Maybe Trump should have watched the news a little more closely this
weekend. If he had, he might have seen large numbers of Americans
carrying and saluting flags that weren't the Stars and Stripes.
Confederate flags, obscure racist insignia and straight-up swastikas
were all on display.
The racists and Nazis and white supremacists
of all stripes who carried that flag were heartened by Trump's failure
to denounce them or their ideology in the immediate aftermath of the
violence in Charlottesville and the murder of Heather Heyer. And his
tepid,
reluctant , TelePrompTer-fed denunciation of racism days later
appears to have done little to discourage their belief that he supports them in the deepest, darkest, most wizened recesses of his heart.
Though
it's technically true that no one but Donald Trump knows what's in
Donald Trump's heart, he's given us some pretty good clues. He likely
thinks swastika-toting Nazis and hood-wearing KKK members are bad guys –
those are the easy targets everyone knows we're supposed to denounce –
but the entitled, clean-cut, polo-wearing, torch-bearing racists
chanting about how they won't be replaced? Those are the people who put
him into office. They're his people. And they know he's their leader
because they know Donald Trump is, like they are, racist.
Oh, they wouldn't put it that way. They think the
real
racism is the affirmative action that gives people of color a chance in
a world that hands people who look like me privilege from birth. They
believe the
real racists are the ones who declare black lives
matter. ("What, ours don't?") But like the president they cheer, they're
racist as hell.
You don't even have to look into Trump's heart to
see his racism. You only have to look at all the things he's done and
said over the years – from the early Seventies, when he
settled with the Justice Department
over accusations of housing discrimination, to Monday, when just hours
after his speech news broke he is considering pardoning anti-immigrant
sheriff Joe Arpaio.
Arpaio was also Trump's partner in crime in
pushing the birther conspiracy that promulgated the ugly lie our first
black president was born in Kenya. We've conveniently forgotten (if not
forgiven) how Trump spent years – years! – pushing a conspiracy based on
nothing more than the assumption that a black man with a funny name
couldn't possibly be a genuine American, not like
we are.
Trump also has a weird obsession with the
superiority of his own genes
in the face of all evidence to the contrary. That may explain why
racism so often seems like his default setting, like the time he took
out a full-page ad demanding the execution of five kids of color accused
of raping a jogger in Central Park. Even in 2016, years after they were
proven innocent,
Trump stood by his actions .
Last
year was when Trump put his racism on full display for the country to
see. From launching his campaign by calling Mexicans rapists, to going
to war with the parents of a Muslim soldier killed in battle, to
encouraging violence against minority protesters at his rally, to
promising to build a wall and make Mexico pay for it, he built a
presidential campaign on racial resentment and fear. Those were
deliberate choices he made. His campaign stoked white entitlement and
outrage at every turn, sending out dog whistles and sometimes glaring
billboards that this was the campaign for angry white people.
President Donald Trump called protestors attacking white supremacists "alt-left."
He didn't improve as president. There was no pivot. Just weeks ago, he gave an
ugly speech to a group of police officers
during which he described gang violence in creepy, almost loving detail
in a ham-handed attempt to smear immigrants as violent criminals. He
started a commission to perpetuate the myth of rampant voter fraud –
part of a long-running conservative scheme to deny black people and
others their right to vote.
And just hours after he grudgingly
gave his speech condemning racism in the wake of enormous public
pressure, Trump retweeted Jack Posobiec, a prominent alt-right figure
who's been featured on the racist conspiracy site Infowars and who
brought a sign reading "RAPE MELANIA" to a protest to frame anti-Trump activists.
The
same day Trump called racism "evil," he mollified his base of racists
by promoting a racist on his huge platform. These are not the actions of
a man who is genuinely concerned about racism.
His speech wasn't
enough. It's not just that it came three days too late, or that he read
it with all the conviction of a hostage video. If Donald Trump wants to
say anything meaningful about racism, he needs to acknowledge his own
complicity. He has to admit to his past sins, and commit to a future of
activism from the most powerful perch in the world to fight racism in
all its forms. And I'm not holding my breath for that.
Racism
isn't limited to the thugs marching in Charlottesville. It pervades
American culture like humidity in the D.C. summer air. You don't get to
say guys in hoods are bad and declare the job done. For white people,
fighting racism (and all bigotry) must be a constant effort that
includes self-reflection.
Self-reflection isn't Trump's strong
point. He may well believe it when he says he's the least racist person
in the world. But we don't need to read his mind to know the truth. He
has built a legacy of race-baiting throughout his career – from his
apartment buildings in the outer boroughs right into the White House.
Watch
below: Protest – with people waving Confederate flags, chanting
Nazi-era slogans – turned violent, prompting Virginia governor to
declare state of emergency.
