As members of Indivisible Durango’s Immigration Committee, we wish to express our profound dismay and revulsion that our president would characterize people from Haiti and the continent of Africa – there are 54 independent African countries – as coming from “sh––hole countries.”
He is describing resilient Haitian people who are rebuilding their lives after a devastating earthquake. He is demeaning Haitian Americans who are prominent in music, sports, the arts, business, science and politics.
Did the president know that John Audubon was born in Haiti?
The continent of Africa has given the world numerous Nobel Prize winners, both white and black. Men of peace like Bishop Desmond Tutu and Nelson Mandela are from South Africa, and books by white Africans Nadine Gordimer and Allan Patton have helped in the slow but, ultimately, successful process of dismantling apartheid.
To characterize a country or continent as being undesirable is a glib way of asserting one’s superiority as an American. We are not better than people from other countries, and immigrants from countries around the globe have enriched our national character, our culinary arts, businesses, sports, the arts, education and sciences.
We are a nation of immigrants, all but indigenous people. It is time to acknowledge our common roots and to work for more inclusion. Immigration to America is a 400-year old tradition, and to acknowledge its key role in building America is to take the long view of history and not be stuck in the fleeting upheavals of our current political system.
Connie Jacobs, Kathy Barrett, Margaret Cozine, Nancy Fisher, DeeDee Haro, Celia Villa-Guillen, James Watt
Durango
