Every once in a while, even as we grow numb with the clownish inanity of all things Trump, there arises a clarion call of meaning about this presidency, a diabolical message seeped in the worst traditions of America’s past. It was there in his nod to white supremacists in Charlottesville. It was there when he called Haiti and African nations “shithole countries.” And, most assuredly, it was there in a recent Washington Post analysis showing that Trump’s immigration plan would let white people cling to their majority status for up to five more years. In case there was ever a doubt, making America white again is what the Trump odyssey is all about.
The president is insisting that any immigration bill must drastically reduce the number of legal immigrants allowed to enter the country. According to the Post, such a move would disproportionately affect black and brown immigrants. Current census projections predict that whites will become a minority in this country in 2044. Trump’s proposed immigration restrictions could delay that seminal demographic shift until 2049. Those are metrics most of us rarely think about, but they represent the lifeblood of Trump diehards, angry white folks who feel they are being pushed aside by people of other races and ethnicities.
Racism isn’t merely one of many character flaws of our 45th president. It was the driving force behind his candidacy and it continues to fuel a cult-like base that worships at Trump’s altar and sees him as their last Great White Hope. This is not to say that the president is not also misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic and xenophobic. There is no human right this guy won’t obliterate. Yet, the race card is always on top of his deck. And for good reason: Without the divide between white and non-white, this presidency is finished.
There is an overwhelming mountain of evidence that racism fueled Trump’s ride to the White House (here, here and here). He tapped into . . .no, he plowed into . . . a visceral strain of Caucasian anxiety and resentment, a feeling that white folks were being left behind in a country of people who no longer looked like them. Trump did something that no politician since the early days of George Wallace had even attempted: He made bigotry great again. For his followers, that is. He pulled it out of the darkness and onto the center stage of his campaign. Immigration policy is complicated, layered and nuanced, and Trump can’t be bothered with the details. All he cares about is the bottom line. If the number of black and brown people in this country can be significantly reduced, it’s a good day for Team Trump and the base.
As shocking as this phenomena may be to millennials – and to boomers with fading memories – there is nothing new here. Before the 1964 Civil Rights Act’s ink was dry, Republicans were pushing their “Southern Strategy” to cash in on a raging white backlash against the end of Jim Crow laws. In every national election since, the GOP has milked white racism to its advantage, albeit with dog whistles through talk of “law and order”, “welfare queens” and “states’ rights”. Trump got rid of the dog whistles and dropped the subtlety. As much as we may have wanted the stain of our dark racial history to have remained in the past, it is very much part of our present. A major 2016 study showed that the number of slaves owned in southern counties more than 150 years ago accurately predicts the number of white voters who today identify as Republican and express racial resentment toward blacks. The higher the number of slaves, the more anti-black Republican voters.
A Richard Nixon campaign aide told the New York Times in 1970 that “. . .political success goes to the party that can cohesively hold together the largest number of ethnic prejudices.” Nixon’s Southern Strategy carried the day for him in 1968. According to historians, Nixon’s appeal to white racists came through his running mate, Spiro Agnew, a Trump-like persona with a larger and more alliterative vocabulary. Agnew once called an Asian-American reporter a “fat Jap” and referred to the press corps as “nattering nabobs of negativism”. He expressed nothing but contempt for black civil rights leaders, calling them “circuit-riding, Hanoi-visiting, caterwauling, riot-inciting, burn-America-down type leaders.”
As the New Republic’s Jeet Heer observed, this Southern Strategy of turning white racial resentment into GOP votes was “the original sin that made Donald Trump possible.” Republican elites like Paul Ryan, who called Trump a racist during the campaign but has embraced him ever since, now own him and his unvarnished racism. “In truth,” as Heer put it, “he is their true heir, the beneficiary of the policies the party pursued for more than a half a century.”
There is something to be said for clarity. As the unapologetic cheerleader for white supremacy, Trump has given us a binary choice, more stark, momentous and crucial than this country has faced since the start of the never-ending Civil War. He has put racism on the ballot. Now that bigotry is no longer disguised with code words and knowing winks, the choice is clear. If you believe in racism, Trump is your guy. If you reject racism, you have to reject Trump, and with him, all the Republican sheep in his flock.
Long live the Resistance! Either we nail this, or we slip ever further into the abyss of highly uncivil rights.
Excellent piece! Franklin’s response to what sort of government we had achieved was, “A republic, if you can keep it”. It has been written that democratic republics are not only founded upon the consent of the people, they are absolutely dependent upon the active and informed involvement of the people. As the darkness descends, let us not go gently into that good night.