I Would Give You All I Have For Just One Safe Space In These United States
I am reminded of the 1965 celebration of “National Brotherhood Week” by songwriter and satirist Tom Lehrer. There really was an optimistic time when Americans celebrated the week of spreading welcoming to all Americans, although the commemoration died in a wave of cynicism in the early 2000s.
Lehrer wrote:
Oh, the white folks hate the black folks
And the black folks hate the white folks
To hate all but the right folks
Is an old established rule.
But during
National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week
Lena Horne and Sheriff Clark are dancing cheek to cheek
It’s fun to eulogize the people you despise
As long you don’t let them in your school.
Oh, the poor folks, hate the rich folks
And the rich folks hate the poor folks
All of my folks hate all of your folks
It’s American as apple pie.
But during
National Brotherhood Week, National Brotherhood Week
New Yorkers love the Puerto Ricans cause it’s very chic
Stand up and shake the hand of someone you can’t stand
You can tolerate him if you try.
Oh the Protestants hate the Catholics
And the Catholics hate the Protestants
And the Hindus hate the Muslims
And everybody hates the Jews.
Lehrer could have been referring to the latest travel advisory issued by major civil rights groups warning African Americans and Latinos to be wary about traveling to Florida, Missouri, Texas and Arizona.
The advisory issued by the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and LULAC (the League of United Latin American Citizens) specifically referred to the four states but it could easily have included Louisiana and Georgia, whose officials have not exactly put out the welcome mat for African Americans and Latinos.
If you’re part of the LGBTQ community, you ought to steer clear of South Carolina, Arkansas, and Wyoming while Jews should be forewarned about visiting New York, California, New Jersey, Florida and Texas.
And pretty much everybody should avoid Montana, Tennessee, Nebraska, Arkansas, New Hampshire, Alabama, Virginia, South Carolina, Idaho, and Nevada.
The NAACP issued a travel advisory for the Sunshine State “in direct response to (Republican) Gov. Ron DeSantis’ aggressive attempts to erase Black history and to restrict diversity, equity, and inclusion programs in Florida schools,” the group said in a written statement on Saturday.
Florida prohibits social studies textbooks that mention social justice, taking a knee and other content of “concern.” Under DeSantis, Florida and a growing number of other states have banned the teaching of critical race theory, a pedagogy that acknowledges systemic racism is a part of American history and challenges the beliefs that allowed it to flourish.
DeSantis, however, said that critical race theory “teaches kids to hate our country and to hate each other. It is state-sanctioned racism and has no place in Florida schools.”
The legislation also prohibits teachers from instruction that suggests anyone is privileged or oppressed based on their race or skin color.
The law says that topics must be “factual and objective,” and specifically prohibits “the teaching of Critical Race Theory, meaning the theory that racism is not merely the product of prejudice, but that racism is embedded in American society and its legal systems in order to uphold the supremacy of white persons.”
It also bans material from the 1619 Project, a Pulitzer Prize-winning initiative by The New York Times that reframed American history around the date of August 1619, when the first slave ship arrived on America’s shores.
The DeSantis administration also blocked a preliminary version of a new Advanced Placement course on African American studies, with Florida’s Department of Education saying it “significantly lacks educational value.”
DeSantis said the state would reconsider the Advance Placement program if the College Board is “willing to come back to the table with lawful, historically accurate content.”
The College Board planned to offer an African American studies pilot class for the first time last year. It was to cover “key topics that extend from the medieval kingdoms of West Africa to the ongoing challenges and achievements of the contemporary movement.”
Florida’s actions inspired other states to follow suit. Idaho passed a bill in May banning teaching in any public school that “any sex, race, ethnicity, religion, color, or national origin is inherently superior or inferior,” which, according to that bill, was often found in “critical race theory.”
“Florida is openly hostile toward African Americans, people of color and LGBTQ+ individuals,” the NAACP said. “Before traveling to Florida, please understand that the state of Florida devalues and marginalizes the contributions of, and the challenges faced by African Americans and other communities of color.”
A day after the recent NAACP warning, LULAC issued a travel advisory for Florida after DeSantis signed a new immigration law that will go into effect in July.
The new immigration law requires employers with more than 25 employees to check their workers’ immigration status using a federal database known as E-Verify. Employers who don’t comply with the law face fines of $1,000 per day until they provide proof that their workers are legal citizens.
The law also invalidates out-of-state identification cards, such as driver’s licenses, that have been issued to illegal immigrants and prevents Florida-based agencies from issuing new cards. The statute will prevent people who immigrated illegally to drive a car in Florida. People who transport undocumented people living in the United States could face steep fines and possible imprisonment, under the new Draconian law.
The president of LULAC, Domingo Garcia, called the new immigration law “hostile and dangerous.” DeSantis said the law is crucial to stop “reckless federal government policies and ensuring the Florida taxpayers are not footing the bill for illegal immigration.”
In Missouri, an NAACP travel warning issued in 2017 remains in place based on passage of Senate Bill 43 which makes it more difficult for employees to prove their protected class, such as race or gender. Opponents to the bill said it would ease the way for profiling, leading to unwarranted search and seizures and potential arrests. The Missouri Attorney General reported at the time that African Americans in Missouri a;ready were subjected to excessive traffic stops and were more likely to be stopped and searched based on skin color than Caucasians.
“Individuals traveling in the state are advised to travel with extreme CAUTION,” the advisory warned. “Race, gender and color based crimes have a long history in Missouri.”
Missouri was the home of Lloyd Gaines, who filed a landmark court case in 1938 after he was denied admission to the University of Missouri School of Law because he was African American and refusing the university’s offer to pay for him to attend a neighboring state’s law school that had no racial restriction. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately ruled in Gaines’ favor. Gaines disappeared on March 119, 1939 and his body or whereabouts were never found.
Missouri also was the home of Dred Scott, an enslaved African American man who sued for freedom for themselves and their two daughters in the Dred Scott v. Sandford case of 1857, popularly known as the dreadful, “Dred Scott decision.” The U.S. Supreme Court upheld the ruling which determined that neither Scott nor any other person of African ancestry could claim citizenship in the United States.
The NAACP said Senate Bill 43 was another iteration of Jim Crow laws, a series of laws first developed in the south after the Civil War to continue to deny rights to former enslaved people. Similar laws remained in force until the 1960s.
“People should tell their relatives if they have to travel through the state, they need to be aware,” said a notice from the NAACP. “They should have bail money, you never know.”
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) also has issued travel advisories in 2010 for Arizona and in 2017 for Texas. Both advisories came after new state laws allowed police to question a person’s immigration status.
In 2010, in response to passage of Arizona’s racial profiling law, the ACLU of Southern California, issued a travel alert informing residents of their rights when stopped by law enforcement when traveling in Arizona.
The law, known as SB 1070, required law enforcement agents to demand “papers” from people they stop who they suspect are not authorized to be in the United States. If individuals are unable to prove to officers that they are permitted to be in the U.S., they may be subject to warrantless arrest without any probable cause that they have committed a crime. The law was the broadest and strictest anti-illegal immigration law in the United States when passed.
In 2017, the ACLU issued a “travel alert” informing anyone planning to travel to Texas to anticipate the possible violation of their constitutional rights when stopped by law enforcement. The alert followed passage of a Texas law, SB4, which allows police to investigate a person’s immigration status during a routine traffic stop “leading to widespread racial profiling, baseless scrutiny, and illegal arrests of citizens and non-citizens alike presumed to be ‘foreign’ based on how they look or sound,” the ACLU wrote.
As far as other states that are less than welcoming to African Americans, there is Louisiana, where just last week, Rep. Clay Higgins, R-La., was captured on video manhandling an activist at a GOP speaking engagement.
Clay, a former police officer, resigned from one police department in 2007 before he could face disciplinary action for alleged misconduct, including using unnecessary force against a Black man he encountered on the job. He later gained notoriety through viral videos he posted while working at another police department in which he wore his police uniform and threatened purported criminals with extrajudicial punishment.
Any discussion about white supremacy and anti-African American bias would be incomplete without mentioning Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga.
Most recently Greene got into an argument with Rep. Jamaal Bowman, D-N.Y. on the steps of the Capitol. The next day, Greene pulled out her racist dogwhistle and claimed that Bowman, who is African American, was “yelling, shouting, raising his voice, he was aggressive, his physical mannerisms are aggressive,” and she added that “I feel threatened by him.”
Video of the incident showed both lawmakers speaking at the same volume but without any alleged physical intimidation by Bowman. Taylor-Greene’s actions were typical of a long, history of painting people of color, and Black people in particular, as dangerous as a pretext for visiting violence upon them or dehumanizing them.
People from any minority group ought to think twice about going to the 10 states with the most hate groups in 2020 per capita, including, in order, Montana, Tennessee, Nebraska, Arkansas, New Hampshire, Alabama, Virginia, South Carolina, Idaho, and Nevada.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) reported that Montana, which is 85 percent white, has six hate groups, including two anti-Muslim groups, two white nationalist groups, a racist skinhead organization, and a chapter of the Proud Boys militia.
And people from the LGBTQ+ community looking to raise a family should probably rule out South Carolina, Arkansas, and Wyoming. None of these states have laws or policies protecting LGBTQ+ individuals, according to moveon.org.
As far as Muslims go, anti-Muslim hatred in 2021 remained ever present. Taylor Greene and Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo., continued to harass and bully Muslims, particularly targeting Rep. Ilhan Omar, R-Minn, who is Muslim.
A 2018 study conducted by Dr. Maneesh Arora found that just 54 per cent of Republicans surveyed would vote for an anti-Muslim candidate, and separately noted that a 2020 YouGov survey found that 37 percent of Republicans approved of discrimination against Muslims.
And bolstering Lehrer’s observation that “everybody hates the Jews” is the latest report from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), that anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. reached their highest level last year since the ADL, a civil rights non-governmental organization, began recording them in 1979.
The incidents including assault, vandalism and harassment increased by more than a third in just one year and reached nearly 3,700 cases in 2022, the ADL reported. The American Jewish Committee (AJC) found that every fourth American Jewish adult, was targeted in an anti-Semitic incident ranging from physical attacks to remarks in person or online in 2022.
Five states accounted for more than half of the incidents New York leading with 580 reported incidents; followed by California with 518; New Jersey with 408; Florida with 269' and Texas with 211.