WALLS ARE FOR LOSERS

Donald Trump loves losers, or loves to hate them at least. He also loves walls, or more specifically the idea of a massive one that stretches the length of our southern border with Mexico. The irony here — which ought not be surprising, we are talking about Donald Trump — is that historically, walls are for losers.

Walls serve the purpose of keeping people either in or out — generally out; either way, a wall is a symbol of losing, and the wall that many conservatives want the U.S. to build along its border with Mexico would make Americans big losers.

If a wall keeps people in, they are prisoners. They likely did something to be put in prison — committed a crime, lost a war, and so on. Winners don’t keep themselves shut in, nor can they be shut in against their will.

If a wall is meant to keep enemies out, the people behind it are likely the losers. Unable to take control of circumstances, they’ve instead chosen to hide behind a wall in the hopes that others will be unable to scale, topple, circumvent, or otherwise get around said wall, rather than confront the larger problem. Hide behind the big wall long enough and the bad guys go away.

Historically, of course, we have ample evidence of how walls fail. The Berlin Wall and the figurative Steel Curtain were ultimately incapable of stopping the spread of ideas and freedom from west to east even if they were temporarily able to prevent or deter the spread of people from east to west.

The largest wall in the world, so big it can be seen from space, was meant to keep the Mongols and other steppe peoples on the plains north of China where they belonged, but that didn’t work out too well either.

Perhaps the most successful wall is Israel’s Iron Dome — much better at shooting down rockets than keeping out people, as last year’s conflict in Gaza proved. While Israel’s defensive walls may help keep Palestinians and terrorists out, those walls have done nothing to alleviate the underlying tensions and demographic issues that will ultimately render them useless.

Which brings us back to Trump and the grand wall he and many conservatives imagine along our southern border, protecting white Americans and America’s whiteness. That is, after all, what this is about. I recently read a profile on Trump in the New Yorker, and there was one quote from a Trump supporter which made clear just how big of a losing proposition this wall would be:

“Trump, on a gut level, kind of senses that this is about

demographics, ultimately. We’re moving into a new America.” He said, “I don’t think Trump is a white nationalist,” but he did believe that Trump reflected “an unconscious vision that white people have — that their grandchildren might be a hated minority in their own country.”

Logistics and costs aside — let’s face it, this is a multi-year, multi-billion dollar project at best — imagine this wall is actually built. What is it doing to alleviate the racial and racist fears of Trump’s supporters, that we whites may be a hated minority in “our own country?” The answer, of course, is nothing. Already at great odds with so-called fiscal conservatism, such a wall does nothing to change the demographic expansion rates of different ethnic populations already living in America. Nor will it ease the underlying tensions that have galvanized white supremacists around Trump. A wall will not ensure that my white grandchildren are not a hated minority here in America; in fact, a wall makes such an outcome more likely.

A wall on the border won’t keep immigrants out of Arizona any more than the Berlin Wall kept freedom out of East Berlin.

What a wall will do is send the message to minority populations that they’re not welcome here. In other words, a wall makes the fears of white supremacists more, not less likely. A wall reinforces the message that this is an America for white people, not an America for everyone, and when it inevitably turns into an American for everyone, the fact that white Americans tried to prevent it isn’t going to play so well.

When the demographics of America ultimately change, what will the role and legacy of white Americans be? To believe we may end up as a hated minority is not terribly far-fetched. After all, our nation has a horrible legacy of slavery and racism that we refuse to confront, and which still has tremendous negative consequence for minority groups today.

Rather than acknowledging that the Civil War was about slavery, we still have people performing intellectual acrobatics trying to prove that it was about states’ rights. We still proudly display a symbol that is explicitly and exclusively racist as a sign of our “heritage.” We have codified systemic racism in a way that makes it possible for a black man my age to serve years in prison for possessing a tiny amount of marijuana, whereas I — a white man — might end up with a slap on the wrist. And of course it’s fantastical to imagine a scenario in which a black cop in a predominantly white neighborhood stops a young white man, argues with him about walking down the middle of the street, and somehow ends up in a conflict that leads to the young white man’s death. That does NOT happen in America, and if it did, there’d be hell to pay. So yeah, given white America’s failure to confront the realities of racism in our nation, it’s not ludicrous to think we might become a hated minority.

I have an idea! Let’s reinforce the message that white Americans are paranoid racists by building a wall to keep out brown people! That will reverse historical, demographic trends and ensure this woeful end for white people doesn’t come about!

It’s hard to overstate what a bad idea this is. It makes no logical sense, and history shows it will fail. There are no examples to my knowledge that turned out well in the long run for the people hiding behind big walls. None.

Trump can play to our worst selves and scapegoat minorities all he likes. If it works and he gets elected, he can even waste time and money building a wall (one wonders if he’ll use Hispanic laborers). But he won’t change the demographics or foster togetherness; he’ll build resentment. The best way for whites not to feel like a minority in our own country is to realize we aren’t the only ones who live here, and until it truly becomes everyone’s country, walls will only delay the inevitable and make the reckoning worse.

Walls are for losers. And chasing the fantasy of an America kept white by a southern wall will make us the biggest loser among all the nations on the scrap heap of history whose walls failed to protect them.

#Immigration