Immigrants' treatment cannot be compared to Holocaust, slave
LETTER: Immigrants' treatment cannot be compared to Holocaust, slavery
April 03, 2007 6:00 AM
Immigrants' treatment cannot be compared to Holocaust, slavery
Like nearly everyone else in this community, and indeed many other parts of our nation, I have been following the events surrounding the raid at Michael Bianco Inc. I have heard and read all the arguments both pro and con, and until reading a recent letter published on your editorial page had decided not to add my opinion to the fray. That is no longer true.
After reading the letter published on March 17 by Carole Snow Keyes, I sat at first stunned and then appalled and repulsed by the ignorance, insensitivity and distortion of historical facts aimed at producing a visceral reaction by comparing the alleged plight of the illegal immigrants with African slaves and, perhaps even more heinous, with the multitude of Jews butchered at the hands of the Nazis.
I say to Ms. Keyes, no, what occurred at the South End factory does not sound familiar at all. You see, the African slaves did not willfully sneak into this country to seek their fortune. Rather they were abducted, shackled and stacked like cordwood on ships to be transported across the ocean under indescribably cruel conditions, where tens of thousands perished from disease, starvation and brutality. Those fortunate enough to survive were sold, beaten, raped and tortured. They were considered property by our government to be used and disposed of at their owners' whim.
How dare you compare these illegals, which by definition means criminals, with the millions of blacks who were dehumanized, subjugated and exploited by our society? Your callous and cruel comparison is an affront to every African-American living and dead. Ms. Keyes needs to keep in mind that slaves weren't released from servitude if they were the primary caretaker for their children. They did not have to be. Their children were slaves, too.
As to the buses being reminiscent of cattle cars that were used to transport Jews and other Nazi undesirables to the concentration camps, the ludicrousness of this statement is only surpassed by the fact that this woman is responsible for the education of our young.
Let me just make note of a few subtle differences in what transpired at Michael Bianco Inc. and events that occurred at Buchenwald, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. The New Bedford detainees were questioned, arrested and sent to holding facilities all over this nation, where they are being clothed, fed, provided medical care and processed through our legal system to facilitate their return to their country of origin. They have not been tattooed, raped, starved, enslaved nor had medical experiments performed on them.
They have not been murdered en masse and then bulldozed into common graves. They have not been piled into grotesque mounds of human flesh after being gassed and then burned in crematoriums.
Open your eyes, Ms. Keyes, and you may notice a little disparity of treatment here. Along with the insult to African-Americans, you have trivialized the deaths of millions of concentration camp victims, many of whom were Jewish.
BRYAN DEMELLO
New Bedford
http://www.southcoasttoday.com/apps/pbc ... /704030415
