Another NC county school board member blames immigrants for nationwide spread of COVID

For the second straight night, a member of a North Carolina county school board without evidence blamed undocumented immigrants for the nation’s rise in COVID-19 cases.

Union County school board member Gary Sides ranted against immigrants near the end of a meeting Tuesday that drew a packed crowd. During the public-comment part of the regular board meeting, parents and others spoke for and against mask wearing in schools. Hundreds with posters and signs chanted earlier that night outside the school district building, WBTV reported.

Sides said his board had been inundated with emails and calls about masks, including some asking why it wasn’t following guidance from Gov. Roy Cooper and the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The CDC recently said masks should be worn in all indoor settings, but the Union County school board hasn’t reversed its previous vote to make masks optional in the 2021-22 school year for students, teachers and staff.

After CMS vote, here’s where some NC school districts stand on masks for students, staff

“To me, it’s not about as much an argument over the science of masking ... or the science of vaxxing or not,” Sides told his fellow board members, according to a recording of the meeting on YouTube by the Union County Public Schools. “I feel those are decisions for you, your family and your doctor. Really, it’s something deeper than that, as far as a trust issue.

“If you’ve been following the news, you know that our southern borders — Texas Arizona, southern parts of California — are basically open,” he said. “It’s been estimated to date some 1 million illegal or undocumented, however you want to call it, have come across the border from not just Mexico but other South American (sic) countries, Cuba, Haiti, others.”

NC county school board member blames unmasked ‘illegal aliens’ for COVID rise

Without being tested for COVID, he said, people “are put on buses and transported throughout our country. We could even have some in Union County. If this isn’t a super spreader, I don’t know what is.”

Sides said if the U.S. government wasn’t addressing the influx, “I have a hard time believing what they are instructing the rest of us to do.”

That’s when another board member, the Rev. John Kirkpatrick, took issue with Sides.

“Madame Chair, if I may,” Kirkpatrick said to board Chairperson Melissa Merrell, “I feel that was uncalled for, personally, because that has nothing to do with what we as board (are) responsible (for) as pertains to these children and families in the Union County Public Schools.”

He called the remarks “very degrading to some who may have families who’ve come from those countries ... and that has nothing to do with the business that we are called to handle.”

Kirkpatrick, who is Black, said if any group should have an issue trusting government, it should be his, “people of color.”

“For so long, people have not wanted to teach history because people have not taught it properly and people have not had confidence,” he said. “That’s why there’s some people who have a concern about even taking the vaccine.

“If any culture should have an issue with trust in the government, it should be ... people of color such as myself who have been used for so long as guinea pigs and who have been disrespected for many, many years.”

On Monday night, Cabarrus County school board member Tim Furr also said, without evidence, at a board work session that unmasked “illegal aliens” are to blame for the recent rise in COVID cases nationwide, the Observer previously reported.

Blaming immigrants and the media

In response to Furr’s remarks, Héctor Vaca, spokesman for the Latino advocacy group Action NC, told The Charlotte Observer: “There’s a long history in the United States of blaming immigrants for pandemics.”

He cited the false blaming of Mexicans, Spaniards, Chinese and others for such outbreaks, as seen in the names those outbreaks were given. At a campaign rally last year, now-former President Donald Trump mockingly called COVID “kung flu.”

An Axios/Ipsos poll released Tuesday found that among the unvaccinated, 37% blame people traveling to the U.S. from other countries, 27% (mainstream media), 23% (Americans traveling to other countries), 21% (Biden) and 10% (the unvaccinated), McClatchy News reported.

Meanwhile, among vaccinated respondents, 79% blame the unvaccinated, 36% (former President Donald Trump), 33% (conservative media), 30% (people traveling to the U.S.) and 25% (Americans traveling outside the country).

Whom do unvaccinated Americans blame for COVID surge? Here’s what a poll found

CDC recommendations

U.S. government health officials blame unvaccinated Americans for the latest rise in COVID-19 cases, the Observer previously reported.

“Infections happen in only a small proportion of people who are fully vaccinated, even with the Delta variant,” according to a July 27 post by the CDC.

The CDC said even fully vaccinated people should begin wearing a mask in public settings again, including K-12 schools and regardless of vaccination status.

Charlotte-area hospital experts agree with the new mask guidelines, the Observer reported.