The Choice: The Statue of Liberty and American Ethnic Cleansing
White Supremacists are trying to adjust American history
Issue #895 The Choice, Tuesday, July 22, 2025
The story of the United States of America has always been a story of contrasts between its stated ideals and the realities of its actions.
The 1776 Declaration of Independence and the 1789 Constitution spoke eloquently about “freedom” and “equality for all,” but those ideals initially applied only to white men with property. It took almost two centuries for women, non-whites, and LGBTQA to be included as American citizens with their full rights.
Now the Trump administration, the MAGA and other rightwing Republicans are working hard to strip as many rights as possible away from everyone except white Christian straight males.
White Supremacist Stephen Miller, who is the architect of the cruel immigration policies of the Trump administration, recently lamented the primary election for NY Mayor of the Democratic Socialist and Muslim naturalized citizen from Uganda, Zohran Mandami, stating that citizens of New York City are about 40% foreign-born.
Ironically, Miller made those statements within view of the Statue of Liberty (full name: “Liberty Enlightening the World”), on which is inscribed: “Give us your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to be free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore. Send these, the homeless, the tempest-tossed to me, I lift my lamp beside the golden door!” Emma Lazarus, who wrote the poem, “The New Colossus,” was a Sephardic Jew from a wealthy Portuguese family that immigrated to New York City in the mid-1700s. She views the statue as the “Mother of Exiles,” a symbol of immigration and opportunity.
Meanwhile, the French gifted the Statue to the United States (after Congress approved the gift, which was required) not only to celebrate July 4, 1776 (there is a tablet cradled in her left arm engraved with that date), but also to celebrate the end of slavery. Her right foot is raised, and has a broken shackle and chains attached. That fact has been overtaken by the immigration focus of the Statue.
Meanwhile, the United States openly engaged in its own genocide and ethnic cleansing activities against the Indigenous Nations at least since the beginning of the 19th century. That century’s white Christian nationalists, led by then General and later President Andrew Jackson, claimed that God had given them a “Manifest Destiny” to control, overtake, and decimate the native population on their way to expanding America to the Pacific Ocean. Those natives who weren’t outright murdered were captured and either sent to low-quality reservations far from their original homelands, or the children were kidnapped and sent to often church-sponsored schools that cut their hair and outlawed them from learning about and upholding their own cultures and languages. This happened in the U.S. and in Canada.
Now today, the U.S., under the direction of Stephen Miller and the Trump administration, is again participating in state-sponsored ethnic cleansing of non-white legal and undocumented immigrants, including some U.S. citizens.
Trump, who is a convicted felon, ironically promised to rid America of violent immigrant criminals who, according to him, were “poisoning the blood of America” and committing untold crimes in American cities. Of course, he pardoned and set back on the streets the violent January 6 criminals who instituted an attempted coup against the United States Congress in order to illegally keep Trump in office.
ICE is pulling Black, brown, and Asian people off the streets, out of their homes, workplaces, and churches, and even from their legal immigration hearings. The majority of those people have no criminal records (entering this country illegally is a misdemeanor) and are being “disappeared” and/or sent to concentration camps here and abroad without due process or the ability to contact an attorney or even their family members.
Trump is also rescinding the Temporary Protected Status of tens of thousands of Haitians, Venezuelans, and Cubans, while at the same time using taxpayer money to bring scores of white South Africans here based on the lie that they are in danger from the Black majority in that country.
None of the millions of white undocumented immigrants are being targeted or removed by ICE.
Trump is also attempting to eliminate the Constitutionally protected “birthright citizenship”. guaranteed by the 14th Amendment, only because the majority of the children born to immigrants are now brown and Black, not white.
He has also declared that Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion policies are “racist” and should be illegal, while also attempting to erase from history anything that promotes or acknowledges the accomplishments of non-white Christian straight men in American history.
The foundation and underlying premise of all of these actions is the protection of white male control and supremacy, period. This has been true in America since the 17th century.
Our Choice
We have to realize that slavery, genocide, the Chinese Exclusion Act, the Japanese internment camps, and the laws restricting basic rights only to white Christian straight men have been part of this country since before its official beginning.
The only way to ensure and retain civil and Constitutional rights for all people in this country is how we've always done it, by protesting, activating, and voting.
We know that the Trump administration is trying to silence all dissent and that the Republicans are trying to cheat their way to victory in the 2026 midterms.
As the Isley Brothers reminded us in a song, we have “Work to Do!”
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"Emma Lazarus, who wrote the poem, “The New Colossus,” was a Sephardic Jew from a wealthy Portuguese family that immigrated to New York City in the mid-1700s. She views the statue as the “Mother of Exiles,”
It is amazing to me that Stephen Miller himself is a Jew, descended from immigrants. I doubt very much that he is an observant worshipper, but he must have considered that if he had been in charge when his ancestors showed up, he would have turned them away.