The ideal that President Trump is simply enforcing immigration laws to re-establish law and order is regularly undercut not only by his own criminal activity and his nepotistic pardoning of convicted criminals close to him, but also by the president’s own deeply offensive and prejudicial comments about Black and African people.
Mr. Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries”, amplified an absurd claim that Haitian migrants were “eating the dogs” in Springfield, Ohio, and now, in his latest bigoted tantrum, he describes Somali people in the country as “garbage” and says he wants them “out of our country.” I hesitate to even repeat this, but you may as well as see what he said for yourself:
“They contribute nothing. The welfare is like 88% or something. They contribute nothing. I don’t want them in our country,” He said. “Their country is no good for a reason. Your country stinks and we don’t want them in our country.”
In this short, Sunday morning essay, I want to offer three analytical points about Trump’s actual words, share some of my own experience with the Somali community in Columbus, Ohio, and make a factual but snarky observation about the data on ICE arrests.
First, what’s going on with the heavy use of “our” in “our country”? Not out of the country—out of our country. This subtle possessive is easy to overlook but anyone familiar with the history of xenophobic rhetoric or the white supremacy of the Jim Crow South will be able to identify the unmistakable radicalized undertones of this our as a distinctly white our. Replace out of our country with out of our diners, out of our pools, and out of our schools, and you get the identical rhetorical structure and dog-whistle messaging that has flamed the fires of prejudice in the past while attempting to hide those flames behind a windscreen of cultural perseveration. Somali refugees in this country, including many who have naturalized, and now a whole generation of their children raised here as natural born citizens—they are part of the our in our country.
Second, the idea that Somalia is “no good for a reason” is the most close-to-correct line in the President’s statement. Somalia has struggled for years through political instability and civil war. Trump implies that the cause of this instability has something to do with the inherent quality of the Somali people themselves, a common trope of Western colonialism, the logic of which is roundly refuted by even the most cursory glance at the history of Somalia. Among the most significant “reason” why the country is “no good” comes from the fact that the United States helped prop up a dictator, Siad Barre, during the Cold War. As Elizabeth Schmidt, Professor Emeritus of history at Loyola University Maryland, writes:
“Much of this [news] coverage gives readers the impression that Somalia’s problems are self-generated and that the rest of the world has been trying to save it. In reality, there is a protracted history of outside interference in Somali affairs that has worsened its long crisis. From the Cold War to the “war on terror,” the United States has used Somalia as a battleground for its geopolitical schemes, with profoundly destructive consequences for Somalis.”
So, yes, there are reasons. Learning those reasons might help the president develop a more informed, nuanced, and productive framework for understanding why the Somali people are among the most displaced in the world and why it’s actually quite a good thing that the United States has helped to relocate them here.
Third, the president claims that Somali refugees contribute nothing. Not true, certainly not in my experience. Columbus, Ohio, where I grew up and where I returned to do my Ph.D., was a major relocation hub of Somali refugees. Far from being a drain on the city, the Somali community helped revitalize a major stretch of Cleveland Avenue, bringing vibrant food and culture to a part of the city damaged by economic disinvestment and white flight. Columbus is the home to the second-largest Somali community in the country after Minnesota. Trump’s remarks prompted local leaders this week to come out in support of the Somali community and to emphasize the countless contributions that they have made to the city.
I would be remiss not to mention with gratitude my many conversations with Abdi Roble, the incredible photographer I used to talk with when he worked at Midwest Photo Exchange across the street from my apartment when I was an undergraduate student. His work documenting the refugee journey that Somali migrants have made is incredibly compelling, as is his visual work on how Somali migrants have made Columbus their home.
Now we come to the data part of the discussion. As you know, I am perpetually—some might say obsessively—interested in how data connects to political discourse. So when Trump described Somalis in such derisive racially-laden terms, I decided to do a quick comparison based on new ICE arrest data. (Yes, yes—a totally logical and not weird thing to do at all.)
I ranked the total ICE arrests by nationality and compare where Somali fell in the order, and pulled out three comparison countries that typically fall outside the racial imaginary of Black or African countries. This is a crude comparison, of course, but I accept the risk to raise a simple question about why some nationalities get vilified as dangerous criminals and immigration violators while others seem to get a pass by virtue of their complete silence—and to ask what role race plays in this discourse. Simply put: the data show that during the current Trump administration, ICE has arrested more nationals of Russia, Canada, and UK than of Somalia.
So the question is, if Somali immigrants are allegedly all such massive violators and dangerous criminals, why are they so underrepresented? Conversely, why is Somalia, and Somali refugees, uniquely denigrated while predominantly white countries that are more prevalent in the data, avoid such offensive language?
To state the obvious, I am not suggesting that immigrants from Russia, Canada, and the U.K. should be treated with equally offensive language, nor that the rank in the list of total ICE arrests corresponds to moral or social worth. Many other factors drive arrests, including issues with our criminal legal system, total and relative populations, and so forth. This is illustrative and not some deep comparative analysis, but it does nevertheless connect to larger issues of how race and nationality are intertwined in this administration’s rhetorical coding of who is worthy of inclusion—who counts as the our in our country—and who gets described as actual refuse.
Let’s not forget that when it comes to who counts as “legitimate refugees,” the official policy of the United States right now is that only oppressed white South Africans deserve to be resettled—everyone else is apparently fraudulent, bogus, or “garbage.” This type of language is deeply concerning and can stoke very real violence.