Since you've opened the floor -
The creation of a physical barrier along the border, such as a wall, is not racist in and of itself - as you said, every country has a right to decide who can and can't cross its borders. The idea of using that barrier to keep a certain class or ethnicity out starts to tip the scales towards racism - we don't want THOSE people, as a group, to come into our country.
We don't have, nor do we plan to build, a wall on our northern border - because the people to the north of us are pretty much the same as us, only more polite than we are (maybe they should build a wall). But there is this irrational fear of allowing Hispanics to cross our southern border - perhaps because they're different? We don't look the same, we don't share a common language? That's the beginning of racism.
When you take an entire ethnic group and paint them with the same broad brush, that's the very definition of racism. You've lost sight of the individual, are throwing them all into a bucket of bad people, and saying that "we need to keep THOSE PEOPLE out" - not this person or that person, but everyone who looks like them.
In that sense, the proposed border wall is racist. Those who support it are playing on the fear of "THOSE PEOPLE", people they know nothing about other than that they are Hispanic.
I'm all for border security, but it has to be done right. Building a wall is not doing it right.
PS: Trump's "Great Wall" is never going to be built. Period. Mexico won't pay for it, and neither will we. Just another broken promise... |
