the same time, it is also true that Obama has never really presented himself as an advocate of African-Americans during his time in office. He learned during a very early stage of his presidency the kind of fury he might unleash if he commented on conflicts with a racial element.

When the president said police "acted stupidly" when they arrested black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates in 2009, he faced fierce criticism from his white opponents. Police had accused the professor of trying to break into his own home because his key had gotten stuck in the lock. Obama felt compelled in the end to convene a reconciliatory "beer summit" at the White House to which he invited both Gates and the police officers who arrested him.

Equal opportunity was the subject of Obama's State of the Union address in January and, in it, he cited two examples. The first was Misty DeMars, a white woman from a Chicago suburb who counts among the long-term unemployed. The second was Estiven Rodriguez, a 17-year-old student from New York who immigrated to the US as a nine-year-old from the Dominican Republican without speaking a word of English.

DeMars was meant to represent the difficulty women face in advancing their careers. And Rodriguez served as an example of how immigrants can succeed when given the chance.

He didn't mention a single black person in his speech.

President Barack Obama Weekly Address November 22, 2014 (Video/Trascript )

President Barack Obama
Weekly Address
Las Vegas, Nevada
November 22, 2014

Hi everybody. Today, I’m at Del Sol High School, in Las Vegas, to talk with students and families about immigration.

We are a nation of immigrants. It has always given America a big advantage over other nations. It keeps our country young, dynamic, and entrepreneurial. But today, our immigration system is broken, and everybody knows it.

That’s why, nearly two years ago, I came to this school and laid out principles for immigration reform. And five months later, Democrats, Republicans, and Independents in the Senate came together to pass a commonsense compromise bill. That bill would have secured our border, while giving undocumented immigrants who already live here a pathway to citizenship if they paid a fine, started paying their taxes, and went to the back of the line. Independent experts said it would grow our economy, and shrink our deficits.

Now, had the House of Representatives allowed a yes-or-no vote on that kind of bill, it would have passed with support from both parties. Today it would be the law. But for a year and a half, Republican leaders in the House have refused to allow that simple vote. Now, I still believe that the best way to solve this problem is by working together -- both parties -- to pass that kind of bipartisan law. But until that happens, there are actions I have the legal authority to take as President -- the same kinds of actions taken by Democratic and Republican Presidents before me -- that will help make our immigration system more fair and more just.

I took those actions this week. We’re providing more resources at the border to help law enforcement personnel stop illegal crossings, and send home those who do cross over. We’ll focus enforcement resources on people who are threats to our security -- felons, not families; criminals, not children. And we’ll bring more undocumented immigrants out of the shadows so they can play by the rules, pay their full share of taxes, pass a criminal background check, and get right with the law.

Nothing about this action will benefit anyone who has come to this country recently, or who might try and come to America illegally in the future. It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive. And it’s certainly not amnesty, no matter how often the critics say it. Amnesty is the immigration system we have today -- millions of people living here without paying their taxes, or playing by the rules. And the actions I took this week will finally start fixing that.

As you might have heard, there are Members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better. Well, I have one answer for that: Pass a bill. The day I sign it into law, the actions I’ve taken to help solve this problem will no longer be necessary.

In the meantime, we can’t allow a disagreement over a single issue to be a dealbreaker on every issue. That’s not how our democracy works. This debate deserves more than politics as usual. It’s important for our future. It’s about who we are, and the future we want to build.

We are only here because this country welcomed our forebears, and taught them that being American is about more than what we look like or where we come from. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal -- that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will. That’s the country we inherited, and it’s the one we have to leave for future generations.

Thank you, God bless you, and have a great weekend.

President Barak Obama addresses the Nation on sweeping immigration reform (Video/Transcript)

Cross Hall

8:01 P.M. EST

THE PRESIDENT: My fellow Americans, tonight, I’d like to talk with you about immigration.

For more than 200 years, our tradition of welcoming immigrants from around the world has given us a tremendous advantage over other nations. It’s kept us youthful, dynamic, and entrepreneurial. It has shaped our character as a people with limitless possibilities –- people not trapped by our past, but able to remake ourselves as we choose.

But today, our immigration system is broken -- and everybody knows it.
Families who enter our country the right way and play by the rules watch others flout the rules. Business owners who offer their workers good wages and benefits see the competition exploit undocumented immigrants by paying them far less. All of us take offense to anyone who reaps the rewards of living in America without taking on the responsibilities of living in America. And undocumented immigrants who desperately want to embrace those responsibilities see little option but to remain in the shadows, or risk their families being torn apart.
It’s been this way for decades. And for decades, we haven’t done much about it.

When I took office, I committed to fixing this broken immigration system. And I began by doing what I could to secure our borders. Today, we have more agents and technology deployed to secure our southern border than at any time in our history. And over the past six years, illegal border crossings have been cut by more than half. Although this summer, there was a brief spike in unaccompanied children being apprehended at our border, the number of such children is now actually lower than it’s been in nearly two years. Overall, the number of people trying to cross our border illegally is at its lowest level since the 1970s. Those are the facts.

Meanwhile, I worked with Congress on a comprehensive fix, and last year, 68 Democrats, Republicans, and independents came together to pass a bipartisan bill in the Senate. It wasn’t perfect. It was a compromise. But it reflected common sense. It would have doubled the number of border patrol agents while giving undocumented immigrants a pathway to citizenship if they paid a fine, started paying their taxes, and went to the back of the line. And independent experts said that it would help grow our economy and shrink our deficits.

Had the House of Representatives allowed that kind of bill a simple yes-or-no vote, it would have passed with support from both parties, and today it would be the law. But for a year and a half now, Republican leaders in the House have refused to allow that simple vote.

Now, I continue to believe that the best way to solve this problem is by working together to pass that kind of common sense law. But until that happens, there are actions I have the legal authority to take as President –- the same kinds of actions taken by Democratic and Republican presidents before me -– that will help make our immigration system more fair and more just.

Tonight, I am announcing those actions.

First, we’ll build on our progress at the border with additional resources for our law enforcement personnel so that they can stem the flow of illegal crossings, and speed the return of those who do cross over.

Second, I’ll make it easier and faster for high-skilled immigrants, graduates, and entrepreneurs to stay and contribute to our economy, as so many business leaders have proposed.

Third, we’ll take steps to deal responsibly with the millions of undocumented immigrants who already live in our country.

I want to say more about this third issue, because it generates the most passion and controversy. Even as we are a nation of immigrants, we’re also a nation of laws. Undocumented workers broke our immigration laws, and I believe that they must be held accountable -– especially those who may be dangerous. That’s why, over the past six years, deportations of criminals are up 80 percent. And that’s why we’re going to keep focusing enforcement resources on actual threats to our security. Felons, not families. Criminals, not children. Gang members, not a mom who’s working hard to provide for her kids. We’ll prioritize, just like law enforcement does every day.

But even as we focus on deporting criminals, the fact is, millions of immigrants in every state, of every race and nationality still live here illegally. And let’s be honest -– tracking down, rounding up, and deporting millions of people isn’t realistic. Anyone who suggests otherwise isn’t being straight with you. It’s also not who we are as Americans. After all, most of these immigrants have been here a long time. They work hard, often in tough, low-paying jobs. They support their families. They worship at our churches. Many of their kids are American-born or spent most of their lives here, and their hopes, dreams, and patriotism are just like ours. As my predecessor, President Bush, once put it: “They are a part of American life.”

Now here’s the thing: We expect people who live in this country to play by the rules. We expect that those who cut the line will not be unfairly rewarded. So we’re going to offer the following deal: If you’ve been in America for more than five years; if you have children who are American citizens or legal residents; if you register, pass a criminal background check, and you’re willing to pay your fair share of taxes -- you’ll be able to apply to stay in this country temporarily without fear of deportation. You can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. That’s what this deal is.

Now, let’s be clear about what it isn’t. This deal does not apply to anyone who has come to this country recently. It does not apply to anyone who might come to America illegally in the future. It does not grant citizenship, or the right to stay here permanently, or offer the same benefits that citizens receive -– only Congress can do that. All we’re saying is we’re not going to deport you.

I know some of the critics of this action call it amnesty. Well, it’s not. Amnesty is the immigration system we have today -– millions of people who live here without paying their taxes or playing by the rules while politicians use the issue to scare people and whip up votes at election time.

That’s the real amnesty –- leaving this broken system the way it is. Mass amnesty would be unfair. Mass deportation would be both impossible and contrary to our character. What I’m describing is accountability –- a common-sense, middle-ground approach: If you meet the criteria, you can come out of the shadows and get right with the law. If you’re a criminal, you’ll be deported. If you plan to enter the U.S. illegally, your chances of getting caught and sent back just went up.
The actions I’m taking are not only lawful, they’re the kinds of actions taken by every single Republican President and every single Democratic President for the past half century. And to those members of Congress who question my authority to make our immigration system work better, or question the wisdom of me acting where Congress has failed, I have one answer: Pass a bill.

I want to work with both parties to pass a more permanent legislative solution. And the day I sign that bill into law, the actions I take will no longer be necessary. Meanwhile, don’t let a disagreement over a single issue be a dealbreaker on every issue. That’s not how our democracy works, and Congress certainly shouldn’t shut down our government again just because we disagree on this. Americans are tired of gridlock. What our country needs from us right now is a common purpose –- a higher purpose.

Most Americans support the types of reforms I’ve talked about tonight. But I understand the disagreements held by many of you at home. Millions of us, myself included, go back generations in this country, with ancestors who put in the painstaking work to become citizens. So we don’t like the notion that anyone might get a free pass to American citizenship.

I know some worry immigration will change the very fabric of who we are, or take our jobs, or stick it to middle-class families at a time when they already feel like they’ve gotten the raw deal for over a decade. I hear these concerns. But that’s not what these steps would do. Our history and the facts show that immigrants are a net plus for our economy and our society. And I believe it’s important that all of us have this debate without impugning each other’s character.

Because for all the back and forth of Washington, we have to remember that this debate is about something bigger. It’s about who we are as a country, and who we want to be for future generations.

Are we a nation that tolerates the hypocrisy of a system where workers who pick our fruit and make our beds never have a chance to get right with the law? Or are we a nation that gives them a chance to make amends, take responsibility, and give their kids a better future?

Are we a nation that accepts the cruelty of ripping children from their parents’ arms? Or are we a nation that values families, and works together to keep them together?

Are we a nation that educates the world’s best and brightest in our universities, only to send them home to create businesses in countries that compete against us? Or are we a nation that encourages them to stay and create jobs here, create businesses here, create industries right here in America?

That’s what this debate is all about. We need more than politics as usual when it comes to immigration. We need reasoned, thoughtful, compassionate debate that focuses on our hopes, not our fears. I know the politics of this issue are tough. But let me tell you why I have come to feel so strongly about it.

Over the past few years, I have seen the determination of immigrant fathers who worked two or three jobs without taking a dime from the government, and at risk any moment of losing it all, just to build a better life for their kids. I’ve seen the heartbreak and anxiety of children whose mothers might be taken away from them just because they didn’t have the right papers. I’ve seen the courage of students who, except for the circumstances of their birth, are as American as Malia or Sasha; students who bravely come out as undocumented in hopes they could make a difference in the country they love.

These people –- our neighbors, our classmates, our friends –- they did not come here in search of a free ride or an easy life. They came to work, and study, and serve in our military, and above all, contribute to America’s success.

Tomorrow, I’ll travel to Las Vegas and meet with some of these students, including a young woman named Astrid Silva. Astrid was brought to America when she was four years old. Her only possessions were a cross, her doll, and the frilly dress she had on. When she started school, she didn’t speak any English. She caught up to other kids by reading newspapers and watching PBS, and she became a good student. Her father worked in landscaping. Her mom cleaned other people’s homes. They wouldn’t let Astrid apply to a technology magnet school, not because they didn’t love her, but because they were afraid the paperwork would out her as an undocumented immigrant –- so she applied behind their back and got in. Still, she mostly lived in the shadows –- until her grandmother, who visited every year from Mexico, passed away, and she couldn’t travel to the funeral without risk of being found out and deported. It was around that time she decided to begin advocating for herself and others like her, and today, Astrid Silva is a college student working on her third degree.

Are we a nation that kicks out a striving, hopeful immigrant like Astrid, or are we a nation that finds a way to welcome her in? Scripture tells us that we shall not oppress a stranger, for we know the heart of a stranger –- we were strangers once, too.

My fellow Americans, we are and always will be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once, too. And whether our forebears were strangers who crossed the Atlantic, or the Pacific, or the Rio Grande, we are here only because this country welcomed them in, and taught them that to be an American is about something more than what we look like, or what our last names are, or how we worship. What makes us Americans is our shared commitment to an ideal -– that all of us are created equal, and all of us have the chance to make of our lives what we will.

That’s the country our parents and grandparents and generations before them built for us. That’s the tradition we must uphold. That’s the legacy we must leave for those who are yet to come.

Thank you. God bless you. And God bless this country we love.