Trump, Proxy of Racism
Trump, Proxy of Racism
[Charles M. Blow]
President Trump with Navajo veterans at the White House. A portrait of Andrew Jackson is in the background. Credit Tom Brenner/The New York Times
Donald Trump is completely unfit to be president of the United States.That is not an ideological expression. That is an expression of the shock of mounting evidence that he is intellectually deficient, temperamentally unsound and morally bankrupt. Just this week, he has once again underscored the degree to which he is openly hostile to people of color — I call that racism and bigotry — and demonstrated his lack of impulse control to conceal his contempt even when doing so would be to his benefit. On Monday, Trump defiled a White House ceremony to honor Navajo veterans of World War II (a meeting already defiled because it was held before a portrait of Andrew “Trail of Tears” Jackson) by using a racial slur, pejoratively referring to Senator Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas.” These men deserved better, and if Trump were thinking more about them and less about himself — as almost any other American president would have been — he wouldn’t have dragged their moment down into his muck. But this is what happens when you “let Trump be Trump”: He shows up as the bestial creature that he is.
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that unnamed advisers told the paper that Trump has also resurrected the racist lie of his political vivification: the question of Barack Obama’s birthplace, and by implication, his legitimacy as America’s first black president, or put another way, its only nonwhite president. According to The Times: “In recent months, they say, Mr. Trump has used closed-door conversations to question the authenticity of President Barack Obama’s birth certificate.” This unprecedented “show me your papers, boy” kook campaign of which Trump became grand wizard is deeply rooted in racial hostility. It is a castigation of assertive black masculinity, like Obama’s, which refuses to bend to traditional power or promulgate the fallacy that the legacy of historical racism is all either fantasy or forgiven.
Then, on Wednesday, Trump shared on Twitter apparently unverified, anti-Muslim videos from a right-wing extremist group in Britain. As CBS News reported, “The videos were tweeted out by the account held by Jayda Fransen, the deputy leader of the far-right U.K. political party ‘Britain First,’ which is known for promoting an anti-Islam, anti-immigration and nationalist agenda.” That’s right: Not satisfied with his implicit (though obvious) endorsement of white supremacy here in America, Trump has now explicitly endorsed white supremacy in another country. These are not mistakes. These are not coincidences. This is not mere bungling. These are revelations of the soul. This is who Trump is and who he has always been. This is who he was before he entered politics, and who he remains.
The Trump Doctrine is White Supremacy. Yes, he is also diplomatically inept, overwhelmed by avarice, thoroughly corrupt and a pathological liar, but it is to white supremacy and to hostility for everyone not white that he always returns. When the political vise tightens on him, he just so happens to find a nonwhite target to attack. When his tongue gets loose within him, he just so happens to find a nonwhite target to attack.
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I believe in diversity and tolerance. But the tolerance of a hateful ideology is not inclusiveness, but appeasement, and of that I will have no part. If you support Trump and his racial hostility, you and I have absolutely nothing to discuss. Nothing!
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/30/opinion/trump-racism-white-supremacy.html
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