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

Woman and child on auction block, 1800s
"Like most of you reading this, I am deeply appalled at what I see happening right now in the United States — immigrant children being snatched away from their parents and sent to separate detention centers, often locked in cages with strangers, with no real idea of when they’ll ever be reunited with their families. It’s an abomination. But I often see two troubling responses to this crisis that show just how aloof and asleep millions of Americans are right now. The first is a statement that goes something like this: This is not the America I know and love. The second is a question, rooted in the same ignorance, that goes something like this: How could this ever happen in the United States? What’s happening right now in our country is, without question, a human rights catastrophe. Yet every deeply entrenched mechanism used in these policies and the spirit fueling this catastrophe are as American as Facebook and Disneyland. Let me break it down. At least five troubling factors are at play here. All five were fully and completely present before this current crisis ever began. They set the tone and created the culture in which something so heinous could ever take place. ..."
The Intercept
The Atlantic: Watch the U.S. Turn Away Asylum Seekers at the Border (Video)