Trump’s Racist and Bigoted Anthem of Refugees as Deadly Snakes
In the landmark 100 day Trump-Trods-Triumphant speech in Pennsylvania, Trump tripled down on the song “The Snake”. Trump has made it clear that he means this as applying to Syrian refugees, and Muslims terrorists. In this song, a woman takes in a snake from the cold, and it turns on her and gives her a poisonous bite in the end.
The song, “The Snake”, was written in 1968 by singer-songwriter and social activist Oscar Brown Jr., of Chicago. The family of Oscar Brown Jr., as early as March 2016, wanted Trump to stop using the song, as reported by Lara Weber in the Chicago Tribune. The article implies that the snake might be Trump. Oscar Brown Jr is black and was a black activist in Chicago. The song is based on an Aesop fable, and not on Muslims or immigrants.
The fact that Trump carries this song in his head and has used it at campaign rallies is deeply disturbing. On its face value, it could apply to any charitable giving or kindness to strangers, as preached by Christianity, Judaism, and Islam.
As far as Trump applies it to immigrants, we should remember that Trump’s mother Mary immigrated from Scotland. His father Fred had parents who came from Germany. Trump’s present wife Melania is a model from Slovenia. Trump’s first wife Ivana, mother of Donald Trump Jr., Eric, and Ivanka, , was a Czech model. The grandparents of Jared Kushner, Ivanka Trump’s husband, were Holocaust survivors. Just for completeness, Trump’s second wife Marla Maples is US born and is an actress and television personality, and mother to Tiffany.
Trump’s entire family is embedded among immigrants, and for him to essentially adopt as his campaign’s anthem a song which, as he interprets it, is so demeaning of immigrants, is an embarrassment to Trump himself. In the TV broadcast of his Pennsylvania speech, I could see in the faces of his enthusiastic supporters behind him, that they were aghast and speechless as he recited this song.
I would have preferred that he used the poem on the Statue of Liberty, written by Emma Lazarus called “The New Colossus”. The second verse reads:
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” Cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
