College Republican "Illegal Immigrant Day"
| By August J. Pollak - Apr 17th, 2006 at 7:30 pm EDT |
| Also listed in: Campus Progress Blog |
Bored with "Affirmative Action Bake Sales," the Penn State College Republicans are working on "refining" their plans for an "Illegal Immigration Awareness Day" at PSU.
So it's good to hear the plan was dropped in favor of "emphasis on education." Apparently someone already educated the College Republicans in the effectiveness of racist, tacky stunts.
Latino Caucus and Black Caucus members responded angrily when the College Republicans first announced the day, along with its plan for a "Catch an Illegal Immigrant Game." After discussions between the two groups, however, the game was eliminated and the group placed more of an emphasis on education.As you may remember from previous publicity stunts, the "game" mentioned is one where students wearing t-shirts labelled "illegal immigrant" run around campus and prizes are given out for catching them.
So it's good to hear the plan was dropped in favor of "emphasis on education." Apparently someone already educated the College Republicans in the effectiveness of racist, tacky stunts.
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That said, you called it 'racist'? That's a pretty serious charge. Care to back it up more, or are we just tossing that out casually these days.
Last spring I helped organize a counter-demonstration at Tarrant County College-NE campus against the Young Conservatives Affirmative Action Bake Sale, and their Illegal Immigrant Round up. I built alliances with our local LULAC chapters, community organizations, and had a wonderful speaker who marched with Cesar Chavez, and even had a hispanic judge who works for the Department of Justice come and address the students. We embarrassed the YC's to the point they folded up their tent many hours before their "game" was scheduled to end.
The sole purpose for these horrible games isn't to bring to light the issue, and even offer solutions to the problem. Instead, they take a very complicated issue, one that deserves attention, understanding, proper education, and real solutions for solving, and they make it a simple game of white skin versus pick your other skin color to trample on today. It is an unrealistic approach to serious issues.
It is ignorant, hateful, and quite frankly....racist.
I'm proud to say that our counter demonstrations were so effective that we got extensive print, and television media coverage, and the YC's were so badly embarrassed that their main state caucus president called to offer a "truce." They would do no more "games" if we agreed to do no more demonstrations that painted them as the hateful, ignorant, bigots that they really were, and as the media portrayed them to be.
We declined the offer and continued to hammer away at them the rest of the semester, to the point their group doesn't even exist anymore on the TCC-NE Campus. :)
TMH
(How's that for 4:30 AM?)
Though to deduce a specific worldview from the construction of what is essentially a game of hide-and-go-seek to raise issue awareness is a bit thin, heh.
Will I turn into Glenn Reynolds in twenty years!? I perish at the thought!
Heh-indeedy. (Seriously, is that an attempt to emulate Instahack, or are you really a secret self-loathing Atriot?)
But racism? Ok, maybe the COLLEGE REPUBLICANS are racist in their views towards illegal immigration, but there are many, many people out there who are against illegal immigration and some of the amnesty programs proposed, and it has nothing to do with race. I could care less if the illegal immigrants in the United States were Hispanic, black, white, asian, etc.
(By the way, I typed this comment with my voice recognition technology) :)
TMH
Look, I just got done having a te-ta-te with the college republicans over racism and Ann Coulter at Loyola. Believe me, if anyone accuses a large portion of the CR's of being racist it is me.
With that being said, I'm sick of hearing that ideas against the illegal immigrants are racist. It simply is not the case. I think that maybe some CR's ideas are based in race, but I we're just walking a fine line here, because not everyone agrees with that.
The issue with immigration is that it is three issues rolled into one. It is a National Security issue, humanitarian, and economic issue all in one. That is kind of unprecedented really. I'm all about being tough on illegal immigration, I agree with a lot of what Lou Dobbs has to say on the issue. I believe you can't solve the problem until you fix the borders, plain and simple.
That being said, we should exhaust all avenues of finding a solution to the problem that minimizes the impact on our economy, safely secures our borders, and humanely allows those undocumented immigrants who truly are doing their part to be good citizens to be extended the opportunity to legally join our country. Deport those who don't follow the rules, and certainly expedite the criminals as well. But, if you don't secure the borders, then it does no good to pour more water over the dam if you haven't plugged the holes. The flood continues otherwise.
TMH
Are the CR's explicitly saying that all the illegal immigrants are of one race? Did they only recruit Latino kids to play the parts or something? Because if they did that, then yeah, that would be really fucked up. But otherwise... what's your point?
This is a huge, gaping logical fallacy.
The vast majority of Mexicans in this country are not illegal immigrants - they are American citizens like you and I.
How, then, would singling out illegal immigrants mean that one is also singling out Mexicans?
That makes no sense at all.
That's a (rather specious) policy argument on your part, but again, you're not providing any logic as to why they're racist.
I think you toss around the race card way too casually and easily.