The Stain of Naked Racism in Trumplandia Is What Powers His Demagoguery: Bill Berkowitz and Gale Bataille
December 30, 2020
The biggest fault line in America is racism that stems from the original sin of slavery in the US. (Elvert Barnes)
By Bill Berkowitz and Gale Bataille
President Donald Trump threatened to call out the military and tried his best to discredit protests against police brutality and racial inequality following the murders of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor, by attacking the millions of people who demonstrated as violent and anti-American.
On Saturday, Dec. 12, Trump’s “Stop the Steal“ supporters, including the Proud Boys, gathered in Washington, D.C. and cities across the country. The D.C. protests turned violent, with 4 stabbings and 33 arrests. Pro-Trump protestors ripped down Black Lives Matters signage and vandalized historically Black churches. Rather than denouncing the violence, Trump circled the rally in Marine One and tweeted his support.
According to Americans United for Separation of Church and State’s Sarah Gillooly, “the [Pro-Trump] protestors set fire to the Black Lives Matter sign in front of Asbury United Methodist Church, the oldest Black Methodist church in D.C. A few blocks away, protestors shouted ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ as they tore down the Black Lives Matter sign in front of Metropolitan A.M.E church, the historic Black church where Frederick Douglass worshiped.
It is not the intention of this column to weigh in on whether or not Trump is the most racist president of the past forty years. Modern era presidents have engaged in racist rhetoric, profiling and policies – Reagan’s welfare queens, Clinton’s welfare reform and support for the 1994 Crime Bill, Bush’s war on terror that led to the demonizing of Muslims, and his incompetent response to the suffering of black people after Hurricane Katrina, and Obama’s immigration policies that branded him “Deporter-In Chief.”
In discussing an October 20th Code Switch podcast titled “Is Trump Really That Racist?,” NPR’s Karen Grigsby Bates asked. “There are plenty of things you could point at to augment that argument: embracing birtherism, referring to African nations as ‘shithole countries,’ telling congresswomen of color to go back to where they came from, calling Mexican immigrants ‘rapists,’ refusing to denounce white supremacists during a presidential debate and so on.”
In the aftermath of this summer’s Black Lives Matter protests (and in the run-up) to the election, Trump employed both racist rhetoric and executive action to appeal to his largely white working class base (many of whom previously voted for Obama) issuing Executive Order 13950, titled “Executive Order Combatting Race and Sex Stereotyping.” The Executive Order prohibits any government training that includes words such as “systemic racism,” “white privilege,” “intersectionality,” “critical race theory,” “unconscious bias,” and “racial humility.” According to Race Forward, “Within weeks of the Executive Order, hundreds of anti-racist programs were cancelled. Countless more have been pulled. Trump’s intention is to attempt to stop a historically unprecedented racial justice movement in its tracks by censoring the language that we use to name racism.”
It is worth noting that Trump’s history as a racist goes back almost a half century. As Vox’s German Lopez pointed out in a story titled “Donald Trump’s long history of racism, from the 1970s to 2020,” “This long history is important. It would be one thing if Trump misspoke one or two times. But when you take all of his actions and comments together, a clear pattern emerges — one that suggests that bigotry is not just political opportunism on Trump’s part but a real element of his personality, character, and career.”
In early December, Donny Deutsch, a regular contributor to MSBNC’s “Morning Joe,” was trying to explain why so many people would show up to see Donald Trump, a lame duck president whine about his fate at a Valdosta, Georgia rally in early December.
“Sadly, I was watching TV as I often do by myself, not much to do on Saturday night,” he began. “I was watching the Trump rally and what I was struck by was the crowd, and we have seen that crowd before. I said to myself, ‘what — why?’ What is the passion in these people? Are they there they because they’re so against the Affordable Care act? Are they there because they’re supportive of the Trump’s Israel/UAE pact or the tax plan that helped none of them in the audience or are they there because of 2040?”
Deutsch went on: “In 2040, whites will be the minority of the country and that’s what this is all about. … There is nothing else going on there but we want to keep our country white. That is the passion. That is what has to be dealt with over the next 20 years — not Trump. Trump is a reflector about that. It’s about the Mexican, about the Muslim, the African-American. That is so terrifying to a swath of this country when you look at their faces there, that is why they are there, that is what Biden has to wrestle with — not Donald Trump — but the fear of tens of millions of people in this country that it is no longer going to be white and ‘what does that mean for me?'”
“So it is about race,” he stated. “It is about racism. It is about fear. It is no other issue, that’s that crowd there. and that’s what you have to understand: the power that Donald Trump has and the power that he holds and that is what the Republicans are afraid to step away from.”
It is about racism. And it is the about empowerment that comes from joining a right-wing movement (in the guise of populism) that stokes fear and rage; that attracts people who have felt excluded and denigrated – assigned to the “basket of deplorables.”
In a recent Washington Post column titled “How it feels to be Black in post-election America,” Kareem Abdul-Jabbar wrote: “While most Americans can celebrate the election of Joe Biden as a triumph of the democratic process, Black Americans saw 70 million Trump voters proclaim that systemic racism that devastates the lives of millions and chokes off the future opportunities for their children isn’t as important as the right to buy yet another gun. That the blatant attempts at voter suppression — which, properly understood, is a form of domestic terrorism, one far more damaging to our security than the 9/11 attacks — are an acceptable price of not having to wear a face mask in a crowded church.
“Here is a demoralizing wake-up call for Black Americans: The popular Black Lives Matter protests over the summer have not resonated as a major priority for half of America. The struggle for equity has only just begun, and it will require a much more comprehensive approach to sway some of those 70 million in future elections. Otherwise, the past year’s protests have been an elaborate flight to nowhere.”
Joe Biden has pledged to make the struggle against systemic racism a central theme of his presidency. As of this writing, the Biden/Harris team has nominated the most racially diverse cabinet in history.
In early December, Biden and Harris met with seven civil rights leaders to address concerns not only about whether Black Americans would be adequately represented in high level cabinet nominations, but also that the new administration would deliver on its promises to address structural racism including police brutality, criminal justice reform, housing policy and voting rights. According to Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense Fund, Biden “was very assertive in assuring us that he intends to address issues of racial equity. He believes that we will be satisfied by his appointments in terms of racial diversity to the cabinet, and he expressed his desire to have a robust partnership going forward.”
We hope that the new administration’s will not only focus on the language of racial justice, but that it will also concretely act to address systemic racism, that will begin to undo some of the damage of the last four years – and address some of the wounds of the past four centuries. In a divided country, with Trump not going away, and the Republican Party working to maintain their power, this will be a very tall order.
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