Kicking Out the Mexicans

BACK IN THE DAY, as we like to say, Mexican-Americans had an even tougher go of it than they do now, if that's possible. Exclusion, unemployment, discrimination, the whole package, always and forever the American way. Not only that, but during the nineteen thirties about a million of them were kicked out of the country, in a national frenzy of racism, which was called, not deportation, but "repatriation". Words mean things, an illiterate man once said, and the gentler term conveyed the illusion that the exodus was voluntary, and accepted by its victims as a positive step in the right direction. The great American depression led to the great American anger, and then the great American scapegoating and kicking out. When a society is in a state of collapse, the minorities are given the blame. No, history does not repeat itself; all events are unique, but, as they say, it often comes close, it often rhymes. A new book, "Decade of Betrayal", by, um, some Hispanic dude, clearly documents the relevant events. There emerged a popular consensus that "they would be better off back where they belong, back with their own people", where they could get jobs, and find acceptance among their own kind. The Attorney General of the U.S. endorsed the movement, as did every state government, county government, and corporate entity in America. One million Mexican-Americans, roughly, most of them United States citizens, loaded onto trains, and sent across the border, deep across the border, in the hope that their return could be prevented. Amazingly, nobody knows anything about it, because the fact of this disgrace is not taught in our whitewashed historiography. The United States is a racist, ethnically bigoted country, and always has been. A nation of immigrants, divided against itself, always closing the door behind itself. See: the Chinese exclusion Act, the Immigration Act of 1924, and Donald Trump.