Donald Trump's targeting of the 14th Amendment would dramatically alter the landscape of our country

The cruelty of slavery was so extreme that every aspect of the shameful institution does not get proper consideration. Once you get past loss of personal autonomy, enforced labor without compensation, brutal punishment, separation of families, obliteration of culture ... there's more, but that will do ... there isn't much emotional space left to consider slavery's multigenerational aspect, though that certainly was one of the more horrific features.

You were a slave because your parents had been slaves. Your children, even if conceived by the man who owned you, a common occurrence, would also be slaves. As would be their children. And their children. Onward into eternity.

Take a moment, and try to imagine how grotesque this is. As a parent, I take comfort that my boys are better than me in almost every regard, leading lives that are smarter, less troubled, an all-around improvement. I can't conceive of the agony of being certain your children would be doomed to a fate exactly like yours, to toil in a field. Or worse.

If you're wondering why this bit of American history bobbed to the surface now — it's isn't even Black History Month yet! — that's because among the flurry of executive orders President Donald Trump issued after his inauguration Monday was one aimed at ending birthright citizenship.

Enshrined in the Constitution, the 14th Amendment begins, "All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside."

In a nutshell, if you're born here, you're a citizen.

Since even the president cannot change the Constitution — you need a two-thirds majority in Congress and approval of three quarters of the states — the Trump administration is arguing that the 14th Amendment has "never been interpreted" to grant universal citizenship to those born here. Another untruth to add to the tally.

The legal crack that the Trump administration is trying to squeeze through is the "subject to the jurisdiction thereof" part. If your parents aren't citizens, the argument goes, then you are not subject to the oversight of the United States but an unwelcome interloper whose only relationship to the law is being sent back to wherever you, or your parents, came from.

The American Civil Liberties Union has already filed a lawsuit against the order, calling it "an attack on a fundamental constitutional protection, and one that is central to equality and inclusion." The 14th Amendment, the ACLU said, "is the cornerstone of civil rights in the United States," and "every attack on birthright citizenship, from the 19th century until now, has been grounded in racism."

Birthright citizenship allows the chain of enforced illegality to be broken — your parents might have sneaked across the border, and spent their lives looking over their shoulders, worrying they'll get sent back over a speeding ticket. But you have a claim here, the place you were born and raised. You belong. You have rights.

It seems a fair system, and is the reason the United States isn't locked into the demographic death spiral that so many other industrialized nations — such as Japan or Italy — are facing.

Bad enough that we have 11 million immigrants without legal status living in rightless limbo — and don't write in to bray that your grandfather showed up from Sicily and did everything by the book. Your grandfather was deposited on Ellis Island at age 4 with everyone else, had his scalp checked for fungal infections, and if he didn't have tuberculosis was waved on in. That doesn't make him a genius, or a saint. He arrived at a time when our xenophobia hadn't resulted in a breakdown of the immigration system. Now we have a president whose central campaign promise was to abuse immigrants, for the fun of it.

I know Democrats are rocked back on their heels. Many ignored the inauguration — I didn't watch a second. I would have, but I was writing an obituary, which appears elsewhere in the Wednesday paper.

But ignoring what's happening is a luxury we cannot afford. Put birthright citizenship on your radar. Sure, ending it by executive order might be illegal. But when the Supreme Court is packed with lackeys, what is illegal and what is not is open to wild interpretation. If Trump prevails, he will create a permanent underclass.

It won't be slavery, quite. But it will be in the ballpark. Millions of young people who should be legal American citizens but aren't. A permanent, generational underclass, locked in, without hope of improvement, because their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents lived here but were not citizens. It is the most medieval, un-American thing I can imagine.