Donald. Trump. Long-time racial arsonist. Photo: Gage Skidmore–Flickr.
[Speaking Truth To Empower]
For several weeks, America has witnessed the horribly racist immigration policies of Donald Trump, and his Republicans cronies, separating Latino immigrant children from their families.
The videos of crying children have disturbed a large segment of America, who have taken to the streets to protest this political policy of child abuse. But there are other Americans—primarily, in the Republican base—who back Trump’s racist nativist message that has everything to do with “making America great again,” by making it White again.
The immigration issue, for some time now, has been a major tool of Republicans who use it to turn out the vote ratcheting up racism against non-White immigrants, who they imply are the crux of all America’s problems. Trump’s use of the immigration issue is rooted in the racism he utilized to get elected.
Republicans have used racist fear-mongering to claim immigration is a national security issue. Since Republicans now control the White House, and both chambers of Congress, why haven’t they passed a party-line immigration vote—like they did when they passed their tax-break bill for the wealthy?
Donald Trump’s political stance, which separated 3,000 immigrant children from their parents, goes to the heart of White America’s anxiety and fear on the immigration issue: the nation’s darkening demographics. America’s color complexion is changing, and some White people are freaking out.
According to William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute, “Native-born Whites become less than 50 percent before 2040.” Frey noted that “These new estimates — showing declining White births…and pervasive losses in the nation’s under age 20 White population — indicate that future generations almost everywhere will be increasingly made up of minorities.”
“The minority population is growing, and the non-Hispanic White population is not,” said Kenneth Johnson, senior demographer at the University of New Hampshire’s Carsey School of Public Policy.
Doesn’t this speak to why some don’t support DACA and the “Dreamers?” Doesn’t this also speak to why many supported Donald Trump and his racist invectives?
This is not a viable long-term solution. Promoting justice, and multi-ethnic and racial harmony are the best guarantees against turmoil, conflict and destruction.
After Trump was elected, many White talking-heads, including so-called progressive pundits, embarrassed and unwilling to admit thet were clueless about the extent of racism in the U.S., made the strange claim Trump was elected because Democrats abandoned the White working-class. These folks didn’t seem to consider the flip side of what such a claim insinuated: that Blacks and Latinos were more economically secure than Whites.
There have been several studies which show it was Trump’s racial appeals, and sexism, that won the hearts of average Republicans.
For example, a December 2017 Washington Post survey by researchers Matthew Fowler, Vladimir Medenica, and Cathy Cohen found 41 percent of White millennials who voted for Trump did so because of “White vulnerability’ — the perception that Whites, through no fault of their own, are losing ground to other groups.” They also found “racial resentment was the primary driver of ‘White vulnerability’ — even when accounting for income, education level or employment.”
There was also the March 2018 report, published in Political Science Quarterly, authored by Brian Schaffner, Matthew Macwilliams and Tatishe Nteta entitled “Understanding White Polarization in the 2016 Vote For President: The Sobering Role of Racism and Sexism.”
This report found that “The 2016 campaign witnessed a dramatic polarization in the vote choices of Whites based on (their level of) education… Very little of this gap can be explained by the economic difficulties faced by less-educated Whites. Rather, most of the divide appears to be associated with sexism, and denialism of racism.”
The authors also state “Sure, a lack of well-paying working-class jobs drove support for Trump. But resentment over the changing racial make-up of the nation, and unease with the shifting role of women, played a much bigger role in his victory.”
Another question we must ask here is: did the 53 percent of White women who voted for Trump ignore his sexism because they were in favor of his racism? Was that an overwhelming plus as to negate his sexism?
The election of President Barack Hussein Obama was another sign to some in White America that Armageddon had arrived—and white supremacy was dying. Having a Black president in the White House–a man who would’ve been an enslaved African a few generations ago—led to the resurgent racist wave which Trump rode to victory.
For the last few days, mainstream pundits have been asking the question: is Donald Trump a racist? The fact this is even being debated illustrates just how much White America is in denial on the question of racism.
Trump’s racist track record is long. But let’s take a brief look at it.
First, he was sued by the Justice Department, twice, in 1973 and 1978, for housing discrimination against African-Americans. In the 1989 Central Park five case, he tried the five innocent Black and Latino defendants in the press, taking out full-page ads in all four major daily New York newspapers. Also, in 1989, he told interviewer Bryant Gumbel, that “A well-educated Black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated White in terms of the job market.”
Former Trump employee John O’Donnell stated Trump once complained about a Black accountant saying “Black guys counting my money! I hate it. The only kind of people I want counting my money are short guys wearing yarmulkes.” According to O’Donnell, Trump also said “laziness is a trait in Blacks.”
Given this history, should we be surprised Trump launched his presidential campaign by championing the bigoted Birtherism charge against President Barack Obama? Should we be surprised he called Mexicans “drug dealers,” “rapists,” and “killers” who are “bringing crime” to America? Or, that he called for a “total and complete shutdown” of all Muslims entering the country?
Let’s remember he said Judge Gonzalo Curiel was biased against him because of his Mexican heritage—a comment Congressman Paul Ryan called the “textbook definition of racism.” And of course, he called assorted racists who assembled in Charlottesville “very fine people.” Yet, despite all this many still pretend its somehow outrageous to call Trump what he is: a racist political provocateur.
Indeed, Republican apologists are always defending Trump’s racist statements by saying he just used a poor choice of words. In fact, this is how they responded when it was revealed Trump referred to African nations as “shithole countries,” during a White House meeting on immigration and DACA. Reportedly, during the same meeting, he complained about the lack of immigration from White countries like Norway.
Recently, one of Trump’s friends, Fox News conservative commentator Tucker Carlson, complained about Congolese immigrant Therese Okoumou, who was arrested after she climbed the Statue of Liberty protesting ICE’s immigration policies. Carlson was upset Okoumou screamed “about how racist we are.”
Somehow Carlson didn’t seem to think his comment that Okoumou came from “Congo a…country noted for mass rape and cannibalism,” was racist. Carlson previously defended Trump’s “shithole countries” comment saying “President Trump said something that almost every single person in America actually agrees with — an awful lot of immigrants come to this country from other places that aren’t very nice. Those places are dangerous, they’re dirty, they’re corrupt, and they’re poor.”
Has Carlson forgotten many Whites initially came to America from dirty, corrupt and dangerous European countries? Has he forgotten England once used colonial North America as a penal colony sending thousands of British convicts here?
Of course the comment is meant to stir resentment and reaffirm the White entitlement theory; that somehow non-Whites, an African like Okoumou, are less entitled to be here. How dare she!
One of the strange ironies is hearing some White Americans crying about how immigrants are taking over America. These folks seem to have forgotten their ancestors stole this land by committing mass murder and genocide against Native Americans. Now they decry the “illegal aliens” who are taking over “their” country—when many of these “aliens” are themselves of Native American origin.
The White American fear being encouraged by Supremacist, of a darkening America, is now causing them anxiety and hysteria since their “Leave It to Beaver,” white-picket fence, view of America as a “White Christian country” is now in jeopardy. The re-emergent rise of racism, and Donald Trump, is a reaction to this reality.
Unfortunately, for such White Americans the biological demographics are working against them. The die is already cast. America will soon be a majority non-White country. The best way forward is harmony; not reactionary racism.
