Racist Borders, Racist Orders

in the last week, back to Port to Prance. What we know is that the country is politically ravaged, is being essentially run by bunches of gangs. That who the Americans want to anoint as the next prime minister is not someone that the people actually want. But that doesn't stop America from inserting its foot inserting itself into foreign affairs that frankly, it has no business being a part of.

What is troubling to me, what continues to be troubling to me is that I don't know about you, but how many more decades are we going to hear about a broken immigration system without there being an actual solve to it. And it seems to me that every single Congress and every single administration continues to kick the can down the road for some other administration and Congress to pick up. What's unfortunate, however, is that our Congress is filled with a bunch of the same mothers that have

been there since like the beginning of time. I shit you not. Senator Grassley has decided, at the ripe old age of eighty eight, that he's going to run for reelection. The man has been in elected office since the nineteen fucking fifties. So we wonder when we turn around and we say, how come we don't have any new policies?

How come we don't have any fresh ideas well, if I'm looking at the average age of those that are sitting in the fucking Senate right now, I'm looking at what a bunch of septarians or like octanagarians like, it's ridiculous where we are. And you know, here's the other thing, and I mentioned this last week, is when Yumishali Sendor ask Jensaki whether or not the President of the United States is going to speak directly about the tragedy that

we are witnessing unfold at the border. She said, well, he speaks through me, he speaks through other people he met, speak on his own. And I'm saying to myself, when we set up a situation where we have people justifying whether or not what was used by the Texas fucking Border Patrol is a whip or is it horse reins? And I don't need to go through with white people and unpack and dissect brutality with you when you want me to not believe my eyes but to believe your

continual lying ass mouths. And I'm calling out this administration because they have considerably fucked this up in I mean, the epic proportions a fuckery that is happening at the border right now is insane. And you know, I could probably be maybe just as angry or angrier if it had been a Trump administration, but I wouldn't be surprised. I wouldn't feel like I was caught out. But that's

exactly how I feel with this administration. And then they want to make an announcement at the end of last week where they tell us that, oh, for the time being, the Department of Homeland Security is going to what suspend the use of horses as if the horses were the fucking problem, they weren't, right. It wasn't the horse that

was the problem. I believe that it's the men that are riding the horse and their attachment and love affair to white supremacy and the feeling that they get to live out their cowboy fantasies, right, that that is actually the problem. So how do you suspend that exactly? How do you enforce humanity for people that do not see people that do not have the same skin color as them as being human? How do you legislate depravity out

of people? What is fucking frustrating to me and continues to be frustrating, is the fact that we just continue to ignore racism in this country and how it plays a part literally in everything that we do. No one has been fired from border patrol, nobody from DHS has lost their job, and in a couple of days, those pictures will cease to have the impact that they did last week, and we will move on to the next crisis, to the next problem, continuing to kick this can down

the street again. But when I look at the faces of those Patian migrants, when I look at their children's faces, you see, because I have a heart because I believe in values of morality and humanization. For all that, I don't have to right articulate my humanity. I shouldn't have to plead for it by virtue of my birth right. I should be provided with the basics. But that is

not how this country is set up. We don't even do that for our own goddamn citizens, let alone those that still think that America is the better place to be than the place that they are coming from, which I say, wow, you know, because the place that you're fleeing clearly has to be on fire, underwater, you know, under siege for you to think in this day and age that America is your safe harbor at a time when our democracy is hanging on by a goddamn thread,

and Republicans and Democrats alike continue to act like all is okay. It is like we are living in that active meme with the dog that is sitting at the table drinking the coffee. Everything's fine, but the entire fucking room is on fire. You know, the reality is that we care very little for black people in this country. We care even less for black people in other countries. But when they show up in mass on Shore and

are not even heard. Do you understand that their cases there please, are not even being heard because this administration has decided to continue Title forty two, which was developed under Trump and used under Trump as a way to expeditially right, get rid of people that you don't want without having to justify a hearing. And then for those people who underneath my posts on social media love to tell me, oh, well, they're all bringing in COVID and

you know what about COVID? Fuck? I would love to, you know, fence off Tennessee, but we can't fucking do that. You want to be concerned about colvid, Why don't you be concerned about the red state governors that are allowing the virus to run rampant because they're weaponizing it. Talk to me about that. Don't talk to me about people that are fleeing violence and hunger and despair trying to come here. We have a country that is flush with vaccines.

Haiti does not right, They don't have the infrastructure for it we do in the United States, and we can't even convince the people down the fucking street to get one without putting in a vaccine mandate. That says, guess what you can't go anywhere as the seasons change, because everywhere indoors is going to require a vaccine. At least that's how it looks in New York. That sure's fuck

is not how it looks everywhere else. Coming up next, Friends, is going to be my conversation with our expert, who is going to talk to us about this immigration problem, where we go about this broken system and whether or not we are going to be able to do anything about it in the months and years to come. Folks, I am very happy to welcome to the show for the first time Kevin Johnson, who is the dean of the University of California Davis School and co author of

the book Immigration, Law and Social Justice. You know, one of the things that I brought up in a piece that I wrote last week which was entitled America owes

the Haitian People More? And what I did was go through historical analysis of what the United States is part has been in creating economic and political instability in Haiti And what I think, and you know, you tell me if I'm wrong or don't have the fu enough picture, is I feel like the problem that we have when we're discussing immigration as a whole, is that we're not really asking why these countries are in shambles in the way that they are and what part the United States

and global indifference has had in them being in such disarray. And so when we look at you know, the influx, whether it is coming from Mexico, Central America, from Haiti, from countries that have had disruptive governments and basically you know, paltry economic viability, that we don't look at the policies that we have allowed that created those situations or the ways in which we got to cherry pick political leaders

that were not chosen in a democratic fashion. And yet we go around the world and we bigfoot and say that we're here right because we're owing to be you know, the valiant knights that are going to provide democracy for you. And yet we're choosing leaders. We're doing this right now after the assassination of the prime minister in Haiti, we're trying to back another leader that the people are saying

we don't want. And so is there or should there be more conversation not of talking about the people that arrive as the problem, but rather the policies that we have championed that allowed for these people to be in such a desperate situation. Now, I think you're exactly right. We as a nation tend to view immigration as a continuing series of crisis. You know, it's Cubans are coming, you know, Haitians are coming, Mexicans are coming, Muslims are coming,

and how do we protect ourselves from the crisis. We don't interrogate why people are migrating. We could say, well, what was our United States government role in propping up a dictatorial Haitian series of presidents that led to mass poverty, violence, political unrest, and all the way up today leading to the situation see today, we tend not to focus on that. You can look at Mexico. Why are so many Mexican migrants coming? Part of it is economic and you could say, well,

look what NAFTA did. NAFTA was a trade agreement. It benedit fitted a big farmers in Mexico. Small farmers became poorer, left their land and are coming to the United States. So that the economic dislocation created by NAFTA, which we champion, that led to the migration streams we see today propping up dictators in El Salvador and Guatemala and Honduras have had the same impacts. Our policies towards Cuba has led to my migrations that we've had to deal with at

various points in time. But we don't say, guys, what was our role in these migrations? We say, how do we stop them? And the truth of the matter is is that you reduce migration in the long run by not propping up dictatorial regimes, not making countries poorer, but helping them. Richard, the long term solution to migration really, and I do think the Biden administration is voiced these words and actually sending Vice President Harris to Central American

to meet with the leaders. Her focus was on long term solutions. The long term solutions to migration. If you're worried about too many people coming, or your view, too many people are coming, the long term solution is economic prosperity and political stability. Most of the world, ninety five percent of the world dies within one hundred miles where it for Most people want to stay home. Most people are more comfortable with their language, their culture, their community,

in their country. People leave when conditions are such that they leave in large numbers. When conditions are such or it's untendable to stay home. So if if we're really interested in decreasing migration pressures from around the world, providing economic support, political support, and thinking the long game, not how do we stop these people from coming? Is what you have to do. But the problem with that, and I'm not saying it's an insurmountable problem, is that we

tend to be reactive when it comes to migration. We also tend not to want to spend money on foreign countries in building their institutions because it's too difficult for us to understand the link between if they're strong, we're better off, and it's it is costly. But the policies we've had in Central America devastated those countries, and that's why you're seeing many Central Americans coming. You can look at Haiti, you can look at Mexico, you look at Venezuela,

look at Cuba. You know it's in Those are countries that are close to us, so you can expect larger numbers of people coming to it's easier to do. I want to focus for a second on what you said with regard to how you stop mass migration. Right, is economic investment right? Into the countries and communities that we've affected with whether the support or the propping up of dictators.

I want to look at the last twenty years in Afghanistan for a moment, and the fact that you know, for twenty years the United States was in this country, spent oh, I don't know, depending on some reports, anywhere between eight and twenty one billion dollars over the course of twenty years, and within a matter of weeks, the entire infrastructure of the country collapses, and now we're opening, supposedly opening our doors, according to this administration, to ninety

five thousand Afghans that have been displaced because of our intervening in a country that many say, and I personally believe that we had no business being in to begin with without a clear entrance and a clear exit strategy. What are the lessons to learn from the money, lives and time wasted in this particular part of the world world. What are the lessons that you think that we can learn from Afghanistan that we shouldn't be copycatting in other

nation states? So seemingly I agree with you with regard to the investments that need to be made into areas that we have torpedoed in a lot of different in a lot of different ways over many decades. What lessons can we take from what happened in Afghanistan and not model Yeah, well, I think spending billions on war, trying to force something on people that may not want it, isn't going to give you the stability or the economic

growth that's necessary. I'm not saying that we should have supported the Taliban, but I do think that the idea of conducting war like in Vietnam, like in Afghanistan, given the popular resistance, without building institutions, without supporting communities, uh, isn't going to work Because I mean, throwing in a war machine propping things up, uh, isn't going to necessarily

transform the hearts and minds the people people of the country. Uh. And I think that what we can learn is that spending money on helping people build their own institutions, as opposed to imposing institutions on them or trying to impress upon them they should adopt American ways somehow isn't going to necessarily work. But I think that the primary focus

on on war um into quote liberating these these countries. Uh. You know, it isn't going to work in the longer, and the hearts and minds and the people have to be committed to change and to the building of institutions. And it strikes me that what happened in Afghanistan is we spent a lot on war, not so much on UM, you know, building those durable institutions. We're going to be

able to remain in place after we left. And Uh, there are other factors involved, I think, UM, But to me, UM, yeah, a twenty year of war with UM, you know, many more casualties on their side than on our side, but an awful lot of casualties on our side too. UM. It shows that, UM, there are limits to what you

can do through through the pointing of a gun. M M. You know another thing too that I find really frustrating again, you know, and you began and have peppered throughout this conversation talking about racism, right, and you know, illuminating that many of the policies, right. I won't say all because I don't know all of them, but many of them

are steeped in racism and classism. Right. What Donald Trump famously said, we only want the best people, you know, why can't we get people that are coming from Norway, right, seemingly you know, white and middle and upper class, right, was the connotation behind that racist statement. But Donald Trump said out loud what many people in the United States belief, right,

Democrats and Republicans alike. Is there a way right to create immigration policy that isn't steeped in racism, that isn't about Oh well, if you're coming, you know, from Chile as opposed to from Venezuela or Colombia, you're better, right if you can show us that you're coming here on a work visa or college visa. Oh, that's the kind

of immigrant that we want. Is there a way to create a system, because let's be frank that there isn't a system in this nation that wasn't created from racist ideals, right, So, is there a way, with everything that we know now to detach ourselves from racism and classism, particularly at a time when people don't even want to acknowledge reality that it exists. No, I think that's that's another good point.

You know, systemic racism affects all aspects of US society, from the education system, the voting system, the health system, in criminal justice system. Obviously, the first thing if you're really interested in removing that racism is awareness that it exists, and we have been in is a nation have been in denial or not racist? You know, the immigration laws

are color blind and race neutral. They don't discriminate. But when you look at how things operate in the ground, you look at those pictures along the border, how could you not see that racism is infecting it when you see the poor brown woman being separated from her brown

child who's crying. How can you not see the racisms evolved when ninety percent of the people removed every year or Latino, and most of those are removed because of problems they had with our criminal justices, someone which we know engages in race based law enforcement. How can we not realize that that racism infects the system. I think that we, in all aspects of our society are in a profound sense of denial that racism exists and infects

our institutions. Now there's one place where I think that we could help, or the Supreme Court could help. Maybe it's not this court, But I like how you said just You're like the court could help, but not this one. Maybe you want down the road that is it for Today's Woke F Daily Podcast. To hear more from me, including five full hour long shows every single week, exclusive guests, interviews, and more. Support me on Patreon at patreon dot com

slash WOKEF. Power to the people and to all the people. Power, get woke and stay Wocus fuck