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Black America Web
15-05-2025
- Politics
- Black America Web
White Tears Incoming: America Welcomes Afrikaner ‘Refugees' To Rescue Whiteness
Source: SAUL LOEB / Getty 'Send me your bitter. Your huddled masses of racists. Your wretched, sun-worn, and paranoid, waving the flag of a dying empire, terrified of DEI, hallucinating about genocide, and teeming with desperation to Make Anywhere Great Again.' The Neanderthalic Donald Trump is certainly no Emma Lazarus, the poet whose 1883 sonnet 'The New Colossus' is cast onto a bronze plaque on the Statue of Liberty and inspired the satirical flip I just delivered. But this is essentially what he said before rolling out the red carpet for a planeload of salty, land-losing colonizers who've been recast as 'refugees' because Black South Africans have the audacity to reclaim what was stolen from them generations ago. These Afrikaner welfare recipients, who descended mainly from Dutch colonists, have received preferential treatment over many other groups who've been waiting in limbo in refugee camps and other dangerous conditions for years. The Afghan and Iraqi interpreters who risked their lives to assist American troops in wars. The Haitians being deported after fleeing violence and natural disasters. The Syrians still trapped in camps in Jordan, Turkey, and Lebanon. The Congolese languishing in East Africa, the Uyghurs from China, along with Somalis, Rohingya Muslims, Yemenis, South Sudanese, Central Americans from Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala, the Eritreans, and Ethiopians. These Afrikaners aren't refugees. They aren't fleeing war. They aren't being persecuted based on their religion. They aren't stateless. They aren't politically dissident exiles. They haven't endured famine or climate collapse. But Trump and top officials, including Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, compared post-apartheid South Africa to Nazi Germany. Invoking his family's history, Landau said: 'My own father was born in Europe and had to leave his country when Hitler came in … We respect what you had to deal with these last few years.' He added: 'We're sending a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa.' Where was this same energy during the apartheid era? Trump went even further, accusing the South African government of committing 'genocide' against its white minority. But there is zero evidence of a genocide. Zero! What does exist is a slow, contested, and deeply uncomfortable effort to decolonize, undo historical injustice, and redistribute land, wealth, and opportunity. But the descendants of colonizers across the diaspora treat such developments as an existential threat. Source: The Washington Post / Getty Racial equality is treated like a zero-sum game and a prelude to white annihilation. They even traffic in hyperbole by calling racial equality 'genocide.' Land reform becomes 'persecution.' Statistical parity equals 'reverse discrimination.' Reckoning with the colonial past feels like attempted extermination. But this ain't about actual danger to white lives. It's about the fear of no longer being able to dominate. So, of course, the U.S., a white supremacist nation built on the bones of enslaved Africans and Indigenous genocide, is providing sanctuary to its colonial kin. Let's not split hairs and call this political maneuver what it really is—ideological rehoming of a people mourning the loss of racial hierarchy. Be clear—that planeload of disgruntled Afrikaners is not on US soil because they are in danger. They've been imported as reinforcements with rage because whiteness is. They've arrived at a moment in U.S. history when the president has engineered an aggressive full-scale white identity project. People of color in this country are being deported, snatched off streets, hidden away in secret prisons, displaced, and denied resources. We're also seeing government-sponsored fertility campaigns and abortion bans to push white women into birthing more white babies, regardless of the circumstances surrounding conception. These faux refugees are here to breed, vote red, promote white Jesus, and help fortify the architecture of a white ethno-state by any means necessary. Emma Lazarus didn't write The New Colossus for this. And if Lady Liberty could move, she'd be giving that plane full of apartheid leftovers a hard side-eye. Her torch was meant to light the way for the suffering, not to guide entitled colonizers back to the throne. But then again, the Statue of Liberty has always been more complicated than the poem at her pedestal. For generations, she welcomed European immigrants who were quickly consolidated into whiteness to reinforce its power. They came not as threats to the system, but as new blood for its preservation. Perhaps Lady Liberty wouldn't flinch at all. Maybe she'd just tighten her grip on the torch, glance at the tarmac, and whisper into the Afrikaner ears: 'Rraight on toime. Mehyk Amerrrica Greyt Again.' SEE ALSO: Trump Prioritizes White Afrikaners Over Black and Brown Migrants Trump's Brazen Takeover Of The Library Of Congress Is Another Direct Threat To Democracy SEE ALSO White Tears Incoming: America Welcomes Afrikaner 'Refugees' To Rescue Whiteness was originally published on Black America Web Featured Video CLOSE
Yahoo
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Contributor: The Statue of Liberty was a welcome sign. Now the U.S. vibe is 'stay out'
A little over a year ago, while trying to secure votes to pass a $1.2-trillion spending package, House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly told the fiscal conservative members of his party to vote for the bill in part because it banned flying Pride flags over U.S. embassies. Johnson's tactics were not a surprise. Before running for Congress, Johnson worked as an attorney for an anti-LGBTQ+ organization and on more than one occasion had argued in court against legalizing same-sex marriage. Still, it was rather telling that with a government shutdown deadline looming, Johnson was not able to rally his troops around the bill's merit but rather their dislike of rainbow flags. When President Biden signed the spending bill with the ban, he promised Americans that his administration would work around the clock to find a way to lift the ban. Five months later, Biden dropped out of the race, and today the moratorium on Pride flags is still in place. Not sure how much money the country is saving from the policy, but I do know the message that it sends to the rest of the world can't be worth it. The United Nations Refugee Agency believes there are more than 44 million refugees around the world. That's triple the number of people fleeing conflict or persecution from just a decade ago. The nations contributing the most refugees are Afghanistan and Syria, with 6.4 million each, followed by Venezuela (6.1 million) and Ukraine (6 million). In Afghanistan, death is the maximum sentence for being queer, while in Syria it's punishable by up to three years in prison. In Venezuela, being LGBTQ+ isn't a crime, but police still harass the community by raiding bars. In Ukraine, members of the LGBTQ+ community can serve in the military to fight in its war with Russia, but same-sex relationships are not legally recognized. That means if the love of your life died in battle, the government would not even have to notify you. They're just gone and it's up to the surviving partner to figure out if their loved one is buried and if so, where. The 19th-century American poet Emma Lazarus said she wrote the sonnet 'The New Colossus' to raise money for the construction of the Statue of Liberty because she believed the statue would serve as a welcome sign for new immigrants arriving in the New York harbor. 'A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles,' Lazarus wrote shortly after the Civil War in 1883. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants — mostly from Europe — made their way to the U.S. During that four-decade stretch, it wasn't just heterosexuals coming to our shores in search of a better life. And it's not only heterosexuals among the estimated 44 million refugees around the world. This is why until last year, the Pride flag flew over U.S. embassies during June, to let the desperate souls fleeing persecution know that they would find comfort in the arms of the Mother of Exiles. Now that is no longer true — not because of a strategic foreign policy decision but because some members of Congress — like Johnson — simply don't like queer people. Strange behavior from a political party that claims it doesn't like identity politics. Last month, Russian-born tennis player Daria Kasatkina announced she had defected from her home country and become an Australian citizen because she is openly queer. She said that as an out athlete, she 'didn't have much choice.' Last year, while Republicans were trying to de-gay the flagpoles of our embassies, the world also learned that Russia's Supreme Court declared the rainbow flag was forbidden in its country. If Ukraine falls, what rights its LGBTQ+ residents have will most likely fall with it. Kasatkina's decision to leave her home country made her a political refugee. Now she's in the land Down Under. The United States used to be the kind of country that welcomed the persecuted, but I guess she didn't see us as the best option. Hard to blame her. @LZGranderson If it's in the news right now, the L.A. Times' Opinion section covers it. Sign up for our weekly opinion newsletter. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
Los Angeles Times
05-04-2025
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
The Statue of Liberty was a welcome sign. Now the U.S. vibe is ‘stay out'
A little over a year ago, while trying to secure votes to pass a $1.2-trillion spending package, House Speaker Mike Johnson reportedly told the fiscal conservative members of his party to vote for the bill in part because it banned flying Pride flags over U.S. embassies. Johnson's tactics were not a surprise. Before running for Congress, Johnson worked as an attorney for an anti-LGBTQ+ organization and on more than one occasion had argued in court against legalizing same-sex marriage. Still, it was rather telling that with a government shutdown deadline looming, Johnson was not able to rally his troops around the bill's merit but rather their dislike of rainbow flags. When President Biden signed the spending bill with the ban, he promised Americans that his administration would work around the clock to find a way to lift the ban. Five months later, Biden dropped out of the race, and today the moratorium on Pride flags is still in place. Not sure how much money the country is saving from the policy, but I do know the message that it sends to the rest of the world can't be worth it. The United Nations Refugee Agency believes there are more than 44 million refugees around the world. That's triple the number of people fleeing conflict or persecution from just a decade ago. The nations contributing the most refugees are Afghanistan and Syria, with 6.4 million each, followed by Venezuela (6.1 million) and Ukraine (6 million). In Afghanistan, death is the maximum sentence for being queer, while in Syria it's punishable by up to three years in prison. In Venezuela, being LGBTQ+ isn't a crime, but police still harass the community by raiding bars. In Ukraine, members of the LGBTQ+ community can serve in the military to fight in its war with Russia, but same-sex relationships are not legally recognized. That means if the love of your life died in battle, the government would not even have to notify you. They're just gone and it's up to the surviving partner to figure out if their loved one is buried and if so, where. The 19th-century American poet Emma Lazarus said she wrote the sonnet 'The New Colossus' to raise money for the construction of the Statue of Liberty because she believed the statue would serve as a welcome sign for new immigrants arriving in the New York harbor. 'A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame is the imprisoned lightning, and her name Mother of Exiles,' Lazarus wrote shortly after the Civil War in 1883. Between 1880 and 1920, more than 20 million immigrants — mostly from Europe — made their way to the U.S. During that four-decade stretch, it wasn't just heterosexuals coming to our shores in search of a better life. And it's not only heterosexuals among the estimated 44 million refugees around the world. This is why until last year, the Pride flag flew over U.S. embassies during June, to let the desperate souls fleeing persecution know that they would find comfort in the arms of the Mother of Exiles. Now that is no longer true — not because of a strategic foreign policy decision but because some members of Congress — like Johnson — simply don't like queer people. Strange behavior from a political party that claims it doesn't like identity politics. Last month, Russian-born tennis player Daria Kasatkina announced she had defected from her home country and become an Australian citizen because she is openly queer. She said that as an out athlete, she 'didn't have much choice.' Last year, while Republicans were trying to de-gay the flagpoles of our embassies, the world also learned that Russia's Supreme Court declared the rainbow flag was forbidden in its country. If Ukraine falls, what rights its LGBTQ+ residents have will most likely fall with it. Kasatkina's decision to leave her home country made her a political refugee. Now she's in the land Down Under. The United States used to be the kind of country that welcomed the persecuted, but I guess she didn't see us as the best option. Hard to blame her. @LZGranderson
