Philip Bump take a look at that startling chart:
You can understand, then, why sixth-grade teacher Sarah Inama would have been surprised to learn that a banner hanging in her classroom was triggering an outcry. Showing a range of heart-holding hands, each in a different hue, the banner read, “Everyone is welcome here.” It’s an anodyne sentiment, at worst, but also a celebration of multiracial community. And for that reason — and explicitly that reason, as a school official explained in an interview in March — the banner was determined to be unacceptable.
Saying that “everyone is welcome” has become a political statement in the way that “science is real” has become one. Not because these statement themselves are political or even particularly controversial. No, they are now tainted with politics because they reject the right’s rejections of both objectivity and pluralism.
When the 10th anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Obergefell v. Hodges decision arrived last month — the decision that legalized same-sex marriage nationally — a chart of poll data from Gallup began to circulate on social media. It showed that most Americans supported marriage access for same-sex couples, as has been the case since shortly before Obergefell. But it also showed that support had slipped slightly in recent years — driven entirely by declining support among Republicans.
How about that chart at the top?
Republicans have gotten 25 percentage points more likely to say that American diversity is threatening to our culture. Among White people, the increase was 16 points.
I don’t think they’ve changed, actually. I think they are just feeling they now have permission to say what they’ve always believed. They are feeling their oats.
Here’s a gift link to the whole piece. It makes me feel sick.
I’m having a hard time even thinking about the 4th of July this year. It’s usually a holiday where I allow myself to celebrate some of the good things about our system and our society and one of them was always the fact that we have always been a pluralistic, immigrant nation. I won’t take that for granted ever again.
We’re building concentration camps for immigrants.