A\u00a0portrait of Andrew Jackson now keeps a watchful eye in\u00a0the Oval Office, often appearing over President Trump\u2019s left shoulder. White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon likes to cast the president as Jacksonian.<\/p>\n
While historians will debate the similarities between the two presidents, the choice and prominence of this portrait is significant.<\/p>\n
President Andrew Jackson is often remembered for his relocation of the Indian tribes, and his policies are\u00a0credited for the Trail of Tears<\/i><\/a>, making\u00a0the indigenous Cherokee North Carolina’s first illegal residents.<\/em><\/p>\n Jackson\u2019s Fifth Annual Message to Congress in December 3, 1833 is most telling:<\/p>\n “My original convictions upon this subject have been confirmed by the course of events for several years, and experience is every day adding to their strength. That those tribes can not exist surrounded by our settlements and in continual contact with our citizens is certain. They have neither the intelligence, the industry, the moral habits, nor the desire of improvement which are essential to any favorable change in their condition<\/i>.\u00a0 This was an official address to the Congress and country, published in newspapers throughout the land — what we now call the\u00a0State of the Union Address<\/em>.\u00a0<\/p>\n In his first presidential campaign speech, Donald Trump, in declaring candidacy, shocked a nation by stating:<\/p>\n The U.S. has become a dumping ground for everybody else\u2019s problems. When Mexico sends its people, they\u2019re not sending their best. They\u2019re not sending you. They\u2019re not sending you. They\u2019re sending people that have lots of problems, and they\u2019re bringing those problems with us. They\u2019re bringing drugs. They\u2019re bringing crime. They\u2019re rapists<\/i>. And some, I assume, are good people. But I speak to border guards and they tell us what we\u2019re getting. And it only makes common sense. It only makes common sense. They\u2019re sending us not the right people<\/i>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They are n<\/i>ot you!<\/i> Not the right people!<\/i> They are o<\/i>ther than you<\/i>, and they must be removed.\u00a0Perhaps we should ask, Is that what it means to \u201cmake America great again\u201d?<\/i><\/p>\n Forget the millions of young American citizens in jeopardy. Or the “Dreamers” — the hundreds of thousands\u00a0of young adults with no legal status and no memory of another country. \u00a0<\/p>\n And totally dismiss the million of hard-working-at-two-jobs undocumented parents whose vision of the American Dream is that their US citizen children might become productive citizens.<\/p>\n Forget that these people are, by culture, family-oriented and generally\u00a0conservative in their values. Forget that these millions of people rent apartments or own homes, buy food and other items from major retailers — fully participating in our economy.<\/p>\n They pick our fruits and vegetables, build our houses, tend our lawns, replace our roofs, cook our food, bus our tables, clean our homes and take care of our children. \u00a0Their legal status may vary from person to person, but they have something in common. They believe in this country, with a faith we do not deserve.<\/p>\n What these immigrants have in common is not drugs. \u201cThey\u201d are not sexual predators. Nor, for that matter, are\u00a0\u201cthey\u201d White Europeans! \u201cThey\u201d are a mixed people. Partly of Spanish (European) descent while not\u00a0fully Spanish. Partly Native American with\u00a0a brown tone to their complexion.<\/strong><\/p>\n Several years ago researchers studied the dna of various groups of Mexican people.<\/p>\n But Mexico is a land of mixture, captured in the term \u201cmestizo\u201d that describes someone of European and Native American heritage. The researchers wondered whether the genetic signature of the Aztec, Maya and other cultures had been overwhelmed by the genes of the Spanish conquistadors over the course of the last half millennium.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n They were shocked to find that the indigenous component of mestizo samples replicated the same geographic differences found in the indigenous samples. Conquest had not swamped the genetic signal of ancient Mexico. http:\/\/www.latimes.com\/science\/la-sci-mexico-dna-20140613-story.html<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n In other words, many Latin Americans are, in great part, Native North Americans with an ancestry that predates the arrival of European settlements, whether Spanish or British. But to our president they are not the right people. They are not white people.<\/i> Chief Birther and Pre-candidate Trump<\/i> made that clear in his remarks to the Conservative Political Action Conference in March, 2013<\/i><\/span><\/span><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n Now, I say to myself, why aren’t we letting people in from Europe? I have many friends, many, many friends \u2013 and nobody wants to talk this, nobody wants to say it \u2013 but I have many friends from Europe. They want to come in. People I know. Tremendous people. Hard-working people. They can’t come in. I know people whose sons went to Harvard; top in their class, went to the Wharton School of Finance, great, great students.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n These white and right<\/i> people were clearly contrasted from the \u201c11 million illegals\u201d \u2013 those brown and wrong<\/i> people who are\u00a0already here, but couldn\u2019t be trusted to vote Republican if they became citizens.<\/p>\n So much for democratic populism. Like Andrew Jackson, our president is an advocate of white superiority who may also leave a legacy of removal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \t\t\t\tA portrait of Andrew Jackson now keeps a watchful eye in the Oval Office, often appearing over President Trump\u2019s left shoulder. White House Chief Strategist Steve Bannon likes to cast the president as Jacksonian. <\/p>\n
\n Established in the midst of another and a superior race, and without appreciating the causes of their inferiority<\/i> or seeking to control them, they must necessarily yield to the force of circumstances and ere long disappear.”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n