when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.

also it has been quite convenient explanation for adopting systems such as Flock and allowing all kinds of para-police actions which seems very similar to what happened in germany circla 1930-1934

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jacquesm 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

This is my touchstone for evaluating any society: how does it deal with people without power?

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tclancy 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes

Thus the rebranding of humans as “illegals”.

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jandrese 5 hours ago | parent | next [-]

Especially when they arbitrarily change the rules so people who did everything by the book are now “illegals”. Especially when they “lose” paperwork somewhere inside of an enormous overworked and hostile bureaucracy.

	▲	motbus3 an hour ago \| parent [-]
		It seems that changing rules retroactively is on the run for all capitalist world

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conductr 5 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

That term has been in use for at least the half century I’ve been alive. It’s a common word almost every where in the US, shows up in daily conversations, but it’s been deemed not politically correct. That’s why you maybe never heard it in media or from a politician in the past. This presidency is all about breaking political correctness though and it’s on brand. This is why his devotees love him. Simple things like saying the words we were told we couldn’t say really resonates with some people. There’s unfortunately still a lot of deep seated racism in the US. Will take a thousand more years to really get rid of it. Political correctness is a way to force accelerated the process, it backfires when you push it too hard too fast. You’re trying to change culture faster than humans can be expected to change (pesky long lifespans and all). It doesn’t work well and cause a pressure cooker situation. Trump is the steam venting of years of political correctness and rapid progressive movement.

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mullingitover 4 hours ago | parent | next [-]

> Simple things like saying the words we were told we couldn’t say really resonates with some people.

Nobody said you couldn't say them, it was that open bigotry is something everyone associates with being a person of low class. When it's used by the upper classes it's as a divide and conquer tactic to keep the lower classes from focusing on the group that's actually exploiting them.

The normalizing of open bigotry is a kind of 'death of despair' for US culture: it indicates that, en masse, people have given up on elevating their class in society and being better people, and have decided to just wallow in it. Blaming the 'other' isn't anything new, it's the basic lazy tribal default and it's the 'easy' button for a culture that simply gives up.

	▲	throwaway85825 2 hours ago \| parent [-]
		>elevating their class The middle class is disappearing. They're being impoverished.

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rayiner 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

Trump is not about “racism.” He won more racial minorities in 2024 than any republican president in modern history. Trump is about Americanism versus third-worldism. Among immigrants themselves—half of whom voted for Trump in 2024–it’s about whether immigrants should Anglicize and dissolve into the American polity, or whether they should bring their home cultures with them and retain their separate ethnocultural identity.

Fundamentally, it’s a disagreement over what makes countries the way they are. Does a Bangladeshi start thinking and acting like an American the minute they set foot within borders where the 1st, 2nd, etc., amendments apply? Or is culture deeper than the words on paper.

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pixl97 4 hours ago | parent [-]

>Trump is not about “racism.” He won more racial minorities

"Of course I'm not racist, I have black friends"

...

I have a family member that is a naturalized citizen. They were in the country illegally for 2 decades before that, and they are the first one to yell "kick those lazy illegals out". So just because someone is the same race/culture as you doesn't mean they aren't racist against that culture.

What's really fucking stupid about this guy is the people he loves to vote for are the ones that would strip his rights and kick him out of the country in a heartbeat for.

Remember when America was a melting pot and not a bunch of redhats goose stepping in line?

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motbus3 an hour ago | parent | next [-]

I honestly think he is not racist. He does not even consider no billionaires as people.

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rayiner 4 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

> Of course I'm not racist, I have black friends

It’s weird that you think my point is about the superficial optics of having immigrants in Trump’s coalition, rather than about the motivations of the immigrant voters themselves.

> So just because someone is the same race/culture as you doesn't mean they aren't racist against that culture

You can’t be “racist” against a culture. Racism is wrong because race is superficial—how much sunscreen someone does or does not need is as irrelevant as hair color or eye color. But culture isn’t superficial. Culture has major impacts on the types of societies people create.

Your family member’s viewpoint is totally rational, and frankly, more rational than the opposite. If you come from a country that’s dysfunctional and unsuccessful, why wouldn’t you dislike that place’s culture? It’s like someone who left some failing dinosaur company to go to a high performance startup saying that the culture at the new company is better.

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mullingitover 2 hours ago | parent [-]

> You can’t be “racist” against a culture.

Counterpoint: yes you can[1] and it's basically what you're advocating.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_racism

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rayiner an hour ago | parent | next [-]

Your article clearly describes that as a concept that as been put forward for debate but hasn’t been generally accepted. And it shouldn’t be accepted. It’s just an attempt to use people’s rightful aversion to prejudice based on skin color to Trojan Horse cultural relativism through the gate. Cultural relativism is not morally required. People’s attitudes, beliefs, customs, habits, and ways of looking at the world substantively impact the societies people create. And we can judge cultures on that basis. In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.

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mullingitover 40 minutes ago | parent [-]

> In the Star Trek future, people of all ethnicities think and act like Anglo-Americans, not like Bangladeshis.

That's a weird way to cap off an endorsement of cultural racism? A series of fictional stories about the future, by and for Americans, tells a story that Americans would want to hear: QED, monolithic American culture is obviously the future. Let's get this paper submitted for peer review.

	▲	rayiner 14 minutes ago \| parent [-]
		That term isn’t an accepted thing, as your own article points out. Your idea is also itself racist by treating race and culture as linked. I guess that in your version of Star Trek the Desi characters would be showing up hours late to dinner. You’d have bridge scenes where face saving communications and excessive deference to seniority impedes information flow and gets everyone killed. I think the actual Star Trek paints a much more optimistic and hopeful vision of a post-racial society where everyone in the Federation adopts Anglo-American culture and values.

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crises-luff-6b 2 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

[dead]

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redeeman 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

oh please, everyone knows that its referring to their immigration status or legality of stay in country.

you surely must realize that any rational person just shrugs off listening to what else you might say when you start with such ridiculous interpretations

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locknitpicker 9 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

> when you treat immigrants like they were not people with lifes, you are just one step away from treating poor people as they were not people and then too treat all common people as they were not people.

"The way that a society treats its prisoners is one of the sharpest reflections of its character." - Nelson Mandela

http://www.mandela.gov.za/mandela_speeches/1998/980625_dcshr...

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motbus3 8 hours ago | parent [-]

I did not know this but true. I would point out that when you are talking about criminals there is still a layer of judgment from society given the crimes. When talking about legal immigrants and refugees there is even less space.

	▲	wood_spirit 7 hours ago \| parent [-]
		The US is an outliner on prison terms and sizes etc. Under the surface it is hard to tell if the public lead the prisons or if the big prison business shapes public opinion but from the outside it seems crazy. Different societies are at different places on the prison is for punishment to prison is for rehabilitation spectrum, and their reoffending rates reflect that.

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59percentmore 6 hours ago | parent | prev | next [-]

[flagged]

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rayiner 5 hours ago | parent | prev [-]

You treat them like they are people without personal agency.

Temporary worker programs are a deal offered on open terms: people can come to work, but they have to leave afterward. The laws are plastered with the word “temporary.” People take advantage of the deal knowing the terms and there is nothing wrong holding people to the deal.

	▲	mattnewton 4 hours ago \| parent [-]
		This is not that, these are people seeking to immigrate to the United States legally getting jerked around instead of a process that approves or denies them on a set timeline.