Failed Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams on Friday accused President Donald Trump and his administration of having an intentional “strategy to erase certain communities from the national narrative,” which she said is “most evident through the citizenship question” on the Census.
Speaking at a National Security Action event in Washington, DC, Abrams said the citizenship question has not been used “since the weaponization of immigration has been part of our body politic” after the country had more “robust international immigration” after the 1960s.
She said the citizenship question is designed to reduce the count of illegal immigrants and “mixed families” and added that it “targets black men” by propping up counts in states in which they are imprisoned instead of their home states. Abrams said poorer communities, as a result, never get the resources they need to respond to the “mass incarceration” crisis.
Abrams also said the Census ignores children in poor communities, leading to overcrowded schools that “never get the resources.”
She also said the decision to move the Census online may seem like a good idea, but pointed out that up to 50 percent of some communities in rural areas in the south, midwest, and the west do not have access to broadband, which means those communities will not be able to respond to the Census.
Abrams, who has not closed the door on a potential 2020 White House bid, claimed that all of this is intentionally “designed to erase populations from the story of America for the 21st century.”
“If we do not do this right, we will have an entire generation that is erased from the narrative from 2020 to 2030,” Abrams warned after accusing Trump of “homophobia, racism, xenophobia.” “And if you thought the last 10 years were bad, watch what happens if we don’t deal with the Census this year.”