Posted: Thu 30 Apr 2009 17:09 Post subject: Racists Using Swine Flu As Excuse to Promote Hate
Quote:
Racists Using Swine Flu As Excuse to Promote Hate
by Shani Saxon-Parrish | 04.29.2009 | 5:40pm
The frenzy over swine flu has spurred another potentially deadly outbreak: racist hate-mongering against Mexicans and Mexican-American immigrants. Conservative journalists and scared American citizens are looking for someone, anything to blame for this still small global outbreak. With no proof to support his beliefs, California radio jock Michael Savage said, "Make no mistake about it: Illegal aliens are the carriers of the new strain of human-swine avian flu from Mexico." He also added that it would be a good idea to avoid contact with illegal immigrants, insisting that people who eat out are "morons who eat in restaurants with illegals all over the kitchen." Fox News columnist Michelle Malkin also weighed in with frightening commentary: "I've blogged for years about the spread of contagious diseases from around the world into the U.S. as a result of uncontrolled immigration."
Rampant misinformation has even motivated the ALIPAC, or Americans For Legal Immigration, to ask Congress to shut down the U.S.-Mexico border in order to contain the swine flu. And talk show host Neal Boortz has gone so far as to suggest Islamic terrorists created the deadly flu strain and introduced it to Mexicans as a sneaky way to spread it to the U.S. "What better way to sneak a virus into this country than to give it to Mexicans....then spread a rumor that there are construction jobs here, and there they come," Boortz stated.
Perhaps the scariest thing is that these ignorant people with large platforms aren’t feeling any repercussions from their comments. Why are certain public figures allowed to be so openly racist and hateful? Is it because many people find an odd comfort in placing the blame on a group they consider to be outsiders? Members of the Latino community are marginalized enough as it is, and this level of hate-talk is only making things worse. "It's a virus. Any of us can get it,” says Lalo Rios, a radio DJ in Reno, Nevada. “Closing the borders is not going to help. Pointing the finger at certain groups isn't going to help anything either.”
It's quite possible that illegals from Mexico who travel back and forth between the two countries may me one source of the flu's spread in the U.S.
The first(?) reported case in my area is a child who just back from Mexico where he visited his family. He may or may not be illegal.
I live on the border, in Texas. I'm not sure about that. Most of the cases in the U.S. stem from the students in Queens who went to Cancun for spring break.
There are (as of yet) no reported cases of swine flu on the border, and the few that are were in California (a Marine contracted it...I suspect he was in Tijuana but that's probably not fair ). There are no reported cases in Juarez, a large Mexican city right across the border from El Paso. Since illegals traffic here on the regular, if they were bringing it over I think the outbreak here would be ridiculous. But that not happened. We'll see.
Personally I am more fearful about all of the business people who travel to Mexico City who live here. I've kept my daughter home from school this week. Probably an overreaction, but who needs some kid whose Dad works in M.C. sneezing all over people in the classroom?
The article did say that they were EP residents but who knows what that means. Around here that could mean U.S. citizens commuting to Mexico, Mexican nationals living in the U.S., people who go back and forth...oh well. Not much to do except stay home and keep your hands clean.
That is a fascinating story. It reminds me of the famous Philadelphia yellow fever epidemic of 1793. Here is an article I wrote about it for Interracial Voice Magazine several years ago.
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The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793
In 1780, free Americans of part-African descent in Newport, Boston, New York, and Philadelphia had very nearly assimilated into the mainstream. Exogamy (intermarriage) and permeability (fair-complexioned children born into African-American households re-labeling themselves White after high school) were at a peak.
Then, social leaders of every shade began to advocate segregation. In 1787 New Yorker Prince Hall formed the first Masonic Lodge restricted to Blacks. That same year, according to historian Elizabeth Rauh Bethel, he "initiated a petition to the city [Boston] for separate schools for African-American children."
On April 12, 1787, Black ministers Absalom Jones and Richard Allen of Philadelphia were treated badly by White churchgoers at their Methodist Episcopal Church. The two men resigned and formed their own congregations, the first AME congregations in America. For the next six years, they prayed and preached in rented or borrowed locations. They collected for building funds, but the money came in so slowly that in 1793 they seemed no nearer their goal than ever.
The worst yellow fever epidemic in U.S. history struck Philadelphia that summer. Yellow fever (also known as "black vomit") is a virus similar to Ebola. It spreads quickly and causes death from internal bleeding. It destroys the liver, so the patient turns yellow with jaundice just before dying.
Many Philadelphia residents, including President Washington (with Martha) and Secretary of State Jefferson (with Sally), fled Philadelphia -- the nation's temporary capital -- when the epidemic of 1793 broke out. Some terrified people abandoned the sick in their beds. Others threw them into the streets.
Matthew Carey, who later became the official historian of the epidemic, preached a theory that the plague was Black germ warfare against Whites. He said that yellow fever had been discovered and brought in by brown revolutionaries from the rebellion in Sainte Domingue (now Haiti), which had begun two years earlier. He claimed that Blacks of the world wanted to overthrow the U.S.
White Philadelphians refused to swallow such idiocy. To the contrary, Philadelphia's mayor asked the town's Black community leaders for help. At that time, Americans of all complexions thought that folks of strongly African descent were resistant to this plague (they are not -- yellow fever is quite different from malaria).
The Black community of Philadelphia responded with heroism. Its members entered White homes to care for the sick and dying while healthy White people left town for the duration. Soon, you could see in every home, by every occupied sickbed, a Black figure keeping silent vigil by candlelight, nose and mouth covered with vinegar-soaked gauze to keep out contagion. No one knew that the disease actually spreads by mosquitoes, not by infected air.
Cooler weather eventually ended the epidemic after it killed 5,000 Philadelphians of every complexion. Despite Matthew Carey's pamphlet (shown) continuing to shriek that it had all been a Black plot, the White community of Philadelphia was so grateful that it took up a collection and helped build something that the African-Americans had wanted for years but had been unable to afford -- the first two Black owned and operated churches in the nation. Those churches, the African Methodist Episcopal Church of St. Thomas, and the Mother Bethel AME Church, still have active congregations today. For details of this tale, see Kenneth R. Foster, Mary F. Jenkins, and Anna Coxe Toogood, "The Philadelphia Yellow Fever Epidemic of 1793," Scientific American August (1998): 88-93.
Pennsylvania newspapers hailed this outcome in 1794. They said that it exemplified interracial harmony. Henceforth, Black folks and White folks could each have their own churches, neighborhoods, schools, and so forth. This would avoid their getting on each other's nerves. To make it work, the only thing people had to do was to remain tolerant despite segregation -- to not let ostracism slide downhill to alienation.
Fat chance. The very next generation of Philadelphians torched the Black neighborhoods in order to uproot the sub-humans infesting their city. According to historian Leon F. Litwack in North of Slavery: the Negro in the Free States, 1790-1860 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1961) pages 100-101:
Between 1832 and 1849, Philadelphia mobs set off five major anti-Negro riots. In July, 1834, a white mob stormed though the Negro section, clubbed and stoned its victims, destroyed homes, churches, and meeting halls, forced hundreds to leave the city, and left many others homeless.
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). There are no reported cases in Juarez, a large Mexican city right across the border from El Paso. Since illegals traffic here on the regular, if they were bringing it over I think the outbreak here would be ridiculous. But that not happened. We'll see.