Despite familiar refrains of xenophobia. Kansas has shown a welcoming spirit. We can do it again.

President Donald Trump addresses the nation from the Diplomatic Room of the White House on Dec. 17, 2025. (Photo by Doug Mills - Pool/Getty Images)

America’s xenophobia and racism are again manifesting. On Dec. 2, the current president of the United States engaged in a racist tirade during a cabinet meeting, denigrating Somali immigrants as “garbage,” asserting that the nation of Somalia “stinks,” and declaring that America was “going the wrong way if we continue to accept immigrants who are not worthy of our country.”

Although Trump’s rhetoric is directed at the Somali population in Minnesota, it is crucial to acknowledge that Kansas also has a significant Somali community that will face threats and scrutiny. Furthermore, Kansas serves as an example of how hateful, xenophobic language can incite extremists to transition from rhetoric to violent action.

In 2019, three men from southwest Kansas were sentenced to substantial prison time for conspiring to detonate a bomb at an apartment complex in Garden City, where a number of Somali refugees lived. The three men used familiar xenophobic talking points about the refugee population, including dehumanizing language — calling them “cockroaches.”

Garden City and other regions of Kansas have experienced a substantial increase in Somali residents since the beginning of the 21st century. They migrated to the state, finding employment opportunities in the cattle and meatpacking industry.

These immigrants from Somalia, and those from other parts of the world, contribute to Kansas’ economy, pay taxes and help drive an agriculture-based industry that feeds the nation.

Trump’s rhetoric is not novel in America. In 1905, there was a debate regarding increased immigration, particularly immigrants from Southern Italy, Russia, Austria and Hungary. Nations that the popular Baptist minister Madison C. Peters claimed were not the most favorable “recruiting grounds under the sun for American citizens.”

Using familiar rhetoric, Peters and others, with no evidence, insinuated that the European nations were acting in self-interest by “allowing criminals their freedom on the condition of their emigration to the United States.” This furthers a common refrain of the current president that there was “no difficulty in accounting for the large increase in crime in America and its corresponding decrease” in the nations that are opening their prisons and asylums.

As a testament to the importance of understanding history, one nation legally opened its prisons to send criminals to North America.

In 1717, the British Parliament passed the Transportation Act, which authorized the release of convicted criminals and their subsequent transportation to the colonies for labor purposes. Consequently, between 1718 and 1775, more than 50,000 individuals were released from British, Irish and Scottish prisons, provided they departed for the British North American colonies.

This history was succinctly articulated by James Marmaduke Boddy, an African American minister and essayist, in a letter to the editor of the New York Tribune in response to Peters. In the piece, he concluded by reminding readers that America was largely founded by the “so-called ‘scum of Europe.’”

Today, we again watch the Trump administration employing unsubstantiated claims of nations emptying their prisons and asylums to inundate the country with criminal elements. Simultaneously, the White House consistently relies on xenophobic and racist rhetoric to disseminate falsehoods and incite fear among immigrants and populations of color throughout the nation.

We observed this phenomenon during the 2024 presidential campaign, when then-candidate Trump asserted that Haitian immigrants were “eating the dogs. They’re eating the cats. They’re eating the pets of the people that live” in Springfield, Ohio.

A few years earlier, Trump referred to Haiti and several African nations as “s***hole countries” and pondered reasons behind the influx of immigrants and refugees from these nations rather than locations more suitable for the United States, such as Norway. Peters did the same more than century earlier.

Recently, Trump has again resorted to xenophobia and racism. In an unsubstantiated attack on an entire immigrant community, he disseminates misinformation and disinformation, ultimately intimidating and terrorizing specific groups of people.

We need to embrace the diversity that immigration provides to our nation, states and communities. We should address the dysfunctions and corruptions within our systems, not scapegoat the supposed outsider.

We need to say no to hate and division.

In 1876, Benjamin “Pap” Singleton wrote to Kansas Gov. Thomas Osborn, announcing that he and other Black Tennesseans would move to Kansas in search of a “better place.” This event marked the beginning of the Exoduster Movement, which brought thousands of Black migrants to Kansas to live and prosper.

Kansas has, from its inception, advocated for inclusion rather than exclusion.

Many residents of the Kansas territory opposed the expansion of slavery within our borders. Nearly a century later, young Black activists in Wichita demonstrated to the nation how to fight for desegregation by leading the nation’s first modern lunch counter sit-in at the influential Rexall-controlled Dockum Drug Store. Activists in Topeka championed desegregated education and became plaintiffs in the landmark Brown v. Board of Education decision. Finally, more than two decades before Brown, Mexican immigrants led protests against segregated schools in Wyandotte County.

These incidents collectively illustrate Kansas’ efforts to establish a multiracial democracy. While not always effortless or flawless and often achieved through the activism of Black and immigrant communities, change has come. Kansas has evolved into a more inclusive and prosperous society by embracing diversity and the contributions of residents.

I would prefer to reside in a nation and state that fights for the existence of a multiracial democracy. A country that recognizes the significant power and strength that America has gained through a more welcoming immigration policy.

The point shared by Rev. James Boddy, President Barack Obama and President John F. Kennedy: “We are and will always be a nation of immigrants. We were strangers once too.”

Such a belief will always be a more inspiring and welcoming sentiment than “they contribute nothing. I do not want them in our country.”

Shawn Leigh Alexander is a professor of African & African-American Studies at the University of Kansas. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.