Family separation at border sad and shameful
I am deeply saddened by the reports, photos and recordings of children being separated from their parents whose only crime is fleeing extreme danger and hoping for a better life in America.
However, today’s immigrants are not the only people who have suffered this type of unimaginable trauma. For hundreds of years, federal and state governments wrestled Native American children from their parents and placed them in foster homes or institutions in an effort to “civilize the savage born.” According to a 1976 report commissioned by the Association of American Indian Affairs, as many as one third of Native American children were separated from their families between 1941 and 1967.
I write this not as a justification of what is happening to immigrants today. Instead, I am addressing it as an indicator of what racially biased, white “leaders” are capable of doing to people they deem as less than equal. Shame on all of them.
Cynthia Whalen
Bluffton
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