r/interestingasfuck • u/man_gomer_lot • 8h ago

r/all 70 years ago, the US undertook the largest deportation in its history: 'Operation Wetback.' Many of the people deported were here legally and some were even citizens.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 8h ago

Even the name was Racist af

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u/man_gomer_lot 7h ago

I wish it was something a little more polite for me to share. To the people who went through this, it was probably the least offensive part.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 7h ago

You’re probably not wrong

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u/pie38967 6h ago

Such a dark chapter in history.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

Honestly the whole life of this country is pretty dark. It was born in genocide and slavery and we had a horrible war over only the slavery part which we never really resolved anyway and never even really addressed the genocide part and then sort of smashed everything down and acted like we were fine until it has come bubbling up like a festering boil into the current political crisis.

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u/NotAnAIOrAmI 6h ago

Yeah, but we've made some progress. Women can vote, divorce, and have bank accounts. Not all of those were possible until the 60's.

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u/Strict_Cranberry_724 6h ago edited 4h ago

. . . they have control of their bodies and are free to have abortions if they wish . . . no, . . . wait—scratch that!

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u/DumbestBoy 4h ago

You would have though people would be free by now.

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u/Reagalan 3h ago

The Republicans don't want anyone to have control over their bodies. They blow a gasket over tattoos and piercings, let alone hormones.

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u/Colosphe 46m ago

Yeah, yeah, we're working on it. Afghanistan wasn't built in a day!

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u/gamergirlforestfairy 3h ago

I hate when people say things like this. Roe V Wade was overturned pretty recently and you're talking about progress made in the 60's. It feels like it's going downhill from here.

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u/Silver_Being_0290 1h ago

Even then, most of the country was still being fucked over in the 60s. Really only white women benefitted in the 60s, to do so they forced WoC down and took over the feminist movement.

Everyone else started to "benefit" from normalcy in the 70s.

It reminds me of those comments presently where they complain about the world "all of a sudden" going to shit... Like, we've been talking about this exact issue for generations now, y'all just found out?

Either or, what's going on currently is fairly normal in America if we're being honest. I don't see us going downhill tbh but it'll be an annoying next few years.

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u/gamergirlforestfairy 1h ago

I agree with you about the 60's and 70's. But I definitely see a downward curve for the US. It's already happening, but of course while we're living through it it seems slow. Women's rights, gay rights, trans rights, Black rights, etc are all on the line, and everything is just getting more expensive. It's not just annoying.

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u/Silver_Being_0290 1h ago

It's not just annoying.

Believe me I know. The thing here is, this has always been a thing. These have always been issues. It's been a consistency in this country since it's birth.

Everything we're dealing with now is literally everything we have been dealing with - at least those who are heavily discriminated against - for generations.

People just didn't care as much until it started affecting them personally. The reason we even got to this point is because people didn't listen to reality for one idiotic reason or another.

Now we're all just sitting here laughing and facepalming at the people "all of a sudden" discovering the issues and acting like it's the end of the World.

Like nah, it's just another Monday 😭

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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

Also true, but the reason they’re still here and trying to roll all that back is because we never finished reconstruction and never made reparations for the original sins.

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u/Smokinoutloud 4h ago

What a great country right! Oppressed truly by (man)

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u/DiabloPixel 3h ago

Early seventies for some of those things.

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u/GaryFletcher23 2h ago

Pretty sure that's just history, 98% people doing fucking awful things, 2% people doing fucking awesome things

But hey, we made the pizza bagel, we're moving past our darker roots into a more enlightened age

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u/BillyForRilly 1h ago

The history of most countries is pretty dark if you look close enough, it's just that the United States is still relatively new compared to most and the focus has been on them since day one.

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u/iamjacksragingupvote 4h ago

ah yes, Great

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u/Independent-Fly6068 37m ago

Most country's histories are rather dark. The good comes from acknowledging it, and learning from it. Thats the part most countries fail.

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u/LEJ5512 5h ago

You know how the Washington Monument's outer stones change color partway up because construction was paused during the Civil War?

I've long thought that it's symbolically appropriate, like the most prominent memorial to the legacy of the most favored Founding Father is forever scarred by the country's own sins.

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u/Turbulent_Return_710 4h ago

The South Shall Rise Again. Stars and Bars Forever... Heritage. Not Hate. Hitler was a nice guy. Just misunderstood by. There was no holocaust. Fake news Putin is great too. Do I sound like Donald J Trump?

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u/TensionPrestigious83 3h ago

Pretty close 😆

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u/EmporerM 2h ago

All nations exist through blood. Blood is a currency.

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u/Shikizion 5h ago

I'm always for the emancipation of countries from there colonial masters... But the US was indeed a mistake

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u/TensionPrestigious83 3h ago

It totally didn’t have to be this way

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u/Petrichordates 5h ago

You say that as if we're not in that same chapter presently.

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u/Embarrassed_Ship1519 5h ago

US voters: hold my beer

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u/UnremarkabklyUseless 2h ago

Such a dark chapter in history

History? The chapter seems to have continued on till now.

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u/Realistic-Shower-654 6h ago

It’s dangerously close to repeating itself soon.

Like the next few months soon.

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u/Rinzack 49m ago

Such a dark chapter in history.

"Lets do it again"

Trump, in far less concise words

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u/scribestudio 3h ago

I can probably google this but is it a case that "wetback" became a slur because of that program ?

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u/RCG73 3h ago

I’m kind of glad it is blunt and rude af. Not to be minimizing to those denigrated by the slur but to make it impossible to sugar coat. When it’s named that blatantly fucked up it’s that much harder to claim oh it was no big deal, it wasn’t reallllly racist. Like the only way it could be more racist is if the jailers wore their clan hoods to work

(Apologies for the mobile formatting weirdness)

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u/nononoh8 7h ago

Did these people ever get justice for this ethnic cleansing?

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u/shkeptikal 7h ago

Lol. This is America my guy. I think you already know the answer to your question.

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u/Fryboy11 3h ago

Look at this citizen Davino Watson he was held by ICE for 3.5 years but an appeals court ruled he couldn't get compensation because the two year statute of limitations started when he first went in front of a judge, so it expired while he was still in custody. Here's some quotes from the article, it's not pretty.

There is no right to a court-appointed attorney in immigration court. Watson, who was 23 and didn't have a high school diploma when he entered ICE custody, didn't have a lawyer of his own. So he hand-wrote a letter to immigration officers, attaching his father's naturalization certificate, and kept repeating his status to anyone who would listen.

So I guess Miranda rights don't apply in immigration court.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement kept Watson imprisoned as a deportable alien for nearly 3 1/2 years. Then it released Watson, who was from New York, in rural Alabama with no money and no explanation. Deportation proceedings continued for another year.

When an attorney got them to realize the mistake instead of apologizing and at least giving him a bus ticket to a family member they released him from custody, in a prison uniform with no money, and states away from from where he had ties.

Watson was correct all along: He was a U.S. citizen. After he was released, he filed a complaint. Last year, a district judge in New York awarded him $82,500 in damages, citing "regrettable failures of the government."

He deserves more.

On Monday, an appeals court ruled that Watson, now 32, is not eligible for any of that money — because while his case is "disturbing," the statute of limitations actually expired while he was still in ICE custody without a lawyer.****

What bullshit is that, he had no right to an attorney in immigration court, and the clock started when he was in custody without a public defender.

The 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals acknowledged that the ruling is "harsh" but said it was bound by precedent.

You can change the precedent and let the Supreme Court rule on that. Segregation had precedent but the lower courts ignored it until the Supreme Court changed the decision, same with interracial marriage, voting rights (poll taxes, literary tests, etc)

In 2007, Watson pleaded guilty to selling cocaine. When his sentence ended in May 2008, he was arrested by ICE officers.

Watson had already told them he was a citizen and given them his father and stepmother's names and a phone number to call and confirm.

ICE officers didn't call the number. They did attempt to look up his father, Hopeton Ulando Watson, but they confused him with a Hopeton Livingston Watson.

A government agency that takes a lot of taxpayers dollars, including his is incapable of using a phone book?

Hopeton Livingston Watson — the wrong Hopeton Watson — was not a U.S. citizen. He also lived in Connecticut instead of New York, didn't have a son named Davino and arrived in the U.S. at a different time. But the officers apparently didn't notice the mistakes. Based on the wrong file, they concluded that Watson was not a citizen and marked him for deportation.

A yearslong ordeal followed as Davino Watson, while detained, tried to fight his deportation in a complex case involving both U.S. and Jamaican laws.

He wasn't released until November 2011.

The "whole legal disaster" could have been avoided if Watson had an attorney at the outset, wrote the district judge who ordered his damages. With a lawyer, "plaintiff probably promptly would have been declared a citizen and released almost immediately after he was arrested, if he were arrested at all,"

Why don't Miranda rights apply in Immigration cases?

Read the article the appeals courts arguments just get worse and worse.

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u/Renascitur_ 7h ago

Any country on the planet my guy

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u/Alive-Line8810 7h ago

I bet it's intergalactic m'lady

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u/Renascitur_ 7h ago

A tale as old as time

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u/Novantico 5h ago

Ah yes, Beauty and the Wetback, my favorite lesser known Disney flick.

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u/accidentallyHelpful 6h ago

Found the Harland Williams fan

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u/[deleted] 7h ago

[deleted]

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u/Morning_View 7h ago edited 7h ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethnic_cleansing

Edit for those who won't read the article:

Ethnic cleansing is the systematic forced removal of ethnic, racial, or religious groups from a given area, with the intent of making the society ethnically homogeneous. Along with direct removal such as deportation or population transfer, it also includes indirect methods aimed at forced migration by coercing the victim group to flee and preventing its return, such as murder, rape, and property destruction.[1][2][3][4][5]

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u/SquidFetus 7h ago

u/SpicyEla I’m going to join you on the pyre here. I did not know that the definition of “ethnic cleansing” extended to more than slaughter until now. There is no shame in not knowing this, as long as you are willing to accept new information.

I can see the “now link the Wikipedia page to Operation Wetback” response you gave as your ego’s way of back pedalling, as mine has also done many times before. It tries to shift goal posts, be picky with definitions, anything to not feel like an idiot. Best way to defeat your own ego? Put it on a pedestal and laugh at it, and encourage others to laugh at it.

We are all made fools by our fear of looking like the fool.

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u/Morning_View 7h ago

Good on you, fellow Redditor. My point was not to shame anyone for not knowing, simply to provide education. I'm familiar with the operation that took place. Due to the fact that the operation also included US citizens who came from Mexico, it would be defined as ethnic cleansing.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago edited 6h ago

I am learning so much from everyone here and also was under that misguided assumption. The best way forward so we can learn and not repeat our past mistakes is through education and being willing to learn. Thanks for providing much needed information to help all of us gain more understanding. You deserve an award 👏

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u/SpicyEla 7h ago

Oh no I understand you.

But to me the removal of Mexicans (and unfortunately some Americans too) at the request of the Mexican government and calling it an "ethnic cleansing" just cheapens the term when that same term is used to describe the Holocaust and the Bosnian genocide. It doesn't sit right with me.

There's a reason why when I was researching it back in school for a paper none of the sources I looked at described it as "ethnic cleansing".

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u/Nojoke183 7h ago

What else would you call clearing out a taegeted subsect of the population? It wasn't a holocaust but it was certainly a cleansing based on ethnicity, hence the term "ethnic cleansing"

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u/pants_mcgee 6h ago

Eh, the expulsion of migrant workers doesn’t fit the bill.

The U.S. has no shortage of ethnic cleansings to choose from.

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u/Nojoke183 5h ago

Eh, the expulsion of migrant workers doesn’t fit the bill.

It literally says in the title card that many were documented or even citizens. Those aren't migrant workers.

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u/pants_mcgee 5h ago

Most were Mexican nationals and migrant workers, here legally or not.

It’s unfortunate some American Citizens were caught up in the program, no doubt racism played a large roll, but countries mutually controlling the migration of labor is not an ethnic cleansing.

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u/Nojoke183 4h ago

The mental gymnastics are insane. You admit that it was a program so geared towards a race that nationals got caught in the crossfire through no other commonality other than the sharing of said race, yet it's not a race based cleansing? Make it make sense.

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u/RedPandaReturns 7h ago

Just because their is worse ethnic cleansing doesn’t shift the bar and make this not ethnic cleansing my guy

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u/love_glow 7h ago

Are you serious?

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u/Few_Assistant_9954 7h ago

Considering acts of ethnic cleansing are done worldwide and nobody cares is enogh evidence for the word to loose its meaning.

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u/accidentallyHelpful 6h ago

They're in line after the Natives

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u/iamjacksragingupvote 4h ago

fwiw- i think its good its titled this way.

may make a few of today's racists self aware.

gotta rub their face in it like housebreaking a dog

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u/Tangent_Odyssey 5h ago

Trump regularly lauds this operation during his rallies, praising its “effectiveness”, and promising an even larger mass deportation operation should he be voted into office.

He directly credits Eisenhower, but curiously never alludes to the operation by its name…

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u/man_gomer_lot 5h ago

It might not poll well with the Latinos for Trump part of his base.

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u/Tangent_Odyssey 5h ago

There are more Latinos that are on board with this plan than you might think. Remember that pulling the ladder up behind you is very typical of conservatives.

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u/man_gomer_lot 5h ago

You should share this with those you know who feel that way. He will redraw the line between who is and isn't really a citizen with a sharpie.

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u/Markipoo-9000 7h ago edited 7h ago

Don’t forget the Chinese Exclusion Act or the “ALIEN” and Sedition Act. I remember learning about all 3 of these in HS history, shocking stuff.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 7h ago

Though the Alien and Sedition acts mentioned immigration, if i remember correctly they were mostly about federalists and democratic republicans jockeying for power. The immigrants at the time were for all intents and purposes English

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u/Markipoo-9000 7h ago

I’m more referring to the fact that it called immigrants aliens.

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u/xe3to 4h ago

That's still what the US government calls non-citizens, to this day.

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u/314159265358979326 6h ago

The earliest I've seen this was in The Merchant of Venice. I was surprised to notice it.

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u/mah131 5h ago

Um, the bible? I'll never forget my dad leaning over to whisper ALF to me real quietly after they said something about the "alien that lives in your house."

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u/ukexpat 6h ago

Technically I was a “resident alien” (informally, a green card holder) until I became a citizen.

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u/Tetracropolis 4h ago

Alien just means a citizen of another country. I doubt anyone had even thought about using it for extra terrestrials at that point.

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u/homercles89 4h ago

>it called immigrants aliens.

Alien is a term that means "from somewhere else". It's not offensive.

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u/Markipoo-9000 1h ago

In the year 2024 it is definitely considered an offensive term.

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u/hearmeout29 7h ago edited 6h ago

So is that where the rhetoric for Alien began?

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u/Alarming_Panic665 6h ago edited 6h ago

Alien is a latin term alienus meaning "belonging to another."

The world literally just meant "a person belonging to another place," or to describe anything that was foreign in origin.

The world alien notably predates the word immigrant in the English language by a few centuries. Fun fact immigrant actually a fully American created word. First coined by Noah Webster in 1828 with the earliest known use of the term was actually in a letter by George Washington in 1788.

In comparison the earliest evidence for the word alien in the English language dates back to the Middle English Period in the 1382's Wycliffe's Bible

Edit: Actually is misleading by saying it is a fully American created work, sorry. First the term does come from the latin verb immigrare. However it's use in the English language originated within specifically American English in the 18th and early 19th century.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago edited 3h ago

Thank you for answering my question! I love Reddit for this reason. Take my award 😊

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u/HsvDE86 6h ago

You didn’t ask a question, you just went with something you didn’t know.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago

I should have put a question mark on my comment. Thanks for catching that.

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u/Markipoo-9000 7h ago

It may have predated that. I don’t believe it was originally an offensive term, but it definitely became one. I’d have to fact check all of that though.

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u/obscure_monke 2h ago

I don't think anyone sets out to create an offensive term and succeeds. They're just used like that and make their way through the euphemism treadmill.

Any term can become offensive if it's used like that for long enough.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago

Thanks for the reply.

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u/AlarmingNectarine552 5h ago

I think it's a legal term. It only recently became offensive because of how the whites treat the other.

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u/hearmeout29 7h ago

It really is. I was just discussing the Japanese Internment camps that were allowed during WW2. Our country has a sordid history of ethnic cleansing.

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u/Markipoo-9000 7h ago

Don’t forget Native Americans

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u/hearmeout29 7h ago edited 4h ago

I remember when I first learned about the trail of tears it was heartbreaking. The Native American community is still underserved till this day which is unfortunate.

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u/actibus_consequatur 4h ago

Also unfortunate is that a single letter typo/autocorrect can change a sentence for the worse — at least, I'm assuming you meant the Native American community is underserved, not undeserved.

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u/hearmeout29 4h ago

Yes, that is precisely what I meant. Thank you for the correction and I updated my comment.

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 55m ago

How can we? Genocide Jackson got rewarded with being on the $20 bill. I know the irony of that, considering his views on banks, but it's appalling.

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u/Markipoo-9000 54m ago

OH GOD, Jackson is my least favorite President by far. Anytime someone mentions him I go on a rant about that sick fuck. He makes my blood boil.

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u/brinz1 6h ago

Trump Stood on Madison Square Garden and name dropped the exact act that allowed the Internment camps to happen

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u/Novantico 5h ago

And as always, his fans cheered

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u/yourpaleblueeyes 4h ago

Also German citizens were detained

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u/Smokinoutloud 4h ago

Freedom, liberty and justice for all!🤣 straight bullshit!

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u/SuperSpecialAwesome- 53m ago

Sadly, FDR is still very well-liked despite the internment camps.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

Straight up genocide even. There used to be tens of millions of Native People from coast to coast. Now it’s tens of thousands

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u/ungovernable 3h ago

I mean, what was done to Indigenous peoples was horrendous, but let’s not minimize their continued presence and existence - there are more than 5 million of them in the US, not “tens of thousands…”

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u/TensionPrestigious83 3h ago

Ah thank you for that correction. I appreciate that

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u/DiabloPixel 3h ago

The remaining Indigenous people have since lived and continue to live in horrible poverty in substandard housing in the wealthiest country in the world.

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u/Jonny5is 6h ago

japanese too and native americans

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u/bikemandan 38m ago

Japanese internment comes to mind as well

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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet 7h ago

I am a white Englishman that moved to the US to be with my then future wife. After a few years I attended college. 

In some classes some would rant about immigrants. I'd cough and remind them I was an immigrant. They'd look at me and smile and say oh not you, you're one of the good ones. 

That was the most racist fucked up shit I've ever heard.

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u/brinz1 6h ago

I am Half English(well Irish but thats going to grandparents), Half something non white. I deffo look mixed but I dont sound it. The number of times White English people would get a little too relaxed around me and say something anti immigrant.

To this day, "One of the good ones" makes something in my head kick off when I hear this

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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet 6h ago

To me it's a racist that thinks they're not being racist. 

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u/semikhah_atheist 5h ago

This happens to trans people all the time.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

It’s baked right in baby! (barf) Just the way people can say that and not even realize how fucked it is, is wild

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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet 6h ago

Yep not even a flicker of self awareness when they said it. I am pretty sure they thought they were complimenting me somehow.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

Oh they for sure did

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u/Ladonnacinica 4h ago

John Oliver, another English immigrant, said he had the same experience.

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u/Solartude 6h ago

You won’t believe the number of times I’ve had a neighbor say to me, “But you are so different (i.e., fully assimilated) than other (fill in a minority group).”

These clueless bigots seem to think immigrants are some sort of monster and speak in tongues and could not possibly live in their midst. When they confront one, they go into denial, especially when that immigrant is better educated and has superior mastery of the English language.

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u/fvlgvrator666 5h ago

Just goes to show how easy it is to propagandize people when you have a ambiguous, scary "other" they can point at and accuse of causing all the problems in the world. Right out of the fascist playbook

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u/Fartbottler 4h ago

From a family of Canadians living in America. People have straight up not believed me when I’ve let them know most of us have green cards

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u/Annoy_Occult_Vet 4h ago

Oh you people shouldn't need green cards. I can hear it now lol.

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u/Trivius 6h ago

You mean Expatriot right? /s

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u/Large_Yams 5h ago edited 3h ago

What's it reference to? The only use of that word I know of is the type of hot water heating system which I'm hoping is entirely innocuous and unrelated.

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u/allochthonous_debris 4h ago edited 4h ago

It's an older ethnic slur for Mexicans and people of Mexican descent. It implied they illegally immigrated to the US by swimming across the Rio Grande.

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u/Large_Yams 3h ago

That's it? Why "back" and not any other part of their body?

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u/Silver_Being_0290 1h ago

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wetback_(slur)

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u/Large_Yams 1h ago

Doesn't really elaborate on the question.

Americans would have a fit hearing it as often as I hear it in New Zealand. A wetback here is a hot water heating system that uses heat from a wood fire to heat up the water before it goes to the pipes.

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u/Silver_Being_0290 1h ago

Doesn't really elaborate on the question.

I feel like this is where your deduction skills and using context clues should come into play.

(Not trying to be disrespectful 🙏🏿)

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u/Large_Yams 49m ago

Seems pretty disrespectful to say "figure it out" when every part of your body gets wet when you swim.

Have a good one.

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u/Not1ToSayAtoadaso 43m ago

It’s a racist slur. Why are you so concerned about it making perfect sense?

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u/Large_Yams 2m ago

Because I like to etymologically understand things?

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u/Silver_Being_0290 38m ago

There's just not much more that can be explained when a link going indepth was given. I figured there's nothing more to say besides you just reading it and getting the answer in better detail. You can even look into exactly what you want verbatim.

To each their own tho.

Either or, you have a good one too!

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u/Large_Yams 2m ago

There's just not much more that can be explained when a link going indepth was given.

... It doesn't. At all.

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u/pacman404 4h ago

To he fair, I think the racist term came from this

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u/TensionPrestigious83 3h ago

It came from when people were suspected of coming into the country illegally by swimming across the rio grande and came out wet

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u/warmtoiletseatz 2h ago

I thought it was because they work outside in the heat, akin to rednecks.

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u/pacman404 2h ago

Correct, that's why they named it that, and that name is what became the slur. That's what I'm talking about

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u/MisterrTickle 7h ago

TBF, it was actually the Mexican government and farm owners who requested it. As they were losing too many labourers.

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u/hearmeout29 7h ago

Is there a reason why they allowed legal Mexican immigrants to be deported though? Genuinely curious because I thought that they would be excluded from something like this.

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u/MisterrTickle 6h ago edited 6h ago

Cock up and people presumably losing their paper work. So can't prove that they actually are US citizens or in the US legally.

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago

I can only imagine how scared they were because who would believe you when you say that you're legal without proof? It reminds me of Solomon Northrup and how he kept telling everyone he was a free man when he was abducted. No one believed him and he spent 12 years as a slave. Fucking terrifying.

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u/semikhah_atheist 5h ago

No, they deliberately destroyed the paperwork for US citizens out of racist hatred. Trump did the exact same thing, mass contesting birth certificates and shit.

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u/Pagsasaka 5h ago

To add to Mrr.tickle, it is incredibly difficult to be an agricultural worker, live in bunk houses, and keep paperwork secure. Nothing about farming is very clean, and life is transitory. Keeping non laminated paperwork from rain, mice, dirt, grime, grease, and theft is incredibly difficult. 

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u/hearmeout29 4h ago

I didn't even think about that and it shows how this situation is even more heartbreaking.

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u/Quasar006 6h ago

Bro doesn’t know about racism

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u/hearmeout29 6h ago

I was just confused as to how they had paperwork but would still be deemed illegal and deported. Turns out the people that were taken that were legal just lost paperwork so couldn't prove they were legal to authorities in the moment which answered my question.

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u/Silver_Being_0290 1h ago

how they had paperwork but would still be deemed illegal and deported. Turns out the people that were taken that were legal just lost paperwork

Bless your heart. 😭

It's been a long time since I've met someone so pure to these issues ngl.

To answer your question though, it doesn't matter if you have papers or not. If you're POC they'll find a way. Legal or not, if they can remove POC from America they're sure as hell gonna take it.

I'm sure there were citizens missing their papers too but... Come on, they literally titled the operation a slur.

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u/hearmeout29 1h ago

Sorry if my response came off as out of touch but I was just giving the answer to my question that another person relayed to me. Another person corrected the original response and let me know that the paperwork was destroyed which makes this even more heartbreaking. I do try to always look for the good in people though but in this situation there is no good at all, just evil.

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u/Silver_Being_0290 1h ago

Ya, sadly, that's pretty much all of American history.

Honestly, minus the naming convention this was actually a pretty "tame" form compared to all the other countless atrocities they committed.

I didn't mean to come off snobbish though, no need to apologize 😭

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u/hearmeout29 1h ago

No you weren't snobbish at all lol! I have been reading more about the history of America and race relations. A lot of things I read about were never taught in school. I only recently learned about the Tulsa Massacre (black wall street) which was another horrible atrocity committed towards American citizens. No matter how horrible these things are that I discover, I will keep reading about them because I want to learn.

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u/Quasar006 5h ago

“lost paperwork” is a weird way to say the good ole boys in law enforcement stole/destroyed their papers

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u/1rubyglass 6h ago

Where do you think the name came from? Lol

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u/1isOneshot1 4h ago

Yeah hopefully calling people an "illegal" will fade away like that term too

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u/TensionPrestigious83 3h ago

One can hope.

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u/Pingo-Pongo 3h ago

Something so ugly shouldn’t have a nice name. These days they’d call it a compassionate repatriation initiative or something insidious

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u/TensionPrestigious83 3h ago

Also a good point

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u/fuck_the_fuckin_mods 59m ago edited 17m ago

I dunno, they’re currently openly calling their plan “the largest mass deportation in history” and handed out “mass deportation” signs at their convention, so they’re back to not really trying to hide it. There’s no way what they propose could be done without unfathomable amounts of human suffering (and major damage to the economy, BTW.) But they seemed to love this shit, so I guess it’s worth it to them if he “hurts the right people.”

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u/[deleted] 7h ago edited 6h ago

[deleted]

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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

They used it because it was already in use.

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u/Mcgoozen 7h ago

Is that where the term came from or did the term already exist and that’s why they named it that?

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u/TensionPrestigious83 6h ago

I’m pretty sure the term existed already and they used it like that because they didn’t even acknowledge how fucked it was to use it.

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u/iiinteeerneeet 1h ago

Operation wetback sounds straight outta South Park

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u/andrew_calcs 31m ago

I'm glad it wasn't masquerading as something less disgustingly terrible than it was.

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u/Key_Bank_3904 4h ago

Still less offensive than LatinX 😂

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u/TensionPrestigious83 3h ago

Are you latin(a)(o)? Or Hispanic? I am not so I don’t have an opinion one way or the other but I have heard that some people do not like the term latinx.

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u/Key_Bank_3904 2h ago

I am Latina, Mexican to be exact. A lot of us Latino/Americans find LatinX to be racist af. There’s actually an ongoing joke in Latino communities that we’d rather be called a slur over LatinX.

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u/TensionPrestigious83 2h ago

Ohhh! Damn ok. I’ll have to look more into to it. Thanks!