The Herald (Jan. 30) published statements from Sens. Michael Bennet and Cory Gardner and Representative Scott Tipton concerning the executive order banning the entry of refugees into the United States.
The statements from Gardner and Tipton are deeply concerning. Only Bennet identifies the dark heart of the order: Using religious or ethnic preferences to shape the nation’s refugee program “betrays the values that have made our country strong.”
Gardner and Tipton miss this essential point and instead say that the order goes too far only in sweeping up valid green card and visa holders into its prohibitions. Racism is founded on a refusal to see people as individuals, and instead treat them as an undifferentiated mass who all share the same characteristics. I have heard this sort of thing many times in my years working in Indian country. Statements like “all Indians have inherent artistic abilities.” Statements like “all Indians have insight into the mysteries of the universe.”
Many of you reading this will have heard the same things, and all of it, every statement made that fails to see people of an ethnic group as being driven by individual thoughts, individual goals and individual desires, is racist.
That is the rotten, racist core of the executive order, because it assumes that all Muslims are terrorists bent on the destruction of the nation.
That Gardner and Tipton don’t see this and haven’t condemned it, but instead embrace the falsehood that the order is necessary to protect us from Muslim terror, is extremely troubling.
All of us must renew our commitment to the ideas and values that make this nation strong. We are a republic: Our elected representatives are expected to understand us, to speak for us and to act for us.
I want Gardner and Tipton to understand that the racism of the refugee order is abhorrent to us. They need to clearly state that the people they represent, us, reject the executive order on those grounds. If they can’t do that, then we need to find someone new who really will represent us.
Steven Boos
Durango
