language, accent, and the politics of erasure
man. this ruling sits heavy with me. as a teenager, i got into decolonizing academia, and what i learned there echoes right now. the supreme court just gave ICE (immigration and customs enforcement) the power to treat an accent, or speaking spanish, like suspicion.
speak english doc! we aint scientists
what does that mean in plain words? it means if you're speaking spanish at work, or you have an accent when you order food, immigration officers can use that as one of their excuses to stop you, question you, or detain you. before, there was a block in place — a lower court said no, that's profiling, you can't do that. now, the supreme court just removed that block.but this isn't really about “law enforcement.” it's about erasure
i remember back in 2014, 2015 and 2016, people were warning about what donald trump would do if he got the chance and support. a lot of us skeptics saw the signs. now, this is the proof. policies like this don't come from nowhere — they grow out of years of rhetoric, out of the idea that brown bodies don't belong here at all.
for the trump supporters, the response is always the same: “well, we wouldn't have an issue if they came here legally.” but that feels unfair, almost cruel. how are we supposed to accept that, if america itself was built on stolen land and slavery? those were not legal, moral, or ethical beginnings. the ancestors of the very people who established this country didn't “come here legally” either.
so what does it mean when we're forced to play by rules that were written after the theft, after the violence, after the erasure? we're told to obey laws made by people whose own history broke every law of humanity. and in that cycle, the question lingers: are we losing our humanity by pretending this is normal?
and it's not just the u.s. either. in mexico, indigenous roots are erased, pushed aside, rewritten. in the u.s., brownness is told to “go back to mexico.” different places, same message: disappear.
when i look at things like the bear gulch fire, or the blind support so many americans give to harmful systems, i cant help but think of nazi germany. even then, people fell for propaganda, looked the other way, or convinced themselves it was necessary. we see echoes of that today.
so to make it clear: this isn't about safety. it's about removing presence. about shrinking who gets to live freely, speak freely, exist freely. we need to call it what it is: minority erasure. and if we stay silent, silence becomes complicity.
response to the trump dick riders
i know the lines by heart.but what i'm fighting for is due process — the guarantee that people deserve a fair hearing before their lives are uprooted. and that is disappearing under the trump administration. are we really going to forget the children lost during the “zero tolerance” policy? the infants, the toddlers, the kids torn from their mothers' arms at the border? where is the compassion in that?
and let's be real: this isn't just about paperwork or “following the rules.” or making america safer. it's about erasure. because what do you call it when people are deported to places like south sudan — countries they've never even lived in, with no safety net, no community, no future? that isn't law and order. that's exile. that's elimination.
history has shown us where this slope leads. in nazi germany, it started with laws about who was 'suspicious' and ended in genocide. in the united states, japanese american families — even citizens — were thrown into internment camps during wwii simply because of their ancestry and language. and in the 1950s, operation wetback deported not just immigrants but mexican americans who were citizens. every time, the government said it was about safety or law. every time, it was really about erasure.
i think trump supporters just want a white america. they twist themselves through loops and hoops to hide that face, and cover it with the phrase 'keep america safe.' safety is the mask, but the real goal is exclusion.
the irony is, if trump were brown and targeted them the way he targets us, they would never stand for it. it would be an end all be all. but because he's white and he's directing the cruelty outward, they call it patriotism.
no matter how you twist it, legal isn't the same as moral. we keep hiding behind laws as if they prove righteousness, when really they just expose how far we've drifted from humanity
history repeats itself over and over again
it never starts with camps, it starts with laws. with accents marked as “suspicious,” with people told they don't belong.nazi germany
it began with labeling accents, language, and heritage as undesirable. before the camps, there was suspicion, paperwork, and erasure.japanese interment in the u.s
entire families — even american citizens — were rounded up during wwii just because of ancestry and language. no due process, only fear.jim crow laws
they were legal, but they were never moral. “separate but equal” was just law dressed up to hide exclusion.operation wetback (1950's)
mass deportations of mexican immigrants — and even u.s. citizens of mexican descent — under the guise of immigration enforcement. every time, it's framed as law and order. every time, it's about erasure. and now, with ICE using accents and language as suspicion, we're watching the same script unfold again.