The wave of terror Donald Trump and J.D. Vance have unleashed upon the Haitian community in Ohio continues to crest. I am by no means the first to observe the similarities between how they are talking about Haitians and how Nazis spoke of Jews at the outset of their rise to power. That's strong language, and yet it is terrifyingly warranted. We are seeing something that is, in fact, not at all unprecedented.
But there is a particular aspect of the racism we're seeing here that particularly resonated with me as a Jew -- the frenetic scouring to find anything and everything that "proves" the conspiracies right, or at least justified. In the Ohio case, this reached a comical (if anything about this could be comical) apex when Christopher Rufo offered a bounty to prove the "Haitians in Springfield are eating cats" conspiracy correct and then started crowing over a video of not-Haitians in Toledo Dayton grilling chicken. But other examples abound (although at least J.D. Vance had the "decency" to admit he was simply making things up). Far, far too many Republicans response to blatant acts of hatred is to cast far and wide for something that makes the hatred feel palatable.
As a reasonably public-facing Jewish professor, I frequently idly wonder if I'll be targeted by some sort of antisemitic attack. Mostly, it doesn't happen. Occasionally, it does; though in my case never in such a fashion that would explode into the public view. But if an "incident" did happen -- someone graffitied my office door, for instance -- I am absolutely sure that a certain cadre of online folk would immediately begin pouring over my collection of writings to find anything they possibly could to explain why I'm a legitimate target. That knowledge -- less that something could happen, and more that if it did I'd be the one scrutinized to hell and back, with the most gimlet eye and uncharitable gaze -- is perhaps what stresses me the most. I do not think I am alone amongst Jews in feeling this way; hyperpoliced at every turn to justify ex post facto a judgment that has been handed down in advance.
By all objective accounts, the Haitian community in Springfield has been a boon to an erstwhile struggling city. But they are not universal saints, any more than anyone else is -- if one places them under a powerful enough lens, one will of course be able to find something or someone butting up against the social compact (though not, I'd wager, stealing and eating pets). No group can maintain a perfect record under that sort of scrutiny. And the knowledge that one is under that microscope is just exhausting. It's exhausting right alongside the more direct anxiety and misery of being directly subjected to acts of hate and bigotry.
The people responsible for this have no shame, so I won't bother to say they should be ashamed. But no good person should feel anything other than contempt for this latest dose of bigotry.
67 comments:
I assume you will delete this post now that the governor of Ohio has said that the bomb threats were hoaxes by foreigners?
And claiming that Trump and Vance "unleashed terror" by simply talking about the plight of ordinary Americans is infuriating. Politicians have a right to talk about the horrible effect of stupid anti-American immigration policies, and you have no right to call free political speech "unleashed terror".
I don't know which is wilder: the notion that a "hoax" bomb threat isn't a threat, or the notion that "hostile foreign powers were able to easily leverage our xenophobic lies to sow terror in American communities" is a defense.
So lol get bent; I'll keep on using my free speech to call xenophobic racist conspiracy theories that have unleashed terror on innocent people by their proper name.
You are equating political speech with terrorism, which is anti-American and contrary to the First Amendment. And I note you have made no remark on the latest assassination attempt on Trump, which is actual terrorism designed to stifle political freedom and political speech. You are just another leftist censorship goon.
Editor's note: Critical counterspeech, even that which offends worshippers of the God-King, is not contrary to the First Amendment.
Calling political speech "terrorism" is not critical counterspeech, it is a call for censorship.
Nope. The question of whether speech has inspired the ongoing terrorization of a given community is, for better or worse, entirely separate from whether it should be subject to de jure censorship.
Indeed, the First Amendment's preferred remedy for risible, destructive, hateful speech is exactly to be harshly critical of it, to call it out by its name and condemn it uncompromising terms, precisely because the Amendment places sharp limits on government's ability to censor such speech. "More speech" -- critical, condemnatory speech -- is exactly what the First Amendment suggests we do in lieu of "enforced silence."
You have provided no evidence of "ongoing terrorism" of Haitians other than the speech itself. And by your standard, every single democrat and leftist media organization should be forcibly muzzled due to the terror they have inspired in the form of multiple assassination attempts on Donald Trump.
Important analysis, thanks.
This consciousness/anticipation of 'hyperpolicing to justify the judgment ex post facto' immediately brought to my mind the hashtag trend #IfTheyGunnedMeDown used by kids of color.
This troll is obviously not a serious thinker and keep going ad infinitum with nonsense, but I'll give @Will one refutation (looking at the initial comment):
1, it's darkly amusing that you think you can get high ground on David about free speech and censorship, he's basically doctrinaire about freedom of expression. You can read the blog archive eg https://dsadevil.blogspot.com/2017/02/berkeleys-partially-pregnant-protests.html.
2, David does have "a right" to call anything he likes "unleashed terror", because that's free speech, and he didn't impugn the "right" of Trump Vance et al to make up racist lies about Haitians. They have a right to say it (as does he), but they don't have a right to be free of criticism for saying it.
3, "talking about the plight of ordinary Americans" is an absurd characterization, because the salient analysis stems from how it is (a), untrue, and (b) fundamentally NOT a common problem. For (a), observe that David linked to coverage of Vance admitting he made it up - it isn't anybody's plight because it's fake. For (b), it fits into a long history of making up stuff about outsiders that would be viscerally abhorrent, rather than realistic.
4, post hoc ergo propter hoc isn't syllogistic but it can still be conclusive. There weren't any "foreign" bomb threats shutting down major Springfield, OH institutions before Trump lied about that city during the debate last week. Afterwards, there have been. Ergo, Trump caused it. And again, while that might be reasonably subject to a weighing of pros and cons if he were saying something true, it was in fact a lie so it presumptively has to tank all of its negative effects directly.
This is all perfectly correct. I think there are two elements that the troll isn't grasping, but which are useful to think about.
The first is the content of the speech (factually), and the second is what it is calling on people to do. Some speech is, by itself, reasonably likely to lead to violence on its own, and is generally unacceptable. That's the "Haitians eating pets/Jews cooking matzoh with baby blood" libel that is, on its face, reprehensible and morally disqualifying for anyone that propagates it. It doesn't matter if there's a policy pronouncement attached to it, because it by itself is a call to violence.
The second is what the speech calls for. The Trumpy right loves to declare, in a few cases in extreme stupidity but more commonly in extreme bad faith, that calling Trump a threat to democracy or a malignant racist or any number of true statements is bad because it incites violence. That is, of course, incoherent. It effectively precludes any harsh criticism of someone because there might be some backlash by crazy people. By that metric, declaring that Bernie Madoff was a fraudster or that Jeffrey Epstein was a pedophile was unacceptable because someone might react violently to them. But if someone declares, say, that "Bernie Madoff was a fraudster, so you should go blow his head off" is an unacceptable call to violence. Same thing here-- "Trump is a malignant narcissist who threatens democracy" is a perfectly fine and true statement. "Trump is a malignant narcissist who threatens democracy, and someone should blow his head off" is a call to violence. But the thing is... no sane person is doing the latter. Calls for political violence, outside of the nutty fringe, have come pretty much exclusively from Trump himself and his acolytes.
And the connective tissue here is also that blanket accusations against ethnic groups are themselves calls to violence. Rehashing the earlier example, "Bernie Madoff was a thieving fraudster" is a true statement. "Jews are financial fraudsters" is an antisemitic trope. And "George Soros is a thieving fraudster" blurs that line because antisemites often use George Soros as a stand in for Jewish stereotypes, and George Soros is not, in fact (as far as we know) a thieving fraudster.
But it's infuriating that the right pulls the transparently racist bait and switch of spreading false claims about ethnic groups that incite violence, while declaring that it's out of bounds to call out the malignant behavior of individuals.
What "plight of ordinary Americans" do made-up racist tropes about Haitian immigrants eating pets refer to?
Bookwork and Alex I--
1. Public records show that there have been calls to police about Haitians in Ohio stealing pets. What they did with the pets after stealing them is anyone's guess. MAybe they ate them, maybe they used them as voodoo dolls, or maybe they adopted them and fed them Chow Mein.
2. I do not care about the Haitians in Ohio, nor should any American. They are no more important to me than some random person in some random country. They are not here permanently (nor should they be) and they do not share my culture.
3. As JD Vance has aptly explained, the main issue is not about dogs or cats, but about dropping 2,000 Haitians into a Town with a population of 4,000 and expecting the Town to just accept it. The Haitians run roughshod over all of the social services, take all of the low paying jobs, and effectively change the society. The people in the Town never asked them to come there and they want them to leave. But because some bureaucrat in Washington, and maybe the mayor, decided to do it, the bus drops them off. It is wrong. Indeed, it is evil, because it destroys the homegrown culture.
David knows what he is doing when he refers to political speech a "terror". He does not need you to run to his defense. He is a First Amendment professor, after all, and he knows what speech is protected and what is not. He may overtly deny being pro censorship, but by referring to Trump and Vance's political speech as "unleashed terror" he has shown that he is just another leftist censor. If he thinks Trump and Vance should be allowed to talk about the plight of ordinary people in Ohio (you know, U.S. citizens as opposed to Haitian refugees dropped on the local population by federal fiat) he can say so. But as far as I can tell, he thinks Trump and Vance should just shut up about it, or have someone shut them up for him.
Also, speaking of incoherent: Two people have tried to shoot Donald Trump in the last 2 months. As far as I know, nobody has tried to murder any Haitians.
The "Trump is a threat to democracy" trope is completely incoherent, yet the left and the media repeat it endlessly. IT is a propaganda mind virus. By contrast, Alex I., saying that someone is a fraudster or a pedophile has a specific meaning and is not nearly on the same level. You stop a fraudster by protecting your money and your assets. You stop a pedophile by prtecting your children. How do you stop a "threat to democracy"? Well, first, by trying to win the election, but what if you can't win the election because nobody likes your candidate or your policies? What do you do next? The answer is obvious, and was obvious to Crooks and to the latest guy. You know the answer yet are playing dumb on purpose.
OK I'll play--
1. No, there have not been any credible reports of Haitians in Springfield stealing anyone's pets. As the authorities on the ground have continuously repeated. The story Vance and Trump came up with came from some woman reposting some third hand claim on Facebook, which she came out and regretted spreading because... it's wildly irresponsible and fanatically racist for national politicians to amplify this kind of bullshit.
2. If you don't care about the Haitians in Ohio, perhaps you should shut up and stop defending the potential next president and vice president spreading vile lies about them? Might be a good place to start?
3. Setting aside any valid issues about expanding a town's population and strain on social services-- spreading (again) vile racist lies is not in any way related to that purported issue. It's like claiming that spreading lies about Jews controlling the financial system is good because it brings needed attention to Wall Street crime. And all of that is ignoring the fact that these (legal) immigrants are revitalized this dying town. So yes, they changed the culture. They improved it immeasurably. If their presence drove the racist garbage out, even better.
So yes, David is absolutely correct-- spreading vile racist lies is in fact terror. Those who believe it are vile doofuses. Those who spread it are far worse and more pernicious. Yes, Trump and Vance should shut up-- inciting violence against racial groups is disgusting, and they shouldn't do it. If you think otherwise, you're the problem.
LOL OK. Schools in Ohio have been closed for a couple of days because of threats against Haitians. If you imagine that this would have happened without Trump and Vance inciting hate, well, I've got some nice oceanfront property in Springfield to sell you.
And yes, the guy who did his best to steal the last election, then incited his followers to storm the Capitol when he failed, and has continually done his best to use the courts to disenfranchise people is in fact a threat to democracy. You stop that threat to democracy by voting. Which, ya know, is how he was stopped the last time. And he proceeded to try strong-arming local officials into "finding votes" and, when that failed, urging Mike Pence to scuttle the certification process, and then urging his followers to storm the Capitol. Sooooooo yeah, there's one candidate in recent American history who's shown that he can't play by the rules. It's not Harris, it wasn't Biden, and it wasn't Clinton.
Alex I.--
I hope they drop the next 20,000 Haitian refugees in your town. Then you can watch them at the local welfare office or hospital, marvel at their grandeur, and report back to the rest of us about it. Me, I'd prefer to remain living among ordinary Americans who share my culture and language.
Turn off the MSNBC before you end up like Ryan Routh.
My town already has far more than 20,000 immigrants and refugees within its borders, and my particular neighborhood has an especially high concentration (primarily coming from east Africa). And I'm delighted they're here! They're wonderful neighbors, and they make our city stronger.
By contrast, the sort of racist agitator who tries to rip my city apart by spreading lies in service of turning neighbor against neighbor can fuck all the way off.
David,
That's a stupid comment. "Your town" of Portland, Oregon has 650,000 people. These Haitians are being dropped into small towns such that they instantly comprise 1/3 of the population. Imagine if all of a sudden the Feds dropped $250,000 Haitians upon Portland. IT would be a very different place. I pray that some day you experience such "diversity" and come to appreciate it for what it is.
The US Attorney prosecuting the attempted assassination of former president Trump in Florida is . . . a Haitian-American immigrant who served in the U.S. Marine reserves and saw active duty in a war. He is serving and protecting our country and making it stronger and safer. Just like immigrants like my ancestors and just about everyone else's in this country have always done.
And what does that have to do with anything? My dad was an immigrant too, as was my grandfather. So what?
To be clear, the "argument" that because (1) some (legal) immigrants are productive, therefore (2) small towns in Ohio and elsewhere must accept thousands of refugees who don't speak the language and who immediately comprise 1/4 or 1/3 of the local population, is complete nonsense.
If you think otherwise, it is on you to make the argument in a straightforward way, not to claim racism and denounce anyone who opposes the nonsense.
Well you see, the reason there are lots of Haitian immigrants in Springfield is… businesses set up shop and needed workers. That attracted lots of them to a dying town that had been losing population. Businesses were uniformly pretty excited to have a reliable, hardworking labor force.
Now, Trump and Vance and you wouldn’t be bloviating if, say, Russian or Ukrainian immigrants had set up shop to take those jobs. You may insist that it’s not because of their skin color but… then we’ll all know that you’re lying, so let’s short circuit that game.
But it’s worse than that. Instead Trump and Vance and co. are spreading vile racist lies about them eating pets. This is because they are, yes, spectacularly racist filth. And yes, we’d be much better off as a country if we dropped 100,000 Haitian immigrants into my city, especially if it meant launching Trump and Vance and other racist garbage piles into the sun.
A big influx of immigrants is a huge boon for cities, especially those with declining population. This is so for the reasons Alex mentions, but also that immigrants help cover infrastructural costs whose coverage was based on a city's higher population heyday but are uneconomical to maintain when populations drop (e.g., one has to provide fire coverage to the whole city regardless of whether half of it is abandoned, but it's much more cost-effective when the city is fully populated). The problems that Springfield is enduring are the "problems" that accompany any growing municipality (strain on services and heightened cost-of-living offset by rapid wage growth and rising tax bases); they're far better than the alternative set of problems that afflict a declining and dying city.
But the thing is that in the Springfield area, the highest realistic estimate of the Haitian population is 15,000; more conservative estimates suggest 10,000 or even 4,000. The Springfield metro area has a population of approximately 120,000. 15,000 out of 120,000 = 12.5% -- lower than the national average of immigrant population (13.6%). That of course shrinks further if the figures are 10,000 (8.3%) or 4,000 (3.3%).
Springfield has certainly seen an influx of immigrants, but the numbers probably aren't that extraordinary compared to other municipalities. Since you mentioned Portland, for instance: our proportional immigrant population is 13.1% -- right in line with the national average (and my neighborhood is likely considerably higher). And once again, I am nothing but delighted with the presence of my neighbors, who make my city and my neighborhood stronger.
David--
Thank you for making the argument in a straightforward way. I, and many others like JD Vance, will make the counterargument that dropping tens of thousands of Haitian refugees into small towns across the heartland is mean, takes jobs from American citizens, and only benefits the federal government, wealthy landowners, and businesses who prefer to pay slave wages to refugees rather than living wages to Americans.
Do this in the future rather than crying "racism" and attempting to demonize your political opponents. Good job, you are learning.
Alex I--
Turn off the MSNBC before you become Ryan Routh. It appears to be eating away at what is left of your brain.
There is no such thing as a "hoax bomb threat", only a real bomb threat with a fake bomb. In the same way, if I mug you with a toy gun, the gun was fake, but the mugging was real. Hope this helps.
Curiously (and this is a much more interesting issue to discuss than chasing racist memes around) the cost of living issues mirror on a smaller scale what you get in wealthier cities. Left-NIMBYs in Seattle talk about the influx of Amazon employees in broadly similar terms as the (very very) slightly more thoughtful anti-migrant nuts talk about Haitians-- "they've driven up the cost of living and made the city worse." Which, in the first instance, is clearly true-- importing lots of highly paid workers into a city does drive up the cost of things, in the first order housing and in the second order other stuff, where prices are driven up both by businesses paying higher rents and having to pay workers more. But the solution to that is to build out housing and transportation to accommodate people.
Because the surest way to keep the cost of living low is for your area to be poor. Right around when I was graduating from college, you could buy a whole house in certain parts of Detroit for low to mid 5 figures. But "just hollow out your economic base and drive everyone away" probably isn't most people's preferred strategy for controlling housing costs.
Update: the "calls to police about Haitians in Ohio stealing pets" appear to be pretty universally... racist nuts losing their cats and then blaming the Haitian migrants. Which is why city officials have, again uniformly, noted that there are zero credible reports of Haitians stealing and/or eating pets. So it's probably a good idea for anyone, but public officials especially, not to spread racist lies.
https://x.com/jwmjournalist/status/1836380510253162720
@Will--I did not say anyone was racist. And I was describing facts in straightforward way about an individual person whose story is part of the larger story of immigrants in the country. The overwhelming evidence is that immigrants strengthen the economy and that immigrant populations have lower crime rates than the general population. And the sad history is that immigrants have been attacked throughout our history, with similar themes and language as they are today. Thankfully, immigrants have continued to trust our promises and to be part of them.
Charlie--
Like anything else, some immigrants are helpful and some are harmful. Some immigrants, even illegal ones, become productive citizens--I will not deny it. Others are rapists and murderers. More generally, "bad" immigrants will often rely upon social welfare and take up tax dollars which would be better spent on American citizens.
I do not think this has to do with anything though. We should not be dropping thousands of refugees into small towns in America without the consent of the people in those towns. The fact that businesses may prefer to pay slave wages to Haitians who have government subsidizes food and housing does not mean that dropping 10,000 Haitians into a town is a good thing. Of course the factory owner will prefer to pay $7/hour to a Haitian who has no rent bill, no electric bill, and no food bill (because he is subsidized by the federal government), rather than $14/hr to a white or black American who has to pay all of those bills. The federal government is choosing winners and losers here. Haitians and the factory are the winners, and the regular Americans are the losers.
It is supremely ironic that so-called "Democrats" are declaring such policies to be in the best interest of the town solely because they are in the factory's interest, and completely ignoring the plight of the working class Americans.
I like how you're relying on the wage issue (instead of absurd racist conspiracies about pet-eating), because reduced wages are the one problem pretty much everyone agrees Springfield hasn't experienced. To the contrary, it's experienced significant wage growth.
That's not at all surprising when you think about it: an influx of new workers leads to new demand for goods and services leads to greater demand for labor leads to increased wages -- this is the most basic, 101 story of economic growth. One of the many ways racism makes you stupid is that, in order to justify the actual belief of "I don't want to be around people different from me," you start spouting off obviously idiotic ideas like "declining midwestern industrial towns can shrink their way out of poverty". The obvious right answer is that revitalized economic activity is a good thing, and it's been good for Springfield -- especially in the area of wage growth.
I will agree that it's important to aggressively enforce labor laws to ensure that businesses can't exploit desperate workers by paying them sub-minimum wage or otherwise imposing illegal working conditions -- that can artificially depress wages in unfair fashion. In that domain, it helps that the immigrants in Springfield are overwhelmingly legal immigrants, not because it denotes some superior virtue, but simply because they're less easily exploitable since they're more likely to avail themselves of legal protections (as opposed to avoiding seeking legal protection because they're terrified of deportation). But that's just an argument for converting more illegal immigrants into legal immigrants by legalizing their status and making it harder to exploit them. Nonetheless, it's pretty much moot in Springfield where the immigrants in question are, to reiterate, almost all legal.
David,
The chart you link to shows that the "increased" wages in Clark County, Ohio have increased by less than the national average, which national average wages have not increased commensurate with the extraordinary inflation the country has experienced under Biden-Harris. In other words, wages have effectively decreased in that area of the country by more than the national average. And to no surprise, because businesses are paying slave wages to Haitian refugees who do not need to pay for room, board, or food, because the federal government subsidizes all of it. The Haitians need to work to stay in the country and that presumably is their main goal. They do not care what they are paid, so they take bottom dollar from the wealthy factory owners.
Regarding the claim that these are "legal immigrants", that is only because Biden made them "legal" by executive fiat. Trump can undo that with the stroke of a pen. Rounding them up might be difficult but can be done. These Haitian refugees did not go through the traditional immigration process, they are not here permanently, and they can very easily be deported.
Plus for some reason that chart ends two years ago and does not show the last two years.
Presumably the reason the chart ends when it does is because that's the most recent data we have. But what it shows is that wage growth has been higher in Clark County (Springfield metro area) than it has been nationally for each of the last five measured quarters, and higher than in Ohio for each of the last seven. The narrative that immigration has depressed wage growth just doesn't hold water. "Facts," as John Adams famously put it, "are stubborn things." And the facts are that Haitian immigration to Springfield appears to have had a positive impact on wages and job growth.
(And while I haven't seen any contention that the Haitian immigrants were ever in the United States illegally -- Haiti has been a TPS country since 2011 -- the correlation between Biden expanding those protections in 2021, and Clark County's wage growth overtaking Ohio and national rates starting in 2021, sure does seem to matchup with the "protecting immigrants --> wage growth by making exploitation harder" thesis).
The contention is that Haitian immigrants who are here legally shouldn't be here because they're eating pets (very very false) and depressing wages (also very false). These are very thin cover for the real reason Trump/Vance want to demonize them-- that they happen to be black. So if the question comes down to who makes our country a better place... well, give me any number of hardworking Haitians over racist scum like Trump and Vance.
@Will I haven't the patience to rebut this bad faith debate point by point; David and Alex probably have that covered, and I doubt it matters anyway (eg, even if there are phone calls, JD Vance admitted that he is indifferent to making this stuff up, so you still have to defend lying about it).
But I'll make one big picture point about values. In your initial rebuttal to me, you said "2. I do not care about the Haitians in Ohio, nor should any American." If your life situation is strained and your focus right now has to be only on what's right in front of you, that's rough and I hope it gets better. But it's embarrassing that your vision for America finds disregarding people admirable and finds recognizing human dignity unpatriotic. That's a dark vision: selfish, pessimistic, and fundamentally UN-american. America is where we believe "that all men are created equal" with an inalienable right to "the pursuit of happiness". America is about hope and compassion and everyone pitching in. When we disagree on that, there's predictably very little common ground on managing immigration.
Beautifully said. This idea that "those people" have different "values" than we "real Americans" is a toxic, troubling but persistent strain in American history. There's always been a nativist push to define immigrants as "other," whether those immigrants were Jewish or Irish or Italian or Latin American. The complaint was that they didn't speak "our" language, had bad hygiene, were vectors of communicable disease, etc.
You see more than a bit of that in how today's racist right, including Will here, rail about Haitian immigrants. Who, not incidentally, commit crimes at substantially lower rates than native-born Americans. The issue isn't that they're dangerous or criminal; it's that they're not white.
I think the only piece I disagree with is that this is "un-American." America's always been in a state of tension between it being a city on a hill that is a refuge for repressed people, and it being a place where many often-powerful strains of society have done their best to push entire groups of people into second class status. America's story is a story of the battle between our better angels and our Trump/Vances.
bookworm--
I respect human dignity, even the dignity of Haitian refugees. The reality, of course, is that "the pursuit of happiness" of native Americans in Ohio and elsewhere has been negatively affected--some would say undermined--by the Biden-Harris regime's decision to drop thousands of Haitian refugees who do not speak the language on their small towns. Imagine that in 2020 or 2021 you spent all of your hard-earned money on a house in Springfield. Then, all of a sudden, by federal fiat, your town was overrun by Haitian refugees. Take even David's smaller number of 10-20%--still, one out of every five or six people you meet is now a Haitian refugee. Your home value is affected, your livelihood is affected, the joy you derive out of life is affected. You didn't have any say in this process and did not vote for it, yet it was imposed on you from above by bureaucrats in Washington who simply do not care.
This conversation has revealed some willful blindness on the part of the participants. This is not a hard point to understand. I think most if not all of you understand it but will not admit it out of fear of revealing some baser morality that you purport not to possess.
I do not want to live amongst Haitian refugees, nor would you even though you won't admit it. That's the bottom line. Americans have a right to have a say before the federal government dumps tens of thousands of refugees upon their towns. This simply is not fair and everyone, even leftists, know it.
Also, it is no surprise that the Biden-Harris regime has dumped these refugees into states like Ohio and Michigan--relative swing states--and not into places like Connecticut or Rhode Island or Vermont. At least dump the refugees amongst the people who are pro-refugee, and not into poor working class towns where the people are struggling to get by as it is.
This is kind of the bottom line. Racists can’t imagine that lots and lots, a majority even, are not racists. They think that everyone shares their revulsion at non-white people. Yes, I am happy to live among immigrants. I came to this country as an immigrant more than three decades ago. I spent my formative years in an apartment complex with lots of immigrants from lots of places, with different religions and skin colors. It was a very formative and very American experience.
So yes, believe it or not, this is an experience that’s been my experience. And I’ve found that those were fundamentally much better, more decent people than the vile racists now spreading lies about them.
And that’s setting aside the continued economic illiteracy— if I’d bought a house in dying Springfield, Ohio, which was bleeding population, I’d be pretty thrilled at the influx of migrants reviving the town and driving up the price of my house (as Econ 101 would tell you, more demand for housing drives prices higher; home prices in Springfield, according to Zillow, are up over 9% year over year).
If you don’t want to live near Haitian immigrants, you’re welcome to leave. And the country will be a better place with one fewer closed minded bigot.
Alex I--
I suggest, then, that the federal government do a poll before dumping the refugees in any particular place--a vote, if you will--and then dump the refugees wherever the population votes to accept them. Then the refugees will live amongst people like you and not amongst people like me. Hopefully all can agree on this commonsensical solution.
The federal government is not "dumping" anyone anywhere. People can live where they please. Racial covenants around housing are, as you may or may not know, spectacularly illegal (and, contrary to what you might believe, rightly so).
And similarly, voting to exclude people from living in certain places is similarly spectacularly illegal and spectacularly racist. I know right wingers love to claim that Democrats "call everyone racist" but, like, when you're pushing the Haitian Exclusion Act, it's not a close call.
Alex--
The bus driver who dumps the refugees off where he is told would disagree with your contention that the feds are not dumping the refugees in particular locations.
The Haitian immigrants are not being "dumped" anywhere. They moved to Springfield of their own volition for the same reason why I moved to Portland and why most people move most places: there were good jobs there and it was a nice place to build a nice life.
And on that note -- you're whining that people didn't get to vote before new arrivals bought houses in their neighborhood? My dude, welcome to society! I bought my house two years ago -- none of my neighbors got to vote on the subject. The house down the block from me is up for sale; I get no say in who my new neighbors will be. You are describing the most ordinary fact of human existence. I don't pitch a fit about it -- it would not occur to me to even think of it as something to pitch a fit about -- and I certainly don't make up lurid conspiracy theories about pet murder to justify my own xenophobic paranoia.
But that's the thing -- you have to make up these conspiracies because the actual "problem" so clearly isn't one. "Your home value is affected" -- home values went up. "Your livelihood is affected" -- wages grew. "The joy you derive out of life is affected", well, now we're just drilling down to the nub of "one out of every five or six people you meet is now a Haitian refugee" -- that is, I'm sad because I have neighbors who are productive, law-abiding, contributing members of society but who have a different background from me. This is the easiest and most obvious case of racism imaginable.
“The bus driver”…? I don’t know where you get these neo-Nazi fever dreams, but they don’t in any way resemble reality. Which is that these people saw a factory job that paid them attractive wages at an affordable cost of living, and they moved there. Same reason any person moves anywhere.
There are videos of the busses dumping the Hatian refugees by the busload. If you want to ignore such evidence, you are the one living in unreality. Those busses are paid for by the federal government.
David, regarding your comment that nobody got to vote before you moved into your neighborhood--that is a natural movement driven by market and other factors. What is happening in Ohio, Michigan, and elsewhere, however, is the federal government deliberately dumping refugees into places chosen by the feds. It is not the result of any market mechanism, much as you may want to deny it.
Needless to say, this is complete BS. There is no federal resettlement program "dumping" anyone in Springfield. For your own sake, you should turn off the right wing media that's turned your brain to mush and your soul to shit.
Haitian immigrants ended up in Springfield the same way anyone else ends up there; because of opportunity and word of mouth. You need to look no further than... the county website. https://www.clarkcountyohio.gov/DocumentCenter/View/8119/Clark-County-Ohio-Haitian-Influx-FAQs
Again, you're consuming a diet of misinformation. The things you believe are wrong. Only you can fix the racism, but maybe getting basic facts right instead of getting duped by racist misinformation might start moving you in that direction...
Alex I--
You would agree that it is a problem if the federal government were dropping refugees by the busload in towns across middle America? If so, you and I only disagree on a factual question that can be easily proven or disproven--whether refugees are being dropped off by bus at particular locations around the country, which locations are designated by the feds.
IF the federal government were dropping tens of thousands of people of any kind into places where it didn't provide adequate resources to settle them, that would be one thing. Whether those people were white, Haitian-American, Ukrainian, whatever, is irrelevant.
That isn't what's happening here. It's not close to what's happening here. Setting aside that you're repeating bullshit claims you mainline from propaganda media, you've declared that your issues are that Haitian immigrants "don't speak English" and "don't share your values." And the whole edifice is built on the (acknowledged) bullshit racist lie that these people are eating pets.
So I'll point out that there are tons and tons of differences between us-- primarily, that your and the Trump/Vance case is (i) built on lies; and (ii) built on phenomenally racist lies. It's what makes the whole thing infuriating and disgraceful. So yes, given the choice, I'd much prefer that the federal government drop 20,000 Haitian immigrants into my city than that they drop one of Trump or Vance or you there. Because, well, my values involve being very intolerant of racism, and them being enthusiastic purveyors of it.
And it's easily verifiable that the situation in Springfield, specifically, is NOT "federal government just dropping off buses of Haitians". They moved there voluntarily, because they liked the town and the jobs available -- same reason why most of us move most places. I concede it is possible that some of them took buses to get there, because buses are a mechanism by which human being travel, but beyond that it's the standard issue paranoid fantastical lie you get from mainlining Breitbart or Alex Jones or whatever propaganda outlet is your preferred favorite.
But I am curious: You say that we "only disagree on the factual question that can be easily proven or disproven" -- whether (in the case at hand) the Haitian population in Springfield is there because that is where they were "dropped off by bus" in a "location designated by the feds." It is, indeed, easily provable/disprovable, and as Alex showed the correct answer is that it is false. But I'm unconvinced that is actually our only point of disagreement, and here's why: Given its easily provable falsity, do you now agree that there is no cause to oppose the Haitian population in Springfield? We already know the answer is no: You've made clear that your anti-Haitian hatred is not at all dependent on how they arrived in Springfield, and based instead on a more atavistic bigotry at them as "different". Learning that they arrived in Springfield the same way any other person moves to a new town won't change that, and so it is not actually germane to any disagreement we may have.
There are busses dropping the Haitians off in Springfield and they were sent there by the feds. If it were not so, why would 20,000 Haitians (out of 500,000 granted special protective status in the entire country) settle in this one little Ohio town? It makes no sense to attribute such settlement pattern to market mechanisms. Plus social media is full of pictures and video of the buses coupled with witness testimony. Disbelieve it if you wish.
Needless to say, this is bullshit. There is no federal program to resettle immigrants in this town. The county government website, of all things, has to explicitly disclaim it. And I promise you, it’s not because the federal government is intimidating the county government of Clark County, Ohio into putting out an FAQ. It’s because one of the presidential campaigns is spouting racist lies that endanger members of their community. And, unlike the racist bottom feeders that these racist lies activate, the local officials in Clark County,
Ohio recognize that it’s bad if racist bottom feeders activate their followers to incite hatred toward members of their community.
Now this gotcha that you imagine makes your point is also, needless to say, stupid as hell. Hold on to your keyboard, this is gonna blow your mind. The reason Haitian immigrants settled in this backwater Ohio county is exactly the same as the reason just about every ethnic community imaginable forms. Do you imagine that the federal government airdropped Somali immigrants into the Twin cities, or Arab immigrants into Dearborn, Michigan, or Jews in lot Bethesda, Maryland…? It may blow your mind but… no. The reason those communities form is that people move in one group to a promising seeming place. Then they relay to friends and relatives that the place is accommodating and has plentiful opportunity, and those people follow. They form community groups and houses of worship, and those attract others of the same group. It’s a story as old as time.
This is what happened in Springfield. The Trump-Vance approach
Is to activate the worst people in the country to hate these groups. They do that by spreading racist lies like, you got it, “they’re eating your pets.” And that activates the worst people in the country, like you, to believe those obvious racist lies to justify your hatred.
This is why David’s last point is obvious— it doesn’t matter if the federal government is bussing Haitian migrants to Clark County, Ohio. That’s not why you oppose them. You oppose them, as you pretty much explicitly acknowledge, because they “don’t share your culture.” Which we all know means “because they have dark skin.”
Which is why it’s important to point out not just that you believe very easily disproven bullshit, but that you believe easily disproven bullshit because it fits your priors. And your priors are that you’re obscenely racist.
I hope for your sake that tomorrow you wake up a totally different person that doesn’t spout racist bullshit. But the really upsetting part is that in 2024 in America, there are tens of millions of yous who really are terrible for society.
Alex I and David--
This is quite the conspiracy theory you have adopted. You have convinced yourselves that based entirely on market mechanisms, 20,000 Haitian refugees (who do not speak the language and largely economically illiterate somehow recognized a great economic opportunity in a small Ohio town that was not recognized by everyone else in the country--blacks, whites, hispanics alike. The Haitians move into that town naturally in droves very quickly to take advantage of this great economic opportunity that nobody else recognizes. And we are all better off for it, or so the conspiracy theory goes.
Hopefully you can see the implausibility in the theory. If you cannot, I have little hope for you.
The conspiracy is that Haitians did what countless other immigrants have done across innumerable American towns since time immemorial? The most mundane and standard-issue immigration story imaginable? As against the apparently Occam's Razor explanation that the federal government hatched a secret plan to bus in tens of thousands of Haitians to Springfield for inscrutable reasons just to tweak the locals? And your own explanation for why the latter is more plausible than the former is "because surely, the brown people are too stupid to make this decision themselves?"
My dude. Touch grass.
David--
You are putting in quotes words I never said. You have offered no explanation for your implausible economic theory, which posits a degree of economic genius to Haitian refugees. This is the only way your theory works, mind you, because you insist that ordinary Americans are better off because of the Haitians. Somehow the Haitians recognized opportunity that everyone else failed to recognize in Springfield, Ohio, of all places, and we should be singing their praises for having done so. To arrive at this conclusion you have ignored pictures and video of buses dropping off the Haitians, you have ignored witness testimony from ordinary Americans in the area who insist they are worse off now than before, and you denounce anyone who disagrees with your implausible and unsupported theory as "racist".
You, sir, are ridiculous. It is a shame that you are teaching impressionable youngsters.
David,
Are you deleting my comments now? LOL
Leftists always resort to censorship. David is no different, just as I said in one of my initial posts. Just admit it, David. You want to control speech. It's okay to admit the truth.
Thank you for putting the comment back, David. And thank you for proving my point.
More amusingly, you were caught in the spam filter. Apparently Google has less tolerance of your rants than I do.
But in any event, the "implausible" theory here is literally the most basic and banal story behind every immigration cluster in American history. It explains why there's a large Vietnamese population in Biloxi and a large Hmong population in St. Paul, and everything in between. Your choice to view an incredibly normal and quintessentially American tale as implausible and sinister, in favor of mainlining lurid fantasies about federal immigrant busloads dropping off Haitians in Springfield (for no discernable reason other than, it seems, mustache-twirling cackling) and random hearsay of debunked nonsense.
Anyone dumb enough to find obvious paranoia about pet-eating "plausible", but "immigrants go to places where there are jobs and then build communities" to be "implausible", is just too far down Alice's rabbit-hole to climb out. As some of my friends would put it: "I'll pray for you."
LOL, alright David, pray away. Just don't try to sell me any pagers. I'm not buying.
It certainly says something that your first thought upon not seeing your comment was not "spam filter got frisky" (an incredibly normal internet phenomenon) but rather "site owner decided to unjustly delete my comment within the first 2 seconds of it being posted without saying anything in order to further a nefarious agenda of leftist censorship."
When given a choice between normalcy and mewling conspiracies of whiny victimhood, leave it Will to always veer aggressively towards the latter.
I'm so thrilled that overt antisemitism has joined the overt racism party.
It was there, and then it wasn't, and then when I pointed it out, there it was again. You can explain it however you want.
I’ll also point out that if the goal here is to prove your point, deleting Will’s comments would be an incredibly self own. With due respect to your terrific post, there’s been nothing that’s done a better job of proving your point than Will's incoherent bigoted rambling.
The bozo who imagines that ethnic communities develop because (((Global Elites))) bus them into dying industrial towns to, I dunno, replace the white people I guess? is mostly doing a bang up job demonstrating that the safest way to get smarter is to see his posts and believe the opposite.
I’ll also point out that if the goal here is to prove your point, deleting Will’s comments would be an incredibly self own. With due respect to your terrific post, there’s been nothing that’s done a better job of proving your point than Will's incoherent bigoted rambling.
The bozo who imagines that ethnic communities develop because (((Global Elites))) bus them into dying industrial towns to, I dunno, replace the white people I guess? is mostly doing a bang up job demonstrating that the safest way to get smarter is to see his posts and believe the opposite.
Sure. You wrote it, and then the spam filter caught it, and then you complained about it (via the usual intemperate self-pitying personal attack), so I checked the spam filter, and then I restored it.
Again, a very normal internet experience (I'd say "... other than the immediate jump to assuming one is the victim of a cosmic injustice by sinister actors", but alas that's also extremely internet-normal).
My dude… you spent 45 posts shitting out the dumbest racist bullshit imaginable. Odds are pretty good no one was sitting eagerly by their computer to auto-delete #46.
You know, in my litigation career I sometimes pick fights because it is in the best interest of my clients to run up the bill. Here it was a waste of time because nobody is paying. But it was still fun. Have a great day guys!
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