154,000

October 5th was the deadline for students eligible to renew their participation in DACA – Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals. For those students who came to the United States as children, DACA grants them permission to stay and continue their education and civic contributions. To be clear, that means permission to stay in school. Without that protection, they are subject to being corralled, arrested and deported to the countries their parents brought them from.

There are 154,000 students in this category.As of Thursday, there were still 36,000 students who weren’t able to file for an extension.  That means all 36,000 of them are facing imminent arrest and deportation – on their way to math class, or on their way to visit their parents this Columbus Day weekend – the irony of that isn’t lost on me. Needless to say, the majority of students implicated in this are Hispanic. Had they been Central European immigrants, like the Slovenian First Lady, the decisions and sentiment may well have been different.Recently the President suggested that the NFL owners should fire the black “sons of bitches” who kneel during the singing of the national anthem in protest of American cruelty to black people. Not dissimilar to American cruelty towards DACA students. He also said that the owners should, “get ‘em outta here.” Not dissimilar to the reality now facing these DACA students.Let’s imagine, in the spirit of the current climate, the relationship between two subsets of American college students. In the NCAA, there are approximately, 253 division 1 football teams, 128 Football Bowl Subdivision (FBS) and 125 Football Championship Subdivision (FCS). Each team has approximately 100 players. There are roughly 25,300 college football players.  More than half of them are black and at the most elite FBS programs, approaching 80 percent are black.What if the NCAA football players all decided to kneel in solidarity with their fellow collegians, the Dreamers, in addition to kneeling to protest their own exploitation? Today the Vice President of the United States turned his back and walked out of a 49ers Colts game because some of the players knelt during the anthem, exercising their first amendment right. He, the President, and their Alabama comrade, Attorney General Sessions (one of the main drivers of the anti-DACA effort), could say to the NCAA, get those black and brown “sons of bitches outta here, the country has turned its back on them."We want them to run and don’t speak.  We want them to clean and don’t study.This is the reality of American life at the moment. Building an equitable infrastructure for students of color in any subject requires being clear of the battle lines. This administration is making them abundantly clear.kamau[/et_pb_text][/et_pb_column][/et_pb_row][/et_pb_section]

Related Blog Posts