Melania Trump gave a speech at the Republican National Convention on July 18. Trump, a white Slovenian immigrant with something of an accent, went on stage to speak about her and Donald Trump’s values. Her speaking in the first place is interesting, considering she is an immigrant. And the man she is married to has built his platform around the idea of refusing and deporting immigrants.
The intrigue only grows when one reads the evidence that she plagiarized phrases from Michelle Obama’s 2008 Democratic Convention speech. If you don’t believe this because Trump’s spokeswoman, Katrina Pierson, defended her by saying, “And this notion that Michelle Obama invented the English language is absurd” [thehill.com], maybe a calculation regarding the chances that Trump didn’t plagiarize by Bob Rutledge, a Canadian physicist, will sway you. He found that there’s a 1 in 87 billion chance she didn’t crib, which happens to be 7,000 times less likely than winning the lottery [sciencealert.com]. Now, who’s being absurd?
What’s captivating about the support for Trump’s immigrant status and the denial of her speech fraud is the sentiment it reinforces.
Stepping back to the plagiarism, it can happen sometimes. But when it comes to events such as the convention, it shouldn’t be shrugged off, but it will be because of from whom it was stolen. Activist Julia Johnson explained this best: “I mean, it’s ridiculous how much this country is based on the exploitation of labor of people of color, of oppressed people, of poor people. So, I’m sure that she thought that she would get away with it, and nobody would care.”
The problem here is that nobody who supports the convention cares; they’ll continue to listen to Pierson defending Trump by saying things such as, “This is a woman for whom English is not her native language …” [msnbc.com].
This excuse is especially striking in the case because it’s an excuse immigrants of color don’t often receive. In fact, I’m sure we’ve all heard atrocious phrases aimed at non-native English speakers to the likes of, “Get out of America if they can’t speak the language.” The assaulter of course is forgetting that the language they are referring to isn’t the official language of our country. On top of this, they live in a country composed of immigrants.
For a country composed of immigrants, it’s appalling how quickly some jump on the bandwagon of deportation and great wall building.
If you support Trump, you support her decision of acquiring U.S. citizenship and immigrant status. Yet, you may also support the deportation of Latinos. Logic says if you support Trump, you should support other people’s attainment of U.S. citizenship and immigrant status. Yet, this is not the case. So there has to be some reason.
The reason that seems clear is reasoned by long-held stereotypes and prejudices against immigrants of color. They invoke faulty logic that explains away white immigrants as travelers or as people seeking a better future in “better country.” Then, simultaneously, that “logic” says immigrants of color are not worthy.
This rhetoric represents the sentiment of the Donald Trump campaign, that being white supremacy will reign.
What the support and defending of Melania Trump by the convention and the party shows us is that this is the party of white power.