Written by Aeryn McMurtry
On Dec. 22, 2018, President Donald Trump declared a government shutdown after Democrats opposed his proposal of $5 billion to build a wall on the Mexico/United States border. As of this publication, the government will have been shut down for 34 continuous days, keeping over 800,000 federal employees from working or being paid. At this point, families are suffering and those living paycheck to paycheck are facing some incredibly hard choices.
There has been an obsession with The Wall since Trump ran for President back in 2016, and not only has it been sighted multiple times for the racists implications behind “border control”, this pipe dream is now on the verge of killing American citizens.
The whole idea of the wall started as a way to get the racist people of the country to ban together under the guise of protect. But due to a video from Jan 19 of a group of white high school students wearing “Make America Great Again” hats yelling, “Build the wall!” at a peaceful Native American protester, we can now openly see that Trump’s wall isn’t about safety, it’s about racism.
As a country, the United States was founded on racist beliefs and practices, and most white people still benefit from it. We can cite multiple cases of police brutality against black people, the fact that Flint, Michigan, a predominantly black city, still doesn’t have clean water, the Dakota Access Pipeline, and others.
At this point, the wall isn’t about protection or keeping the country safe. It’s about a group of white people who are so obsessed with white pride and disenfranchising any people of color that they are willing to suffer as long as others suffer more.
White people need to hold other white people accountable, and that’s the truth of the whole thing. People that have the privilege of a voice need to use it to speak out. This isn’t about heritage or making the country “great”, it’s about protecting human lives.
