Republican attacks on diversity are working

Even before Donald Trump started spreading lies about legal Haitian immigrants eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio, or heavily armed Venezuelan immigrants “taking over homes” in Aurora, Colorado, Republicans were obsessed with Demonizing diversity.

Republican-led legislatures in several states have passed laws that eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion programs and policies at public colleges and universities. Under pressure from conservative groups and right-wing trolls, big-name companies—including Ford, Harley-Davidson, and Lowe’s—that just a few years ago pledged to promote DEI initiatives in the workplace have scaled back or abandoned such efforts.

This very public denigration of diversity is having an impact. A recent CNN poll asked respondents whether they believe that “the increasing number of people of many different races, ethnic groups, and nationalities in the United States primarily threatens or primarily enriches American culture”?

A staggering 33 percent said diversity threatens American culture, up from 11 percent in 2019. More than four years after the killing of George Floyd by a white Minneapolis police officer sparked global protests against police violence and systemic racism, this is America’s true racist Reckoning – a situation that has left the nation more isolated, xenophobic and beholden to white supremacist ideas.

Forget dog whistles. Republican members of Congress post racist hate speech against legal immigrants on social media. On about legal Haitian immigrants.

“All of these thugs had better get their act together and leave our country before January 20th,” Higgins wrote. January 20th is Inauguration Day. He eventually deleted the post, but not before it was viewed more than 400,000 times and reposted more than 2,200 times. He didn’t apologize.

But there is no bigger megaphone than Trump, who denigrates immigrants with ugly language that comes from 1930s Germany. He often talks about how immigrants – meaning black and brown people from other countries – “poison the blood of our country” and calls them “vermin.”

“They come from the Congo. They come from Africa. They come from the Middle East. They come from all over the world – from Asia,” Trump said at a rally in Uniondale, New York. “What’s happening to our country is that we’re just destroying the fabric of life in our country.” We won’t take it any longer. You have to get rid of these people.”

Without evidence, and contrary to recent FBI statistics showing a significant decline in serious crime across the country, Trump claims that immigration is fueling a rise in crime. And he promises to carry out “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” by deporting millions of undocumented immigrants because a core tenet of the MAGA movement is to keep this nation as white as possible.

When Trump makes such statements, he receives cheers, applause and chants of “send her back.” But if such a thing were even possible, this nation would all but collapse without legal or undocumented immigrants.

In his remarkable 1965 satire Day of Absence, playwright Douglas Turner Ward imagines a small southern town that wakes one morning to find that all its black residents have disappeared without a trace. Of crying babies not cared for by black nannies – a white woman complains that her baby doesn’t know her and she’s “unfamiliar with jokes.” It” – to unmanned and silent factories, the city comes to a standstill. The confused white residents have become dysfunctional without the presence of the black people they have always despised.

America would become a great city without immigrants.

A certain text from Lin Manuel-Miranda’s musical “Hamilton” often resonates particularly strongly with audiences: “Immigrants, we get the job done.” That’s because it’s true. At no time in its history has this nation existed without the labor, creativity and ingenuity of those who came to this nation – whether by force or by choice.

Undocumented immigrants pay billions in taxes. They work in the stores we visit, the restaurants we eat at, and harvest the produce we buy at grocery stores. You can see them in parks looking after other people’s children. They are our friends, colleagues and neighbors. You are an irreplaceable part of this nation.

Diversity has enriched this nation. It is not a threat now or ever. Of course the immigration system needs to be improved, but not by deporting the millions of people who contribute to this country every day. The culture that Trump claims is disappearing, white Christian America, has always been a myth. The strength of this nation lives in the vibrancy of the people born in other lands.

And the distinctly American culture they created will be at risk if Trump—and not Vice President Kamala Harris, a proud daughter of immigrants—becomes our next president.

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Renée Graham is a Globe columnist. She can be reached at [email protected]. Follow her @reneeygraham.