December 23, 2020
Page 9
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O PINION
Letter to
the Editor
Grant Murals
Decision
Stoking Anti-Immigrant Sentiment:
Lies should end with his presidency
J ill r iChardSon
As Donald Trump fi-
nally prepares to be evict-
ed from the White House,
it’s worth remembering
how he first launched his
campaign: by calling im-
migrants “murderers” and “rapists.”
This was outrageous then. And there’s
more evidence now that it was, of course,
patently false.
A new study finds that “undocumented
immigrants have considerably lower crime
rates than native-born citizens and legal
immigrants across a range of criminal of-
fenses, including violent, property, drug,
and traffic crimes.”
The study concludes that there’s “no
evidence that undocumented criminality
has become more prevalent in recent years
across any crime category.” Previous stud-
ies found no evidence to support Trump’s
claim, but now we have better data than
ever before.
Put another way, Trump was telling a
dangerous lie.
Sociologists Michael Light, Jingy-
ing He and Jason Robey used crime and
immigration data from Texas from 2012
to 2018 to find that “relative to undocu-
mented immigrants, U.S.-born citizens
are over 2 times more likely to be arrested
for violent crimes, 2.5 times more likely
to be arrested for drug crimes, and over 4
times more likely to be arrested for prop-
erty crimes.”
Unfounded accusations of criminality
are a longstanding tool of racism and other
forms of bigotry across a range of social
by
categories.
When anti-LGBTQ activist Anita Bry-
ant wanted to discriminate against gays
and lesbians in the 1970s, she claimed
we molest children. More recently, when
transphobic people wanted to ban trans
women from women’s bathrooms, they
falsely claimed that trans women would
rape cisgender women in bathrooms.
Consider how much anti-Black racists
justified their actions in the name of “pro-
tecting white women” from Black men.
In 1955, a white woman, Carolyn Bryant
Donham, wrongly claimed that a 14-year-
old Black boy, Emmett Till, grabbed her
and threatened her. White men lynched
Till in retaliation. More than half a century
later, Donham revealed that her accusa-
tions were false.
In 1989, the Central Park Five — five
Black and Latino boys between the ages
of 14 and 16 — were wrongly convicted
and imprisoned for raping a white woman.
They didn’t do it. In 2002, someone else
confessed and DNA evidence confirmed it.
(Trump, who took out full-page ads call-
ing for their execution then, never apolo-
gized.)
Racism and bigotry are about power
and status. Yet instead of openly admitting
that they want to punish other people sim-
ply for existing, most bigots find reasons
that sound plausible to the uninformed —
even if the reasons are completely untrue.
Bigotry is much easier to market if it can
masquerade as fighting crime.
It wasn’t just Trump himself. During
the Trump administration, officials like
the U.S. solicitor general argued before
the Supreme Court that undocumented im-
migrants are disproportionately likely to
commit crime. Data: None. Claims: False.
As Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan
famously said, “You are entitled to your
opinion. But you are not entitled to your
own facts.”
So when you hear a claim that a particu-
lar group of marginalized people are crim-
inals, question it. What is the evidence for
the claim? What is the evidence against
the claim? Why is the person making the
claim, and how will they benefit if people
believe them?
If someone cites research, who per-
formed the research, and who funded it?
Do the funders have a financial stake in
the research findings? Was it published in
a peer-reviewed journal? Is the data pub-
licly available for others to replicate the
findings?
In this case, the research debunking this
racist lie was government-funded, peer-re-
viewed in a major journal, and the data is
available to the public.
Hearing that particular group of people
poses a threat to your safety can be fright-
ening. But because such claims have been
used throughout history to spread bigotry
against marginalized groups, they should
always be fact-checked.
In this case, the evidence is clear.
Trump stoked anti-immigrant sentiment in
the name of fighting crime, and his claims
were baseless and false. The lie should end
with his presidency.
Jill Richardson is a columnist Other-
Words.org, the distributor of this opinion
piece.
Thank you for mentioning the Grant
Alumni Association’s fundraising efforts
to restore the Fletcher Memorial Murals
(Relics of Past Coming Down, Dec. 9 is-
sue). With permission, encouragement and
support from Grants’ former principal and
from the Portland Public School district the
Alumni Association undertook a success-
ful campaign to match a $100,000 dona-
tion from the Leo Lester Browne Fund in
less than six months. The donations came
from alumni and community members in
amounts ranging from $5 to $10,000. Once
the restoration was completed, an estimated
$30,000 to $100,000 was to be used to sup-
port Grant’s music education department.
The murals were paid for by Grant stu-
dents and were dedicated in 1932 to honor
William Fletcher, Grant’s first principal. Carl
Hoeckner, the artist who designed and paint-
ed the murals titled “Ideals of Education”,
was an advocate of social justice. He did not
intend for his work to be historically accu-
rate, but used symbolism to portray ideals. It
is ironic that his paintings showing students
striving toward knowledge and wisdom, Su-
san B. Anthony Ulysses S. Grant speaking of
empowering women and ending slavery, and
Native Americans coming together with pio-
neers in peace, would be thought to be repug-
nant. Even the title proclaims Ideals which
means excellence not yet achieved. Similar
depictions of Native Americans in war bon-
nets can be found in other district schools.
The Alumni Association is sensitive to
the concerns of Grant’s Native American
students and has tried to present several op-
tions to address these concerns. One of the
options is a masking treatment created by
Nina Olsson, art conservator. However, the
Association’s requests to meet with the Su-
perintendent and with each member of the
school board was met with silence from all
but three school board members.
The financial consequences to the tax-
payers are considerable. Not only is the
$200,000 gift of the restoration and the
money for the music education department
lost, but the cost of removal is estimated to
be $215,000 which does not include such
factors as an environmental study, scaf-
folding, lead paint containment, protective
facing, storage containers. The size of the
murals (20X25) makes finding a space for
their display difficult and at best they will be
stored somewhere and never seen again - a
form of destruction.
The Grant Alumni Association has al-
ways advocated for a decision-making pro-
cess that included all voices working togeth-
er to find common ground that would serve
as a model for other schools.
Bob Stayton, president of the U.S. Grant
High School Alumni Association