Photo by Melany Rochester, Unsplash
Photo by Melany Rochester, Unsplash
Many of our immigrants are not white—which is why they will continue to be made into the convenient monsters by white leaders in power, who want to distract from their own grievous malfeasance.
Republished with permission from John Pavlovitz
We’d never have heard anything about building a wall during the 2016 Presidential campaign.
It wouldn’t have become a Republican rally chant, a Conservative hashtag staple, a MAGA t-shirt favorite, a Donald Trump fixation.
Republicans wouldn’t be forever declaring a “national emergency” at our southern border whenever their polls are failing.
There would be no talk of the lawless streams of bad people currently “overrunning” us.
GOP politicians wouldn’t be continually working to create connections between exhausted, desperate families and drug dealers, rapists, and gun runners.
We’d have never had Vice Presidential nominee-fictional horror stories about family pets being eaten—or their bases ready to rush to believe them.
There would be no promises of bloody mass deportations by the Republican presidential nominee.
If the immigrants were white, Evangelical preachers wouldn’t be pounding their pulpits and leveraging their social media platforms in passionate support of an inhumanity that a non-white Jesus would be sickened by.
Our white neighbors wouldn’t be buying into nonsensical ghost stories about the advancing horde coming to take their jobs and rape their children and live off the Government.
Fox News wouldn’t be incessantly perpetuating fear and intentionally manipulating gullible people about the violence these opportunistic people are supposedly unleashing on us.
Other white people living here wouldn’t be experiencing elevated suspicion and bullying and contempt from strangers who might be related to these “malevolent border invaders.”
The GOP wouldn’t be talking about “rounding up” thousands of them and weaponizing agencies in that service.
If the immigrants were white, Donald Trump would never have said a single vile word, never generated one incendiary tweet, never uttered a lie-riddled stump speech, never given one damn about “defending America” from this apparently dangerous threat.
If the immigrants were white, they would be treated like human beings by white Americans.
Those white Americans wouldn’t be sanctimoniously lecturing scared, hungry, tired people to “do it the right way.”
There would be compassion and kindness.
There would be welcome and generosity.
There would be shades of gray to be seen in their stories.
There would be creativity in seeking solutions.
There would be no lazy stereotypes and racial slurs.
We’d be doing so much more with our resources and our time, to address actual human rights atrocities and national emergencies.
If the immigrants were white, Republicans would suddenly find vast resources and working hearts.
The white Evangelical church would embrace its calling to care for the least of these and recover its own soul.
White America would not unleash the prejudice and racism it is still so afflicted with.
But many of the immigrants are not white—which is why they will continue to be made into the convenient monsters by white leaders in power, who want to distract from their own grievous malfeasance while stoking the irrational fears of suggestible white people.
They will continue to be painted as the enemies of a portion of Americans who cannot exist without having one to rail against.
They will continue to be the targets of a single, terrible, dangerous white lie that is making this nation something ugly, something hateful, something none of us should want to call home.
And those of us here who believe that every human being deserves compassion, had better stand up in these moments and demand that these human beings be treated with humanity, or we will have lost the best of this nation forever.
John Pavlovitz is a writer, pastor, and activist from Wake Forest, North Carolina. A 25-year veteran in the trenches of local church ministry, John is committed to equality, diversity, and justice—both inside and outside faith communities. When not actively working for a more compassionate planet, John enjoys spending time with his family, exercising, cooking, and having time in nature. He is the author of A Bigger Table, Hope and Other Superpowers, Low, and Stuff That Needs to Be Said.
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