The disastrous collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Patapsco River last week after being rammed by a gigantic container ship five times when high as Baltimore’s Washington Monument is high on March 26 shocked the world. It led to the death of a half- hundred men, crippled the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore, putting thousands of jobs in danger, disrupted provide chains, deceased- ended the Baltimore Beltway’s northeast half and raised important maritime safety issues.
But if there is one element of this tragedy that is expected, it is this: All six of the victims, each one of them hired by a native contractor to complete potholes and make other habit repairs to the bridge’s surface on the over shift, were immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
Refugees from Latin America are overwhelmingly represented in the labour pool when it comes to this kind of laborious, never particularly well-paid, and potentially dangerous work. According to statistics from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, catastrophic injuries attributed to labor had increased among U.S. Hispanic or Latino workers, particularly in the development industries. Actually in 2020, when the COVID- 19 pandemic caused such casualties to rise overall, they decreased more for non-Latinos, registering a 10.7 % decrease in overall work-related fatalities, while Hispanic and Latino numbers dropped only 3.8 %.
The bridge collapse victims ‘ families and friends have shared stories of loving, hardworking men who frequently send money to relatives back home. Compare that fact to how refugees have been characterized by some significant political characters in this nation. Previous President Donald Trump has made some particularly dehumanizing remarks, calling out on immigrants for “poisoning the heart of our state,” a term that seems to have been taken from the Nazi playbook, and for bringing languages that “nobody speaks” to Fox Business host Maria Bartiromoo to ask if the collapse may be connected to President Joe Biden’s “wide- available” border policies.
Others have attempted to make a connection between the tragedy on the Patapsco and “diversity, equity, and inclusion,” as if a bridge constructed in the 1970s in a city with a majority of Black people or a cargo ship built in South Korea and operating under a Singapore flag had to be suspect due to these non-white connections. Mayor Brandon Scott made the observation last week that he has been repeatedly described as the” DE I mayor” on social media by those who, it seems, do n’t know that the state has responsibilities for the port and the Key Bridge. However, this is really just a way of identifying incompetence with blackness, as the mayor and others have noted, by using the n-word without actually saying it. ” I have no time for foolishness”, Gov. Wes Moore spoke to a CNN interviewer on Sunday. The rest of us should not at all.
In 2024, the political climate in the United States is as follows. Some people are much more comfortable blaming an immigrant for a rape and murder in Georgia than acknowledging that six hardworking people who perished in Baltimore had a significant impact on society. Even though it is necessary to improve security along the southern border of this nation, it must not come at the expense of demonizing those who come here looking for a better life. How much better to instead of donating to the GoFundMe page set up by the Latino Racial Justice Center or the Baltimore Civic Fund, which is also raising money for those families, to help the victims ‘ families? They deserve the assistance, and we deserve to demonstrate how Baltimore continues to be a place of kindness and compassion.
Editors of the Baltimore Sun provide commentary and analysis on news and reader-relevant topics. They operate separately from the newsroom.
