The Executive Order

I know this is a blog that I use to talk about TV, movies, books, music, plays, and so forth, and even when I discuss issues like bigotry or inclusion, it’s always through that lens of pop culture and storytelling.  But right now, I just need to talk.

An indefinite suspension of refugee admissions from Syria.  A 120-day halt on the admissions process for refugees from all countries.  Cutting the U.S.’s total number of refugee admissions for 2017 by more than half of its originally-planned number.  A 90-day barring of all entry for people from Syria, Iraq, Iran, Somali, Sudan, Yemen, and Libya, even if they already have a visa (and while 90 days is the stated number, admissions won’t resume until the administration has satisfied its “investigation” into these countries.)

I am beyond disgusted at the total disregard for human suffering, the utter contempt for our fellow human beings that goes into an order like this.  The bigotry disguised as national security.  Taking people’s very real endangered lives and playing politics with it.  Stoking the fires of fear and racism to make oneself look stronger by battling a straw enemy of one’s own creation (terrorism is a threat – refugees are not.  This is not the same thing, and to pretend it is is shameful.)  The fact that it was signed on Holocaust Remembrance Day just shines even more of a light on how cowardly and despicable it is.

Is it a “total and complete shutdown” on Muslims entering the U.S.?  Not in so many words, but largely in effect.  Certainly, all the Muslims seeking refuge have had the doors barred to them, a blanket block on the suffering, and the additional country-specific ban keeps out everyone from seven Muslim-majority countries.  But the added caveat within the order makes the Islamaphobic bigotry even more undisguised:  room has been left for exceptions to be made, on both the 120-day refugee ban and the 90-day country-specific ban.  Throughout the whole of the process, case-by-case exceptions can be made, with priority going to those fleeing religious persecution, as long as they’re a religious minority in their country.  With the overwhelming, overwhelming majority of Muslim refugees coming from Muslim-majority countries, that means the exceptions aren’t for them.  They’re for those from these countries who aren’t Muslim, i.e., for Christians.

(Now, I’m not saying that Christians fleeing Syria don’t need protection.  They do.  Obviously they do, and I want to see them getting all the help they need.  But so do the Muslims.  To pick and choose who’s deserving of refuge from suffering is a disgrace.)

I’m reminded of the Black codes used to curtail Black suffrage after the passage of the 15^th Amendment.  States in the South didn’t pass laws saying that Black people couldn’t vote, because it would have been blatantly unconstitutional to do so, just like it would’ve been to block entry to the U.S. explicitly on the basis of religion.  So instead, they created laws like literacy tests and poll taxes, casting wide nets that they knew would catch the majority of Black Southerners, who until recently were barred from receiving any type of education and were owned for unpaid labor rather than receiving any sort of earnings.  But they knew that, while Black voters would overwhelmingly be the ones affected by literacy tests and poll taxes, there would also be a number of white voters unable to pass a test or pay a tax.  So what did they do?  They made exceptions.  Grandfather clauses, whereby you weren’t subject to those other voting requirements as long as your grandfather would’ve been eligible to vote, claims that only white voters could make.

As I’ve said before, I live in a city with a sizable population of Muslim refugees from Somalia, and I work in a public school where I have a lot of contact with EL (English Learner) and other Somali students.  I know Muslim kids who are obsessed with sports and prom and Facebook, kids who alternately love school and loathe school depending on the day, and a SPED kid whose favorite things are hamburgers, cars, flags, and sambusa.  Over the past months, as I’ve been working with them, I’ve been continual blindsided by the thought, “The president-elect doesn’t think they should’ve been allowed to come here,” and over the past few days, it’s been all I can do not to cry when I think of these beautiful, awesome, fun kids that the president is willfully determined to view only as potential dangerous terrorists.  Absolutely shameful.