*(Via NewsOne) – As Donald Trump sparks chaos by illegally deploying troops to Los Angeles, as immigration raids intensify, and as protesters are flooding the streets to demand dignity for migrants, far too many Black folks are sitting back on social media platforms singing a tired, familiar song. It’s being sung off-key with a false sense of safety and a dangerous misunderstanding of how white supremacist violence works. The chorus of retreat sounds something like this:
“Black folks need to stay home.”
“Let them handle it. This is their fight.”
“Most Latinos voted for this mess.”
“ICE don’t target us. We’ve got citizenship.”
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“I ain’t marching for nobody who won’t march for me.”
“Latinos don’t like us anyway.”
But what’s really being said underneath all that deflection is this: “If they come for Latinos, I’ll be quiet, as long as they leave me and mine alone.” But if you study history, I mean really study history, then you should already know that they never leave us alone. Not for long.
I get it. Black folks are tired. We’ve carried the weight of every major freedom movement in this country. We’ve bled. We’ve died. And we’ve been betrayed. We’ve shown up, over and over, only to be met with anti-blackness in return. But this ain’t about who likes us. It’s about who’s next!
What ICE is doing to migrants isn’t just an immigration issue. It’s white supremacist violence at its core. It’s separating families. It’s state violence. It’s stalking and snatch
ing people from homes and workplaces and making them disappear. It’s caging children. And for Black folks in America, this should all feel deeply familiar. The white supremacist machine of state violence doesn’t make distinctions based on citizenship status.
What ICE is doing to Latinx, West Indian, and African migrants is part of the same machinery that has policed and abused Black American bodies for centuries. We know what it means to have our families torn about by the state. We know what it means to be told that we don’t belong in the land we built. We know exactly what it’s like to be criminalized simply for existing, to be dehumanized by everyday language, media propaganda, policies, and bureaucrats in uniform.
Black folks know what it means to live under surveillance, to be chased, cuffed, caged, and disappeared. We are the descendants of people who had to run. From plantations. From the Fugitive Slave Act and slave catchers. From the KKK and lynch mobs. Even if you were born right here in America, with ancestors going all the way back to slave ships, that border violence still echoes through Black lives.
The ol’ “I got my papers, I’m safe” is a delusion. That little blue passport won’t stop you from getting profiled, harassed, arrested, or shot by a cop who sees your Black skin before your citizenship status or hears your command of English. Just ask the countless Black immigrants already deported, or the U.S.-born Black folks ICE illegally detained anyway.
Do you think that racist ICE agents caught up in immigration hysteria and round-up quotas will stop to check birth certificates?
Just ask Peter Sean Brown, who was detained in the Florida Keys when an ICE agent mistakenly detained him as an undocumented immigrant from Jamaica.
He spent weeks in custody and eventually sued. Or, ask Davino Watson, a native New Yorker who was imprisoned as a “deportable alien” for more than three years despite claiming citizenship and then denied compensation by the court system.
Get the rest of this commentary by Dr. Stacey Patton HERE at NewsOne.
Dr. Patton is an award-winning journalist and author of “Spare The Kids: Why Whupping Children Won’t Save Black America” and the forthcoming “Strung Up: The Lynching of Black Children In Jim Crow America.” Read her Substack HERE.
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