history of what is going on
"The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries."
So said African Union head Nhosazana Dlamini-Zuma as she addressed the group's members during this week's summit in Ethiopia. Dlamini-Zuma was speaking about President Donald Trump's controversial executive order suspending the U.S. refugee program for at least 120 days and banning travel from seven majority Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — for at least 90 days.
As the United States once again grapples with contentious issues at the intersection of immigration and racial justice, her words underscored how the same white supremacy that's long troubled the nation's domestic affairs has also been expressed in its immigration policy.
A hundred years ago this month, for instance, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917, effectively banning Asian, Mexican and Mediterranean people from entering the United States.
At the same time U.S. policy was restricting immigration by people of color, it was denying full citizenship rights to native-born people of African descent whose ancestors had been forced into bondage. It robbed them of their voting rights, deprived them of labor rights, and forced them into segregated facilities.
Then came the civil rights movement.
How the civil rights movement opened the door to immigrants of color
"The very country to which many of our people were taken as slaves during the transatlantic slave trade has now decided to ban refugees from some of our countries."
So said African Union head Nhosazana Dlamini-Zuma as she addressed the group's members during this week's summit in Ethiopia. Dlamini-Zuma was speaking about President Donald Trump's controversial executive order suspending the U.S. refugee program for at least 120 days and banning travel from seven majority Muslim countries — Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan, Syria and Yemen — for at least 90 days.
As the United States once again grapples with contentious issues at the intersection of immigration and racial justice, her words underscored how the same white supremacy that's long troubled the nation's domestic affairs has also been expressed in its immigration policy.
A hundred years ago this month, for instance, Congress passed the Immigration Act of 1917, effectively banning Asian, Mexican and Mediterranean people from entering the United States.
At the same time U.S. policy was restricting immigration by people of color, it was denying full citizenship rights to native-born people of African descent whose ancestors had been forced into bondage. It robbed them of their voting rights, deprived them of labor rights, and forced them into segregated facilities.
Then came the civil rights movement.
How the civil rights movement opened the door to immigrants of color
