[SIZE=6]Donald Trump’s ‘Shithole’ Roots[/SIZE]
Liz Mair • Jan. 17, 2018, at 1:00 p.m.
In the days since news broke about President Donald Trump’s alleged “shitholes” comment, which appeared to denigrate not just the physical locales, economies and facilities of El Salvador, Haiti and Africa, but also to hint that immigrants coming from these places were inherently undesirable, there has been plenty of criticism of the commander-in-chief. Virtually all of it centers on allegations that the president is a racist, an impression he unfortunately gives off quite frequently and a notion he does little to dispel.
But there is another criticism of Trump’s remarks altogether that is being missed. In speaking disparagingly of immigrants, and immigration, from “shitholes,” he is in fact choosing to ignore his basic family history, which should inform far more than his decisions as to where in the world to site Trump golf courses.
I will forewarn readers of this column, especially friends and family, that many of them are bound to be offended by what I am about to say. But say it, I must: A key member of President Trump’s family, like members of my own family who immigrated to the U.S. from Scotland, came from what could also fairly be described as a “shithole.”
That’s how a lot of immigration to America historically and currently works. People with drive and ambition who are born into poor socio-economic circumstances in places where they cannot advance and fulfill their potential often desire to leave those places. And in many if not most cases, the U.S. is the place they most want to leave for, because here, in general, the circumstances you were born into need not dictate what you achieve in life. Here, people are free, economic opportunity abounds and a great deal is achievable that is not in immigrants’ home countries. And here’s the kicker: This was especially the case for Mary Trump, who immigrated to the U.S. in 1930.
Mary Trump, born Mary MacLeod, was Donald Trump’s Scottish-born-and-raised mother. She came from the outskirts of Stornoway, on the Isle of Lewis, in the Outer Hebrides. Lewis is a picturesque place, to be sure, boasting beautiful coastline. But its history is one of ruthless policies by the landowning class, of which Trump’s family was not a part, relative geographic isolation, poverty and extremely limited economic opportunities. When Trump’s mother grew up there, people – including Mary Trump – did not speak English as a first or native language, further impeding their ability to integrate into the broader Scottish or British economy and branding them as the Scottish equivalent of “rednecks.”
Like many Scottish families, Mary Trump’s was pushed off land they occupied during the “Highland Clearances,” a lengthy period of time in which inhabitants were moved off property owned by wealthy figures to make way for sheep farming and other more profitable uses of land.
The Clearances came late to Lewis ( after 1815), so the shock effect of them was generationally closer to Mary, who was born less than 100 years after they began.
Post-clearance, Mary’s family wound up living in a stereotypical Scottish pebbledash house on a croft, a small piece of semi- to fully-farmable land, which is typically held by a tenant subsistence farmer, known as a crofter.
Depending on which account you believe, the house Mary grew up in was either a one-room or a two-bedroom cottage. In either event, it was cramped: Mary was the youngest of 10 children. Trump himself has visited the house, and to say it comes nowhere near to meeting his expectations in terms of what a property should comprise is an understatement. It has been rebuilt, overhauled and upgraded since Mary lived there, but describing the house, even as it stands now, as “modest” is a grave understatement.
Mary’s father was a crofter, as well as a fisherman, a truancy officer, and later in life, a councilor who reportedly managed the area’s post office. It appears she made it as far as the equivalent of eighth grade in school, and then presumably moved into the workforce, such as it was on Lewis in the day, to help the family piece together whatever income it could. Probably this involved digging for peat, attempting to grow crops in difficult terrain and possibly helping her father with fishing in what was, and is, an incredibly harsh environment. None of this is exactly clear, because Trump speaks infrequently, and then fairly briefly, about his mother. But as CNN noted in a piece about Trump’s Scottish roots, “In a good year they had just enough; in a bad year, life was even harder.”
The bottom line was, a croft like the one in which Mary grew up could sustain one family, but not if the kids married and had children of their own. Of course, that was tough to achieve in the aftermath of the First World War, too. Fifteen percent of Lewis’ men who fought in the war died; another group, 205 of them who made it through the war, drowned when the ship bringing them home sank off the island.
No Scot, either by birth or by heritage, wants to speak ill of Scotland. The fierce pride that we see in many Trump voters, people whose ancestors themselves left Scotland in the aftermath of earlier Highland Clearances, in many cases, is not foreign to those claiming the nationality or ethnicity in the modern day.
But it’s impossible to escape the obvious conclusion here: Lewis, at least when Mary Trump grew up there, was a shithole. And understandably, like many of today’s Salvadorans, Haitians, and Africans, Mary Trump was desperate to get out and make it to America.
Which is exactly what she did, ditching Lewis just before she turned 18, and heading to America to work as a “domestic,” the kind of job that immigrants coming from “shitholes” do to get one foot on the economic ladder and start climbing.
As it was, Mary got very lucky. She married Trump’s father, who was far better off economically than her.
Some Scots of that generation would say that Fred Trump married “beneath” him. But the truth is, Mary, like so many immigrants, was not defined by the socio-economic status or environment she was born into. Ultimately, she was defined by what she made of life—a life in which she made conscious, deliberate, and risky decisions that led her to a free, more economically prosperous and opportunity-rich America where she died a wealthy woman. That is much of what America is all about.
When President Trump thinks about the issue of immigration, he would benefit from thinking more deeply about his mother’s experience. Yes, she came from Scotland, not Sierra Leone, or Haiti or El Salvador. But like people from those places, she grew up in poverty with a deep desire to get ahead and make a better future for herself, whatever it took; she was willing to go somewhere where she needed to function in a non-native language and physically distance herself from friends and family to do what was hard, low-paid work, making a bet that she would ultimately get ahead and be able to do good things for the people who then surrounded her: Americans, who she helped with philanthropic endeavors and volunteering.
These are the kinds of immigrants America wants; not ones that come from here or there, poverty or wealth, but people who are prepared to bust their butts 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days a year to better themselves, and better their neighbors, the vast majority of whom will always be native-born Americans. Of course, we should think about those people, too, perhaps even first and foremost. It’s just that at the end of the day, because far more immigrants look like Mary Trump than the stereotyped welfare-seeking layabout who refuses to learn English, immigration – even, or perhaps especially – from shithole countries remains much more of a good than an evil. Setting aside her marriage to Fred Trump, Mary Trump was more the rule than the exception. Trump, and the rest of us, should remember that.
