REP. Ilhan Omar and Somali immigrants are ‘not rubbish.’ The Trump Presidency

First, it was “Piggy.”
Then it is “bad inside and out.”
And now, -in-king says Rep. Ilhan Omar is “trash.”

Trash.

When a Sitting President Calls a Black Woman to Congress garbagethat is not shade. It is a political act designed to tell the country that people are taken for granted. First of all, you are embarrassing. After that, you are reduced. After that you throw away. This is how society is trained to commit physical abuse on a regular basis and even mass murder.

Now, turn the camera.

Because Donald Trump wants you to look at Rep. Omar as a showman. But don’t fall. Look he. Look at his formation in real time. Scratched sentences. Pigs with no one. Intermittent sleep. To fill the world before thought.

Want to talk trash? Garbage is the politics of grievances and paranoia. Garbage is a controlling tally that peddles stupidity and lies as leadership. Garbage is an organization that feeds on fear and prejudice. Garbage is a Presidency that exploits ignorance and calls it “truth.”

And since Trump likes to rip off his chest and demonize non-white countries by calling him trash, let’s talk about him – directly The list.

She is not a Native American beauty show host. His family came the way millions of people from Europe did: Through conflict, anger, opportunity, and illegality.

His father’s people left Bavaria as part of a wave of German immigration to the United States that they did not want very much. Germans are treated as dirty, ridiculed for their accents, considered dangerous, inescapable, blamed for labor unrest, and blamed for corrupting American Halls, unions, and foreign loyalties. During the wars and depression, the accused began. They were written on paper, looked at, laughed at.

Sound familiar? You have to. Because it is the same script of the script that works now for the brown and black families, just with renewed stones.

His mother came from the Isle of Lewis, one of the poorest, most remote areas of Scotland at the time. People didn’t flee that island because it was booming. They fled because there was nothing to eat and to inherit. When she arrived in New York, she was a girl who rubbed other people down to survive in a country that didn’t roll out the red carpet for her.

That’s the part of Trump’s story he never told about his immigration background.

If America treated her parents the way she wants to treat others, her family’s story would have ended in the factory and ledger ink. Germans used to be immigrants who “took jobs.” The Scots were reduced to cheap labor and told to thank them for being allowed to breathe American air. His people were identified, tested and doubted. His bloodline has benefited from a country that allows the poor of Europe and allows them to be in America, and now he is standing at that door, a rug for anyone blacker than his display.

The real bottom line in the sneer of the Fulani isn’t pride, it’s shame. A large share of white Americans descended from Europeans who came here as castoffs. They were the rural poor, the starving, the landless, the religious apologists, the criminals and the industrial scum of the old Empire that didn’t use them.

This fact was never mourned, so it was rewritten.

Therefore, “refugees” became “pioneers.” “Survival” became “survival.” And now, when today’s immigrants show up with the same hunger and rawness that their grandparents needed, something stands in the way. Cursing isn’t about boundaries, it’s about exposure. Immigrants create an origin story they have never been taught to shamelessly shame. So instead of dealing with it, they rob. Instead of remembering, they make a king. And when you say these truths out loud, they are silent. Not because he is wrong, but because he pulled the thread that holds their tales together. Silence is what happens when an identity is constructed from a found object that acts as a face – starting from forgotten poverty and demons.

When Trump called Rep. Ilhan Omar “garbage,” the confession is under the mind. He throws his unincorporated ancestors like a rock. What’s really surprising is that he embodies the same American miracle his family relies on, except he doesn’t apologize for it. Where his people were silent and despairing, he came smart and bound. And he can’t stand that.

And let’s not forget that this is the same man who says Somalia “stinks.” Trump has never been to Somalia, and he has never set foot on the African continent as President. And yet, he speaks of African air as the world’s air of oxygen. He never stopped in Mogadishu and took a breath. So, really, a finger?

But let’s talk about what’s safe in America: leaky pipes, chemical fires, and silent emergencies are tolerated as normal. In Flint, Michigan, families are still living with water damage after officials questioned it. A few months ago, the EPA finally lifted an emergency order on the city’s water supply. In Jackson, Mississippi, all its neighbors can’t trust the touch. In EAST Palestine, Ohio, poisoned bacon was washed away with poisonous bacon and vinyl chloride while residents were told not to worry about what they could snatch. Along the Gulf Coast, conferenceries and petrochemical plants fume the air with benzene and flags while asthma rates soar and cancer clusters soar. Across Appalachia, abandoned mines spilled acid into creeks, and in farmland, pesticides washed off school grounds. Add in excess, crumbling bridges, ever we endesmed, and houses that cost more than survival itself, and tell me and you live in the world of “smells”. Decay here in the US is not foreign. It is infrastructure. It’s natural. In politics.

Trump also said, his words, not mine, the Somalis “include nothing.” Lie to me.

In the United States, refugees, Somali Americans included, are not Common Stories. They are economic engines. A national analysis by the American Immigration Council found that refugees in the US receive $93.6 billion in household income in one year, money flowing into housing, travel, education, and education.

In cities like Minneapolis, Columbus, and Seattle, Somali businesses have revitalized roads, created jobs, and returned investors that other investors left. The Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis documented how Somali businesses in Minnesota turned failed subs into thriving hubs that are now regional anchors. When Trump says “Nothing,” cash registers, paychecks, and tax receipts say otherwise.

And the donation doesn’t stop at America’s borders. The Global Somali Diaspora is one of the most important economic areas keeping Somalia from collapsing. Remittances from Somalis abroad send about $1.3 billion a year to Somalia. This is the money that pays for food, medicine, school fees, and rent for millions of families. The World Bank estimates that remittances make up a quarter of Somalia’s economy in some years. Without the diaspora mane, hospitals would close, schools would shut down, and famine would break out.

Humanitarian organizations have noted that Somali Amitances regularly withdraw international aid. The Rift Valley Center reports that private money from Somalis abroad does more to strengthen daily life in Somalia than the entire foreign aid program. Trump calls it “nothing.” But the people who survive on those dollars call it life.

Even political contributions are measured. Somali Americans vote, run for office, build mosques and community centers, and revitalize school boards and city councils. PBs wrote that Somali communities in Minnesota have become politically active, re-engaging in local politics, organizing local aid, and seeking a voice in policy that affects them. That is not “nothing.” Community participation at work.

The Center for American Progress found that refugees and immigrants increase employment rates over time, start businesses at higher rates, and strengthen regional economies. Somali families, like many immigrant communities, go from survival to being able to establish an identity. This is the exact pattern that defined Irish families, Italian families, Jewish families, and Thiwu’s own ancestors.

The facts speak for themselves. Somali Americans contribute to US GDP. They contribute to the tax base. They give to the neighbor. They support all their countries abroad. They rebuild war-torn societies with private money where governments fail. They are employers, investors, voters, and self-denial.

“Nothing” is an acronym that erases performance, survival, billions of dollars of economic activity, and millions of acts of care.

What Trump calls “nothing” is the work of people bringing together two nations at the same time. People paying US taxes while supporting Somali families abroad. People building US businesses while rebuilding schools overseas. Building wealth here while preventing hunger there.

That’s not rubbish. Rep. Ilhan Omar is not trash. Somali people do not give up. Garbage is what politicians try to throw away. And the sternn comes from the mouth of the child you say.

Dr. Stacey Patton Is an award-winning journalist and author of “SLARE FOR CHILDREN: WHY CHILDREN WILL SAVE AMERICA’S PUBLICITY” AND MAKE “FREE SHOPPING: Read his keeper here.

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