Thread by @ReginaldOhLaw

There's a long history of dehumanizing immigrants in the United States. Dehumanization has gone hand in hand with invidious discrimination and violence towards immigrants.

History is repeating itself with President Trump's systematic dehumanization of Latino immigrants.

Thread

Dehumanization is the treatment of a group of people as subhuman. By subhuman, people are likened to animals, vermin, and diseases.

When there is dehumanization, these terms aren't just used as metaphors. Rather, people are literally considered subhuman animals or creatures.

Dehumanization is a process which often leads to violence and subjugation of the dehumanized group, precisely because the group is viewed as subhuman.

Moral restrictions that apply to humans are lifted and thus it's easier to inflict harm against the dehumanized group.

Historically, dehumanization was an integral part of the enslavement of persons of African descent in America, the Holocaust, and other acts of genocide.

Dehumanization has also been a central part of the discrimination that immigrants have suffered throughout American history.

While dehumanization of immigrants of color is well documented, what's not as well known is the dehumanization of white immigrants, particularly with respect to the experiences of Irish and Italian immigrants.

During the mid-19th century, Irish immigrants were "depicted as subhuman. They were the carrier of disease. Thy were drawn as lazy, clannish, unclean drunken brawlers who wallowed in crime and bred like rats."

theroot.com/when-the-irish…

In an 1881 British political cartoon, an Irish American is depicted as a grotesque animal like creature dubbed the "Wild Beast."

picturinghistory.gc.cuny.edu/irish-immigran…

American political cartoonists depicted the "simian Irishman" as "Celtic ape-men with sloping foreheads and monstrous appearances."

history.com/news/when-amer…

Explanations for Irish violence in the United States focused on "Irish immigrant depravity that cast them as inherently violent, savage by nature."

There was a prevailing belief that the Irish were closer to apes than to other races.

history.com/news/when-amer…

Viewing the Irish as subhuman led to discrimination against the Irish in employment and to violence killings.

In Louisville Kentucky, in 1855, "Bloody Monday" took place when Know Nothing members rioted on election day and killed more than 20 Irish and German immigrants.

Italian immigrants were similarly dehumanized in the late 19th/early 20th century.

An editorial described Italian immigrants as "a pest without mitigation. Our own rattlesnakes are as good citizens as they."

pri.org/stories/2015-1…

It went on to conclude that lynching was the only way to stop Italian immigrants from committing crimes in New Orleans.

On March 14, 1891, eleven Italian immigrant men were killed by those seeking vengeance for a police officer that had been murdered.

Fast forward to today and Trump's dehumanization of Latino immigrants by depicting them as illegals, animals, and diseases.

He accused Democrats of wanting "illegal immigrants, no matter how bad they may be, to pour into and infest our country."

https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1009071403918864385

In reference to unauthorized Latino immigrants, Trump said during a White House meeting that: "we have people coming into the country...You wouldn't believe how bad these people are. These aren't people, these are animals...."

In 2015, he likened Latino immigrants entering the United States as "tremendous infectious disease...pouring across the border," and he infamously referred to unauthorized Latino immigrants as "bringing drugs, they're bringing crime, they're rapists."

theguardian.com/us-news/2015/j…

Unauthorized immigrants have also been dehumanized as "illegals." As illegals, the most punitive kinds of treatment are justified and rationalized.

The dehumanization of immigrants have gone hand in hand for Trump policies against immigrants and migrants.

Policies such as the separation of migrant children from parents, and support for a border wall to keep out "illegals."

There's a clear historical pattern of dehumanization of immigrants of all races.

And this thread hasn't even covered the dehumanization of Asian and Latino immigrants in the 19th & 20th century.

As a historically dehumanized group, immigrants deserve special protection against discriminatory laws as a protected class under 5th and 14th Amendment equal protection doctrine.

This is the topic for another thread.

End