By Josh Moon
Alabama Political Reporter
Jeff Sessions is a racist.
I have grown tired of people telling me that he’s not, and then using some contrived example of a time when Jeff Sessions didn’t exhibit the tendencies of a hood-wearing, cross-burning racist to prove the point.
Oh, this one time, Jeff Sessions saw a black man crossing the street and didn’t try to run him down!
Racism has defined this man and his career from the very start. From the time when his racist behavior as a U.S. Attorney prevented his confirmation by Congress as a District Court judge to his dreadful work as Alabama’s AG to his pathetic blocking of immigration reform and pretty much any aid for minorities to his abhorrent work as the U.S. Attorney General.
Jeff Sessions has never once failed to view the plight of minorities as overblown, inconsequential or downright irrelevant to him.
This is a man who halted investigations of police departments’ civil rights abuses … just because he could.
Those investigations had turned up myriad issues within departments, and the corrective actions made the departments and the public they serve much more cooperative.
But never mind that. Jeff Sessions put a stop to that nonsense, and then handed back to those departments military gear. Just in case those cops had started to think of the citizens they’re supposed to protect and serve as anything other than the enemy.
So, maybe stop trying to convince people that Jeff Sessions is anything other than what Jeff Sessions is.
That way none of us will be surprised by press conferences like Tuesday’s – one in which a visibly giddy Jeff Sessions, grinning like a troubled child who just finished pulling the wings off butterflies, announced the end of a program that grants some legal rights to immigrants who were brought to this country as minors by their parents.
These Americans – because that’s what they are – are law-abiding, gainfully employed or students and contributing to society. There are thousands of them in our military, fighting daily for the freedom of racists like Jeff Sessions.
But never mind that. Sessions, still grinning, repeatedly referred to these good Americans as “illegal aliens” and spoke of ending this Obama-era “executive amnesty,” which the program is not.
That was one of the many lies used to sell this rollback, placed right alongside other doozies like claiming DACA drove up child immigration. Or that DACA beneficiaries are taking American jobs. Both are outright lies, easily provable, and stated only to sell rescinding DACA.
Because actual facts and sound reasoning were in short supply. And it would be improper for the U.S. Attorney General to come right out and say he doesn’t care for minorities.
So, instead, we got another performance of aww-shucks, who-me racism, in which someone like Jeff Sessions does something awful and really racist but pretends it’s for other reasons.
Oh, it was quite the day for Jeff Sessions.
And I hope it produces an outcome similar to what Alabama experienced back in 2011, when a similarly hateful bill – one that Sessions supported – went sailing through our state legislature.
That year, Alabama, for no rhyme or reason, created boogeymen out of the immigrant labor force in this state. The only reason for doing so, the best anyone could tell, was that GOP politicians needed to win elections and they wanted a new bad guy.
Hispanic immigrants were it.
The bill was one of the most mean-spirited pieces of legislation in history – so vile that it asked public school officials to ask children for their immigration status and then report it.
The law had the desired effect – immigrants fled in droves. They left their farm and factory jobs, bolted construction sites, pulled their children out of public schools.
And guess what left with them?
Money.
Billions of dollars went running out of Alabama. It was so bad that we still haven’t recovered. Some farmers went bankrupt. Some businesses closed and remain so.
And yet, despite all of those newly-opened jobs, Alabama’s unemployment rate didn’t budge. Not even as the rest of the country experienced an employment surge under President Obama. Alabama’s unemployment rate still lagged well behind, and for a time we were the state with the absolute worst job growth.
Because these sorts of hateful acts directed at minorities never turn out well in the end. They always backfire and leave cities, states and countries worse off. And the only people who can’t see these horrible results coming are racists who are blinded by their ignorance and bigotry.
Like Jeff Sessions.
