A town meeting occasionally grew heated. One speaker said Haitians “have smells to them. They’re not like us. ... They’re scary, folks.”

But the gathering at Mt. Calvary Baptist Church occasionally grew heated. One speaker said Haitians “have smells to them. They’re not like us. They’re not here to be Americanized. They don’t care about schools. They’re scary, folks.”

Other comments dealt with city police, which some said don’t have enough officers or funding to deal with issues caused by immigration and proper code enforcement.

If the city was able to adequately enforce housing codes, some said, it would cause a homelessness problem.

  • @some_guy
    8•27 days ago

    You can be racist without slurs.

    Remember also in 1981 that the late Republican campaign consultant Lee Atwater explained in an interview with a Case Western Reserve University political scientist how Republicans could win the votes of racists without resorting to overt racism:

    “You start out in 1954 by saying, ‘[N-word, N-word, N-word].’ By 1968 you can’t say ‘[N-word]‘— that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff, and you’re getting so abstract. Now, you’re talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you’re talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. … ‘We want to cut this,’ is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than ‘[N-word, N-word].'”

    https://digitaledition.baltimoresun.com/tribune/article_popover.aspx?guid=90fa275f-7eca-4fdd-8120-8ba0fd1e8474

    • @militaryintelligence@lemmy.world
      6•27 days ago

      I was a white kid who was bussed in the 80s in Louisville KY. I was a minority white kid in my class and I fully believe I broke out of the racism cycle I was in because of it. Luckily it happened before all that crap was firmly instilled in my pre-racist little brain

      • @dogslayeggs@lemmy.world
        4•27 days ago

        I had the opposite experience but with the same good outcome as you. I was a white kid in the 80s who moved from an all-white school (I think there was one black kid in the entire school) to a suburban school that would have been all-white but it bussed in kids from the inner city. I know that added exposure helped me break out of the cycle of racism I realized later was so prevalent at my earlier school. It’s almost like having experience with something helps you understand it better… wild concept.

        • @militaryintelligence@lemmy.world
          2•27 days ago

          I was bullied relentlessly in school, but not by black kids. Maybe they understood being different, or the experiences of casual racism made them more empathetic, but it left a lasting mark.