Page 5 - Florida Sentinel 10-1-21

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Same Ole Bull
ast year, before the 2020
Election, Democratic can- didates made a lot of promises to the Black community in an effort to secure our votes. In the wake of the murder of George Floyd, and the civil unrest that ensued, nearly every person run- ning for election on the Demo- cratic ticket, including President Joe Biden, pledged to fight for police reform, crimi- nal justice reform and legislation that would protect our voting rights.
In hopes that these candi- dates would keep their words, Blacks turned out to the polls in record numbers to assist De- mocrats in their bid for control of both chambers of congress
and the White House. It was an accomplishment that many of us thought would move the needle of progress forward for Blacks in this country. But, so far, that has not been the case.
It has been nearly 12 months since President Joe Biden ac- knowledged it was the Black vote that put him over the top. But in- stead of us celebrating the leg- islative changes that were promised it appears that, once again, we've been duped.
The increase in the federal minimum wage, discussed so often before the election, ap- pears to have been shelved. Ef- forts to protect voting rights have been stymied. Police re- form can't seem to catch any
traction and the criminal justice reform bills that were intro- duced all still sit in limbo.
Of course, they did manage to make Junteenth a federal hol- iday. But, while it was a nice ges- ture, I don't recall such a recognition being at the top of our "most-important-things- that-need-to-be-done-in-order- for-Black-people-to-survive-Am erica" list.
With mid-term elections coming around a year from now the Democrats have a short amount of time to honor their commitments while they still have the power to make things happen. If they don't, and Blacks realize that all of the promises made to them were just part of some 21st century, 40 acres and the mule, trickery, Democrats shouldn't be surprised if their most loyal demographic decides to leave them hanging at the vot- ing booths in equal fashion.
Reality On Ice is © by the Florida Sentinel Bul- letin Publishing Company. You can email Mr. Barr at: cbscribe2@-gmail.com.
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Haitians Are Not Cattle
mages of immigration border agents pushing, grab- bing, and “herding” of Haitian immigrants trying to enter the United States are seared in our mind’s eye.
Try as hard as we can, we try to recall similar images of the same treatment of Mexican immigrants.
At this point, we have not found any. Indeed, the inter- change between border agents on horseback and Haitians remind us of old west cowboys herding cattle.
Advocates for Haitians call these actions abusive and discriminatory. The treatment of Haitians was met by such a loud outcry against the United States’ actions until the United States government issued a statement that bor- der patrol agents will no longer use horses.
News estimates place the number of Haitians who showed up at the makeshift camp under a bridge between Coahuila and Del Rio, Texas, at 30,000.
Many of them had spent months in Central and South America and had heard that it was easy to get into America near Del Rio because of the shallow waters of the Rio Grande at this location. The devastating 2010 earthquake, political instability, the assassination of the Haitian pres- ident, economic depression and the recent 2021 earth- quake caused the number (40,000 to 60,000) of Haitians to swell in South and Central America as a route to politi- cal asylum in America.
Reportedly, a border official said that the number of immigrants seeking asylum jumped from 400 daily to nearly 14,000.
Allegedly, human rights advocates claim the United States immigration policy, Title 42, singles out immi- grants from Central America, Africa, and Haiti who are ‘disproportionately Black, Indigenous, and Latino for ex- pulsion in return airplane flights to Haiti.
Some of them manage to qualify for the Temporary Protected Status (TPS) program. Reportedly, under Pres- ident (Barack) Obama, at least 46,000 Haitian immi- grants migrated to the U. S. within a year of the 2010 earthquake.
Immediately after President (Donald) Trump took of- fice, he ended TPS for mostly brown people --- Haitians, El Salvadoreans, Hondurans, Nicaraguans, Sudanese, and people from Nepal. The attempt to minimize brown immi- grants is evident in the border agents’ use of horseback riders to control and minimize brown immigrants.
We support equal treatment of all immigrants today. Haitians and brown people deserve better.
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