The Right Thing To Do

By Judith Gayle | Political Waves

You’ve got to hand it to this president, he sure knows how to give the white folks the vapors. His very pigmentation makes old Dixiecrats and lifetime GOP’ers — the kind who nod their heads in rhythm with Pat Buchanan and Rush Limbaughs’ notions of the “white mans burden” — cranky and itchy to oil their guns, which in turn prompts their wives to clutch their pearls in dismay.

And now their fears that Obama might inappropriately elevate the African-American population at the expense of the Caucasian have been realized by his most recent move, opening an even bigger and more frightening can of worms. He’s elevated — using the ‘prosecutorial discretion” of Homeland Security — the future of close to a million of America’s (mostly brown) children, brought here illegally.

He has changed policy to fold the youngest undocumented aliens into a system of temporary legitimacy that might eventually earn them, should Congressional reform occur in the near future, citizenship.

The president has ended the mandatory deportation of kids, sixteen and under, who may not even remember their birth country, let alone its language. There is no question that these are American kids, even as their bi-lingual culture defines them as first-generation immigrants. They are the product of our struggling school systems and overcrowded barrios, kids unable to get work or driving permits because they can provide no US birth certificate.

These youngsters live in the crosshairs of ICE — the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement — which has been aggressively rounding up illegal’s since the turn of the century, [ruthlessly detaining] and deporting under Bush, then Obama, although both men have history of a sympathetic ear to the Latino population. Obama’s pledge to help them with reforms comes late in the game, but — like his acceptance of gay marriage — it will be a game changer.

Wanna talk game changers? The Pentagon has declared June gay-pride month. (Wait! Did you just hear a string of pearls cascade to the floor somewhere out there?) But I digress. To no ones surprise, the Pubs met this announcement with a collective bellow of outrage over apparent “amnesty” — supposing this to be a plot by the Socialist president to water down the gene pool while siphoning off the Latino vote — and concern over the legality of Obama’s decision (and isn’t it interesting that Bush the Lesser acted independently of Congress again and again, with nary an accusation of overreach, while the legality of everything Obama produces is suspect? He’s black, you know.)

The President reiterated that amnesty is not in the equation, and that not only does this policy shift resources to allow ICE to concentrate on real law breakers, but “… it’s the right thing to do.” Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security, echoed that comment as well, which seems to define the heart of this matter. This is about ethical treatment of young people growing up within our system. In my opinion, all of politics is a matter of ethics, much of which has been deliberately ignored in the last thirty or more years as the nation’s leadership has shifted away from concerns of commonwealth.

This is a loaded topic, of course. I suspect that there are those reading this who think it unfair to allow these children to escape their parents’ punishment; who think there is precedent being established to allow a blanket amnesty, like that given to 2.7 million illegal aliens by none other than Saint Ronnie the Reagan back in 1987. Some, like the reader who complained about my concerns regarding Arizona’s harsh immigration response a few years back, may have survived the rigors of US immigration law in order to become a citizen and consider this unfair advantage, yet no blanket citizenship looms for these kids. This is a modest step forward for immigration reform, and a genuine humanitarian moment for the families that live in the shadows of la migra.

Sure that this is a ploy to capture the Hispanic vote, the right is in an untenable spot, unable to go after the Prez with gusto but unwilling to offer a similar program to the Hispanic community. I haven’t heard what grumpy old John McCain has to say about this new policy, but I can guess, and I can’t help by laugh when I hear the paranoid right demand that we must secure our sieve-like border before we tackle issues of immigration. The border IS a sieve, but these days it’s a pipeline for guns, money and drugs, not warm bodies. The American economy is no longer so heady a lure to non-citizens seeking prosperity. In fact, according to Napolitano, illegal movement across the border hasn’t been this low since 1971. Statistics like that should throw a spotlight on the rhetoric coming from Arizona’s vigilantes, trumpeted by that ‘fair and balanced’ cable network as a continuing national emergency, but it’s not what listeners on the right want to hear.

Still, I suspect that it’s not only the undocumented that feel some relief today, I’d suppose that churches, teachers and neighborhood organizations across the nation that have attempted to support youngsters in need over the years must feel elated at the prospect of their decriminalization. Others of us can only hope that this is a precursor to immigration reform and full empowerment of the Dream Act. In a country defined by cultural diversity, this is not only the right thing to do, it’s the necessary thing, the compassionate thing. The ethical thing.

I can’t tell you how happy it makes me to hear the nation discuss matters of ethics. We’ve spent more than two decades being stirred in a pot of pseudo-religious political posturing, culminating in the glaring ethical challenges we’ve suffered since 9-11 from fear of the unknown “other,” of those not born into white privilege and/or money. The coffee-colored complexion of this current president has brought out all the unresolved bias of a nation born to accommodate slavery, our complex racism unsolved and unspoken but everywhere we look. It’s only ethical behavior and the gentle whisper of our Higher Angels that can open the lid on this problem — to ALL of our problems — in order to let in light and air.

Renowned for examining the words we use, as well as the way we think about one another, I’m really interested in reading linguist George Lakoff’s new book called THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK: The Essential Guide to Thinking and Talking Democratic. In a recent article entitled, Why the Conservative Worldview Exalts Selfishness, Lakoff tells us about the differences in our “moral” outlook and supposes that the two opposing political philosophies each heed a different authority.

This is best illustrated, as our dear friend be offered awhile back, if we identify the Pubs with Saturn and the Dems with Jupiter: this is contraction versus expansion, polar opposites. For instance, if we are taught to value strict adherence to law, then the children of illegal immigrants deserve no special consideration, and while those who cannot see the suffering humanity in this equation recognize no implications of racism in their viewpoint, those of us who think of it differently see “us/them” at the very crux of their behavior. Leave skin color and culture out of it; it’s still a matter of separation, a kind of xenophobic terror of “the other.”

Racism is not what our nation wants to be about, nor where it wants to go. In fact, the majority of the nation doesn’t want this conversation, doesn’t want to fight over little brown kids staying in the only country they know. Some of us can rightly identify racism as a false face of superiority and aggression that the world can no longer afford, an unyielding separation that keeps us from acting as a global community, working with and for one another instead of remaining in competition for power and resources. And isn’t that the crux of our challenge now?

As I sit here listening to the arguments by Republican pundits, my stomach gets jumpy: it’s always been a dependable lie detector. Now CNN’s John King is asking, “Did the president do the right thing?” And the righty pundits are talking about how irresponsible Obama is, how he’s overstepped, done the office of the presidency long-term disservice, making deals just for political power. (He’s black, you know. Hold on. OK, I’m back. I just turned off the television. That’s enough bullshit for one day.)

Did he do the right thing? Are they freakin’ kidding? Sometimes doing “what’s right” isn’t the most convenient thing to do, sometimes what’s right is painful or even dangerous. And when we discover ourselves in a process of evolution, we must be willing to let go of what was in order to embrace what is, what impresses our hearts with immediacy. Waiting around to see what will happen next carries no water and chops no wood. That’s the impasse of our political situation today, and, as Obama is want to say, “We know we have more to do.”

Today our President did what was right. Let the babbling fools carry on about what that means. Tonight millions of people will sleep more soundly, face a tomorrow without ducking their head or hiding their face. Tonight an American president can be satisfied that he was more help than hindrance to the public he serves, and I hope he dreams the dreams of the just. As always, we have more to do, but today we did good. And so it is.