President Trump described undocumented Hispanic farmworkers as naturally suited by genes for farm labor, asserting inner-city residents will not do the work. The repeated use of "naturally" and prior comments reveal an emphasis on heredity and "gene" explanations. He previously said "I'm a gene believer" and compared breeding racehorses to human traits. He suggested criminals have "it in their genes" and warned of "bad genes" in the country. Similar racialized characterizations appeared in past presidencies, including Richard Nixon and Grover Cleveland, reflecting a long history of disparaging immigrant groups as inherently unworthy.
President Trump recently talked about undocumented immigrants and farm work: You know, people that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They're just not doing that work. And they've tried, we've tried. Everybody tried. They don't do it. These people do it naturally, naturally. The word naturally is a tell. Forgetting that Hispanic farmworkers often lack any alternative to sweating in the fields for little pay, he suggests their genes suit them for nothing but farm labor.
Contrary to myth, the job is not simple: it requires strength, resilience and dexterity. But Trump does not seem to think that these people come from a good gene pool. Many of them murdered far more than one person, and they're now happily living in the United States, he told Hugh Hewitt last year. You know, now a murderer, I believe this, it's in their genes. And we got a lot of bad genes in our country right now.
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