Trump Says Immigrants ‘Do It Naturally,’ Revives Racist Labor Myths

By Stacy M. Brown, Black Press USA Senior National Correspondent

President Donald Trump has sparked new outrage after declaring that undocumented immigrants are “naturally” inclined to perform grueling farm labor — and that people in “inner cities” simply “don’t do that work.” The comment, made Tuesday on CNBC’s Squawk Box, echoes centuries-old racist tropes and comes one year after Trump infamously told Black journalists that immigrants were “taking Black jobs.” “These people do it naturally, naturally,” Trump said, referring to undocumented laborers, primarily of Hispanic descent. “People that live in the inner city are not doing that work. They’ve tried — we’ve tried, everybody tried. They don’t do it.”

He went further, quoting a farmer who claimed that if a worker gets a bad back, “t