[Baltimore Sun] How Key Bridge tragedy ties into immigration, DEI debates | STAFF COMMENTARY
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Last week’s disastrous collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge over the Patapsco River after being rammed by a giant container ship five times as long as Baltimore’s Washington Monument is tall in the early morning hours of March 26 shocked the world. It led to the death of a half-dozen men; crippled the Helen Delich Bentley Port of Baltimore, putting thousands of jobs in jeopardy; disrupted supply chains; dead-ended the Baltimore Beltway’s eastern half and raised critical maritime safety issues.
But if there is one element of this tragedy that is unsurprising, it is this: All six of the victims, each one of them hired by a local contractor to fill potholes and make other routine repairs to the bridge’s surface on the overnight shift, were immigrants from Mexico, Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador.
When it comes to this kind of arduous, not especially well-paid and potentially dangerous labor, immigrants from Latin America are disproportionately represented in the labor pool. Data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics show that work-related fatal injuries among U.S. Hispanic or Latino workers have been on the rise, particularly in the construction trades. Even in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic caused such fatalities to drop overall, they fell more for non-Latinos — a 10.7% decline in total work-related fatalities —while Hispanic and Latino numbers dropped by just 3.8%.
Families and friends of the bridge collapse victims have shared stories of loving, hardworking men devoted to their families, often sending money to relatives back home. Now, contrast that reality to how immigrants have been characterized by some major political figures in this country. Former President Donald Trump has spoken in especially dehumanizing terms, lashing out about how immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country,” a phrase seemingly lifted from the Nazi playbook, and bringing languages that “nobody speaks.” Even the Key Bridge disaster quickly — and rather incredibly given the circumstances — triggered similar anti-immigrant rhetoric with Fox Business host Maria Bartiromo asking guest U.S. Sen Rick Scott if the collapse might be linked to President Joe Biden’s “wide-open” border policies.
Others have attempted to connect the disaster on the Patapsco to “diversity, equity and inclusion” as if a bridge built in the 1970s in a predominantly Black city or a cargo ship built in South Korea and operating under a Singapore flag must be suspect because of these non-white connections. Mayor Brandon Scott observed last week how he’s repeatedly been labeled the “DEI mayor” on social media by those who obviously don’t know that the port and the Key Bridge are the responsibilities of the state. Yet, as the mayor and others have noted, this is really just a way of associating Blackness with incompetence — of using the n-word without actually saying it. “I have no time for foolishness,” Gov. Wes Moore told a CNN interviewer on Sunday. Nor should the rest of us.
This is the state of politics in the United States of 2024. Some are far more comfortable blaming an immigrant for a rape and murder in Georgia than they are acknowledging that six hardworking immigrants who died in Baltimore had played a useful role in our society. Whatever the imperative to improve security at this country’s southern border, it need not be at the cost of vilifying those who come here seeking a better life. How much better to instead invest ourselves in comforting the victims’ families, perhaps donating to the GoFundMe page established by the Latino Racial Justice Center or to the Baltimore Civic Fund, which is also raising money for those families? They deserve the help, and we deserve to show how Baltimore is still a place of humanity and compassion.
Baltimore Sun editorial writers offer opinions and analysis on news and issues relevant to readers. They operate separately from the newsroom.
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