The History of Trumps Favorite Racist Code Word

[G_j]

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/02/the-history-of-assimilation-as-a-racist-code-word.html?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=traffic&utm_source=TheAngle_newsletter&sid=57ea8f14a22762b55f8b456c

What the president really means when he constantly promotes “assimilation.”

By SILPA KOVVALI
FEB 27, 20184:31 PM

Speaking at CPAC on Friday, Donald Trump once again pushed the notion that ending family reunification—“chain migration” in the parlance of the president—will improve our immigration system. The speech, which came on the heels of news that the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services had removed the phrase “a nation of immigrants” from its mission statement, cited a Manhattan attack to segue into a discussion of immigration policy.

“This guy came in through chain migration. And a part of the lottery system,” the president said. “They say 22 people came in with him. In other words, an aunt, an uncle, a grandfather, a mother, a father, whoever came in. A lot of people came in.”


Trump then argued that his preferred immigration policy of keeping Americans apart from their families was a matter of making the system “merit-based.”

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For Trump, “assimilation” is a particularly loaded code word. If his goal were truly to promote social cohesion, an immigration policy which privileges those with strong familial ties to current residents would seem an optimal tack. In speaking of assimilation as the ultimate virtue, though, the Trump administration is referring to something else entirely, harkening back to a time when citizenship was contingent upon whiteness. A series of cases from the early 1920s demonstrates what has happened when America has formalized “assimilation” as a legal concept, rather than a loose social construction—it is used to codify special privileges for whites and legitimize abuse toward people of color.

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[vlyons]

1. I always thought that assimilation meant

able to speak, read, and write English fluently, able to get a job and support one's self, able to establish residency, and eventually citizenship. That's what it should mean.

[G_j]

2. Or maybe