Garbage. What kind of person would use that word to describe a human being? We all know the meaning of garbage: waste or spoiled food; anything considered worthless. We all know what to do with garbage: throw it away, sweep it up, put it in the trash to go to the dump. We know what happens if we don’t get it removed: it starts to stink, it rots, it draws flies that lay eggs and create maggots. When we encounter maggots, they make us instinctively want to vomit.
What kind of person would describe people as garbage? The same kind of person who might describe people as vermin, as disease carriers, as people who need to be gotten rid of, rounded up and put in jails or camps, separated from the rest of us. In the last century, people like Hitler and Mussolini used words like that and rounded up and deported or killed Jews, homosexuals, and Roma (often called gypsies, which to some is considered a slur). Stalin referred to his political enemies as enemies of the people, vermin, or trash before banishing them to Siberia or having them killed.
In 1994, some Tutsi leaders and media personalities called Houthis cockroaches, which encouraged Rwandans to rise up and murder their neighbors in a modern genocide. After all, how does one deal with cockroaches? Exterminate them. A clear example of words leading to hatred, violence, murder.
Though he says something almost every day that disturbs me, the following words President Trump spewed during a Cabinet Meeting press conference on Tuesday, Dec 2, almost made me gag: "Somalians should be out of here. They've destroyed our country….We're going to go the wrong way if we keep taking garbage into our country. Ilhan Omar is garbage. She's garbage. Her friends are garbage.” Congresswoman Omar was born in Somalia, and represents a district in Minnesota where many Somalian immigrants live, most of them now American citizens.
Have we abandoned our pride in being a country of immigrants? The country France gifted with the Statue of Liberty engraved with the words, “Give me your tired, your poor, Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, The wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Trump wants to keep the golden door and disavow the rest. This nation has not heard such racist words from political leaders in public discourse in decades, and not from a president, at least not since the 1800’s. And in a time when access to guns, even assault rifles, is practically unhindered and political violence so frequent as to be common. And only five years since his words inspired a mob to storm the U.S. Capitol, resulting in the injuries of 174 police officers.
But what can we do about it besides shake our heads in disbelief? We can go out of our way to tell our families, our friends, our neighbors, and yes, even mere acquaintances in the checkout line that we find this kind of speech disgusting and dangerous. Unfortunately, if necessary we must repeat these words, so no one in this country is ignorant of the racism spewed by the man who represents us to the world. Every American should be given the opportunity to condemn this hate speech or endorse it and be exposed as racist.
Paul Epstein is a retired teacher and musician living in Charleston
