Separating Migrant Families Is Barbaric. It’s Also What the U.S. Has Been Doing to People of Color for Hundreds of Years.

"First, this has happened here before. In fact, it has happened millions of times across the years in this country. Africans forced into slavery in this country were routinely separated from their children — not only in being transported to the Americas, but then repeatedly at the auction block. Not thousands, but millions — of mothers and fathers, husbands and wives, parents and children, brothers and sisters — were all forcefully separated from each other. And this was no brief period of this nation’s history, but a feature of the institution of slavery that existed in the United States for nearly 250 years.

Not only were enslaved African children routinely separated from their families, but so too were Native Americans in this country. From the late 1800s all the way until the 1970s, children were routinely taken from Native American homes by force and sent to barbaric “Indian schools,” where their hair was cut and their names and culture stripped away. Many of them never saw their families again.

What might be most shocking, though, is the way the U.S. — today, in the present — separates so many families whose stories go unremarked upon. I’m talking about the crisis of mass incarceration in America, of which the crackdown on immigrants is but one horrific piece.

Right now, as you read this, hundreds of thousands of adults and children, disproportionately black and Latino, are in jails all over this country – not because they’ve been convicted of a crime, but because they cannot afford cash bail. Many of them will languish in jail not for days or weeks, but for months and years without ever being convicted of a crime. In fact, about 65 percent of people in local jails in this country on any given day have not been convicted of a crime. They are in jail simply because they cannot afford bail. They, too, are separated from their families."

more in the article by Shaun King​

Separating Migrant Families Is Barbaric. It’s Also What the U.S. Has Been Doing to People of Color for Hundreds of Years.: