Why Chicago’s Brandon Johnson fumed at ‘illegal alien’ question

The quote in the title comes from George Orwell, and everybody thinks that he was smart.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson argued that the phrase “illegal alien” strips away the humanity of the person in question.

This NPR article talks about the evolution of the term, “illegal alien”.  Prior to the 1970’s, words like ‘wet back’ were used when referring to Mexicans illegally entering the US.  The LA Times thought that didn’t sound endearing, so suggested “illegal alien” as a neutral phrase.  The term was widely adopted, and used in the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1986.

Within a decade or two, “illegal alien” was accused of being a bigoted code word.  Like most words that take on a negative connotation, the problem isn’t the word, but what it describes. 

“We don’t have illegal aliens,” he said, before making the science-fiction remark. “The legal term for my people were slaves. You want me to use that term, too? So, look, let’s just get the language right.”

Yes Mayor Johnson, they were slaves.  Here’s where the stupid part starts.

To Johnson’s point about Africans brought against their will to the New World, it was only fairly recently that there was a concerted effort to refer to them not by the noun “slave,” but by the adjective “enslaved.” To say, for example, that slaves were imported from Africa, is to say “slaves” is all they were and had ever been. To say that they were “enslaved” is to describe what happened to them without reducing them to that condition.

The problem wasn’t that they were called slaves.  The problem was that African tribes sold their prisoners to traders who took them to America, Brazil and other countries as human life stock.

I used to be a teacher.  That doesn’t imply that I was always, and will always be a teacher. 

This is my teaching assistant from my first year as an instructor at Johns Hopkins Center for Talented Youth.  She was born in Maryland, but her parents immigrated from Taiwan.

I asked Crystal why it was wrong to use the word “Oriental” to refer to her, instead of saying “Asian”.  This was when I first noticed language manipulation, and wanted insight from the target demographic.  She was smart, sensible and not particularly political.

Crystal said that it wasn’t really wrong, just old-fashioned.  She wasn’t offended, neither were White liberals.  Liberals occasionally enforce their will on the culture just so nobody forgets how important they are.

Researching the topic, “Oriental” refers to things, not people.  That’s stupid because nobody knew that.  Saying a person is “Asian” isn’t very specific because it refers to about a third of the world population.

“Words mean things.”  That’s a Rush Limbaugh quote.   An Illegal alien is someone who broke the law, and isn’t supposed to be here.  That’s the concept that Mayor Johnson finds objectionable.

In 2013, The Associated Press, which publishes a stylebook that most mainstream news organizations use, thought better of its previous guidance and steered journalists away from “illegal immigrant” and its variations “illegal alien,” “an illegal” and “illegals.”

The Associated Press and other Progressives are attempting to confuse the issue to conflate people who legally immigrate to America to join our team, and people who regard America as a resource to be exploited.

Johnson has been both cheered by progressives and jeered by conservatives for dressing down the person who used “illegal alien,” and some have pointed out that the phrase has a legal meaning and therefore ought to be OK to use.

Mayor Johnson and other tyrants can avoid using the term if they’d like, but they can just stop coercing everyone else to conform to their world view.