Quote of the Day (Frederick Douglass, on the Right of Migration)

“There are such things in the world as human rights. They rest upon no conventional foundation, but are external, universal, and indestructible. Among these, is the right of locomotion; the right of migration; the right which belongs to no particular race, but belongs alike to all and to all alike. It is the right you assert by staying here, and your fathers asserted by coming here. It is this great right that I assert for the Chinese and Japanese, and for all other varieties of men equally with yourselves, now and forever. I know of no rights of race superior to the rights of humanity, and when there is a supposed conflict between human and national rights, it is safe to go to the side of humanity. I have great respect for the blue eyed and light haired races of America. They are a mighty people. In any struggle for the good things of this world they need have no fear. They have no need to doubt that they will get their full share.

“But I reject the arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights, or any other essential human rights to themselves, and which would make them the owners of this great continent to the exclusion of all other races of men. I want a home here not only for the negro, the mulatto and the Latin races; but I want the Asiatic to find a home here in the United States, and feel at home here, both for his sake and for ours. Right wrongs no man…

“And here I hold that a liberal and brotherly welcome to all who are likely to come to the United states, is the only wise policy which this nation can adopt.” —African-American abolitionist, reformer, and memoirist Frederick Douglass (1818-1895), “Our Composite Nation,” lecture delivered in the Parker Fraternity Course, Boston, Mass., 1867

I have been looking for the past week for an item I could use related to Black History Month. Little did I know that perhaps the greatest African-American before Martin Luther King Jr., Frederick Douglass, had something pertinent to say not just on freedmen after the Civil War, but would also denounce the arguments in favor of nativism (that “arrogant and scornful theory by which they would limit migratory rights”) that continue to be propagated to this day.

Our current President seems to have forgotten that, as John F. Kennedy noted, we are “a nation of immigrants.” His proposal for a $5 million “gold card” for wealthy buyers, like so much he has done (starting with “Trump bibles”), monetizes something sacred: an immigration system that, for all its faults, still allows the humblest newcomers to dream of something more for themselves and their children.

Trump overlooks any possibility of his idea leading to abuse or unfairness by the wealthy. In fact, he said, he would consider selling the cards to well-heeled Russians: “I know some Russian oligarchs that are very nice people.”

Why does that sound so much like what he said back in 2017: that white nationalists rioting in Charlottesville, VA, included “some very fine people”?