By Arthur Z. Schwartz
I was in Toronto when the photograph of the Syrian child, Aylan Kurdi, who washed up on the shore of Greece, was published in the newspapers. His family was headed for Canada, and the delay caused by Canadian Government red tape caused an immense outcry and hand wringing. The first fifteen pages of the Toronto Star and the Globe were filled with columns denouncing the government and about the plight of Middle Eastern immigrants, so much so that the government of John Harper is sure to fall in Canada’s October 5 election.
I thought about the U.S. and Donald Trump, who is running for President on an anti-immigrant platform, particularly aimed at Mexicans crossing our borders. (Fact is, more Mexicans left the U.S. in 2014 than entered, as the Mexican economy expands.) “They are criminals and rapists,” he says, and gets a national platform to say it. I wondered that if he said the same about Blacks whether he would be given the platform he has been given. I doubt it. It is a shame that the TV networks and the Republican Party see fit to give Trump’s racist rants the respect that they do. Yes, Colbert and others make fun of him, but what he says isn’t funny. Just ask Aylan Kurdi’s dad.
