On Cats, Dogs, Lies, and Hate
I watched a man who believes he should be President again, and who should've never been President in the first place, angrily shout that Haitian immigrants are eating people's pets in Ohio and that a town in Colorado is overrun and controlled by "terrorist gangs" during a presidential debate last night.
These are, of course, xenophobic and racist dog whistles steeped in fear-mongering and stereotypes, but the danger these kinds of comments pose to Black and Brown folx, to immigrants, cannot be stressed enough.
What that caricature of a man did last night is a white supremacist control tactic as old as time that has harmed generations of melanated folx and immigrants in Western society. The problem is that here we are, in the year of someone's lord, 2024, watching a nationally televised event that received international coverage with a man of pallor whose only skill in life is generating fear to gain power and who has millions of followers ready to eat it up like it's the gospel who truly believe immigrants and melanated folx are a clear and present danger to their families, communities, and evidently, pets when they are the least likely sections of the citizenry to commit crimes and less likely to commit violent crimes.
But who needs facts when you can vilify melanated folx? Your grandpappy did it, and your pappy did it, so why not you too?
These hateful "fables" don't pass the sniff test.
But nothing has to pass the sniff test when your race has been collectively raised and bred for generations to believe that anyone who has melanin in their skin is a threat to "white democracy."
