David Remnick Quotes
You are losing out because Mexican rapists are taking your job.
Remnick, David. "The Populist Phenomenon." The New Yorker Radio Hour, WNYC, 2016.
This quotation is a wonderful use of sarcasm to make an important point in just a few words.
The Congressman was a rabid foe of immigration in general and possible illegal immigration in particular (See {614687}). As his colleagues were trying to improve the methods of identifying illegal workers at the job hiring stage, they were very concerned that law enforcment and some employers would make judgments about the likely criminal status of a person based on his/her ethnicity, race or other general superficial characteristics.
Most immigration reformers want to open immigration more widely. Ward wanted immigration restricted to certain ethnicities and limited. Essentially, this was code for anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism. The immigrants that he described as not being “helpful” have made some of the greatest contributions to America. One element of the immigration debate that is illustrated by this quotation is whether the United State should be homogeneous or heterogeneous. It has been the latter and that has brought the best of cultures of the world to the United States which has constantly been shaped by its immigrants even as it shaped and assimilated the immigrants.
As in most weak economic times there were more people than usual opposed to immigration. Of the opponents of immigration some were not racist, but a large number were very much racist. Also the racist organizations all opposed immigration. Historically almost all anti-immigration movements were racist. First it was against the Irish, then the Germans, followed by Chinese, Japanese, Italians, Eastern European Jews, and at the time of this quote it was against the Mexicans and other Hispanics.
This was a quotation from Roof's twisted confession of the fact that he walked into a black church that was holding a Bible Study Class, and gunned down 9 religious people studing the Bible. His "justification" was based on totally false "facts" but at the time many people--especially those and the extremes of political ideology simply chose the fact that supported their narrative and world vie without regard to veracity. The overwhelming majority of whites who are murdered in America are murdered by other whites and usually by people whey knew. Most rapes in the United States are committed by Whites, not Blacks, Of the Black committed rapes, most of the victims were also Black. Large proportions of the American populace believe that the Black cntribution to crime against whites is very much larger than it reall is. Of the whites who believe this, a tiny few become white supremicists and only some of those act out and commit any physical violance. However the few succetable people like Roof have heard these falsehoods so ofteh that tney not only beleive it si try but they believe taht they must do something lest the problem get worse. Of course, even if Blacks were committing all these crimes against whites, it takes a spcially sociopahic mind to believe that by killing Bible-studying, deeply religious, Christian Blacks, they will somehow stop violent Black crime.
He was agreeing with the Right Wing racist Dutch politician Geert Wilders that one of the dangers of immigration of different races and ethnicities is that their children would not be capable or able to contribute to America or in his view make America Great Again as it has been diminished by all these immiogrant babies of the last few generations. There are very few areas of civilization where America is not greater today than ever before.
David J. Remnick is an American journalist and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize in 1994 for his book Lenin's Tomb: The Last Days of the Soviet Empire and is also the author of Resurrection and King of the World: Muhammad Ali and the Rise of an American Hero. Remnick has been editor of The New Yorker magazine since 1998. He was named Editor of the Year by Advertising Age in 2000. Before joining The New Yorker, Remnick was a reporter and the Moscow correspondent for The Washington Post. He also has served on the New York Public Library board of trustees. In 2010, he published his sixth book, The Bridge: The Life and Rise of Barack Obama.
