This article originally appeared at TomDispatch.com. To receive TomDispatch in your inbox three times a week, click here.
Yes, Donald Trump intends to rid this country of untold hundreds of thousands (millions?) of immigrants of color, starting with the Venezuelans he's begun dispatching to a U.S. military prison at Guanta'namo Bay, Cuba. He's also planning to detain them at military bases across this country. He's rushing to bolster an already overly fortified border with Mexico (while threatening both that country and Canada with tariffs for, among other things, not being able to stop migrants from crossing their borders into this country). At the same time, he's trying to eliminate any "diversity, equity, inclusion" (DEI) programs throughout the government and beyond, including in the U.S. military. In that spirit, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has set up a "Restoring America's Fighting Force" Task Force to do just that. And while the urge to purge transgender individuals, in particular, has gotten much publicity, Donald Trump's major aim is clearly to return America to a predominantly White male-powered world. Within days of being back in the White House again he had all too symbolically suspended the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program for asylum and resettlement in this country indefinitely.
And if you need further proof of what's happening, just check out his desire -- while ridding this country of so many immigrants -- to invite in economically privileged White South African landholders, or Afrikaners, whom he considers "high-quality persons" and whose property in that country, he believes, is threatened by Blacks. No matter that they make up just 7% of the South African population and still own 72% of the private farmland there. He claims he's doing so to help them escape "government-sponsored, race-based discrimination." (Who cares if this is essentially his fantasy, since White South Africans, Elon Musk aside, seem to have not the slightest interest in moving to the United States.) As Ed Kilgore of New York magazine's Intelligencer all too aptly put it: "Perhaps as a follow-up to his renaming of the Gulf of Mexico, Trump will order that the Statue of Liberty's famous inscription now read, 'Give Us Your Rich, Your White, Your Landowners Yearning to Be Separate!'"
And so it goes in this ever stranger land of ours. And in that context, let Douglas White take you deep into America's history and culture of racism, a reality that seems all too central to the world of Donald Trump. Tom
Surviving Hard Times
The Last Generation of Black Americans Under Jim Crow and the Culture of Racism in America
Today, racism remains a poisonous force in America. Fascism and authoritarianism are on the rise and President Donald Trump is giving voice to such hate, making it state policy and central to his presidential agenda. Recently, he tried to ban birthright citizenship by executive order to limit the number of babies of color born in the United States, though such an act is clearly unconstitutional. Currently, at least two federal judges have blocked Trump's executive orders to redefine birthright citizenship. He has also issued executive orders seeking to roll back diversity, equity, and inclusion. He clearly does not want Black, Brown, and Asian people to be on an equal footing with Whites.
All his most recent efforts are consistent with his longstanding attempts to limit voting rights for people of color. Trump has voiced the most vicious comments over the years: he says that immigrants are "poisoning the blood of our country"; he slammed Haitian migrants for trying to enter the United States by claiming hundreds of thousands of them flowing into the country "probably have AIDS"; Haiti, El Salvador, and African lands are "shithole countries"; migrants are "animals"; and, as he also put it, there has to be "some form of punishment" for women who have abortions. Finally, Trump has repeatedly stated his admiration for dictators and strong abusive rulers.
Trump's Protection of Afrikaners
Trump, his enablers in the Republican Party, and his Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters should really be called Make America White Again (MAWA). He and those groups have generated a blueprint for increasing authoritarianism, racism, and xenophobia. It's crystal clear that this enmity toward Black and Brown people is driven in part by demographic changes in the United States that threaten to place Whites in the minority. On the subject of race, Trump is sensitive only when it comes to discrimination against White people. Recently, he signed an executive order that would protect White South Africans from discrimination and allow them to resettle in the United States.
As I witness the rise of White supremacy in America (again) and the president's ever-growing list of unconstitutional and illegitimate acts, I remember the segregation and Jim Crow of my youth in the late 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. And yet, being a member of the last generation of Black Americans to live under Jim Crow and the culture of racism that accompanied it left me, then, with a certain hope and belief in the future. The history of my generation's efforts to make change lent credence to the idea that all of us have the power to eliminate racism. It's just a question of doing the necessary work.
On any day of my youth, sitting in our living room in a housing project in Kinston, North Carolina, I could pick up a copy of Jet magazine, Amsterdam News, the Pittsburgh Courier, or Ebony Magazine, and the headline would scream something like: "Another Colored Person Dies on the Highway." The reason: a "White-only" hospital wouldn't treat them. This happened with alarming frequency and left me with many visions of Black people bleeding to death on the black tarmac of highways in Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, and elsewhere in the South. I imagined loved ones or even myself having an accident and not being able to get treatment because no Black doctors could be located. Mostly, though, I worried about my father because as a professional gambler -- his cardplaying was the total source of economic support for our family -- he sometimes found himself in remote areas of the deep South, far from medical facilities that would treat Blacks.
The most notorious such case occurred in North Carolina when I was eight years old. On April 1, 1950, Doctor Charles Drew, a Black man who was the internationally famous inventor of the blood bank, was in an auto accident near city of Burlington. The rumor was that Doctor Drew had bled to death because a "White-only" hospital wouldn't treat him (though, in fact, he had received a transfusion at an all-White hospital). Black people believed such rumors then because they knew of segregated hospitals that would indeed not treat them. I can still feel the heat of the rage of many Black friends who came to our home and could talk of little else. The fact that segregation was state-sponsored only made such a disregard for human life worse.
Segregation and Jim Crow laws were designed to take from Black people our ability to function as anything but mere appendages of the ruling White society. There were significant attempts to change such laws and locally enforced customs through demonstrations, direct action, litigation, and legislation in the 1950s and 1960s, but they didn't succeed in fully correcting the damage of racism in our society, which, as the Trumpian moment indicates, remains pervasive and unyielding.
But within the Black community, my family, friends, and many others taught me about life and survival, offering me attention and love. Mr. Peter G. Fuller (and yes, we did use "mister" then), a favorite of mine and an older friend of my parents, worked as a farm agent, teaching Black farmers how to grow corn, beets, peas, tobacco, and other produce. He was six feet tall and 66 years old, with a brown complexion, an open, bright-eyed face, bushy eyebrows speckled with grey, and slightly protruding teeth. He walked with a loping gait, always chewing a twig as he worked. When I was with him, he was direct and to the point, talking to me as if I were a grownup and listening to what I had to say.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
Post Article Comment and Rate This Article
