The definition of “racist”

July 20, 2019

      This has been a truly depressing week.  We have witnessed the hatemonger in chief sink to new depths, whipping his knuckle dragging supporters into a racist, xenophobic frenzy to target Rep. Ilhan Omar with the vile chant, “Send her back!”  Not only did we witness the unprecedented sight of a sitting President urging that a U.S.citizen who is a sitting member of Congress be banished for criticizing him, but the fact that not one Republican member of Congress could bring themselves to do more than issue the most tepid criticism.  Trump toady, Lindsey Graham, urged the president to “aim higher,” before doubling down on his attacks on The Squad, calling them “communists,” (Source: “Graham declines to condemn racist Trump tweets and calls Democratic congresswomen ‘a bunch of communists,’” by Devan Cole, CNN.com, 7/15/19). Mitt Romney called Trump’s tweets “destructive, demeaning and disunifying,” but couldn’t bring himself to call them racist, (Source: “ ‘That’s all I’ve got’: Romney fails his own test on Trump’s racist tweets,” by Aaron Blake, The Washington Post, 7/16/19).  The rest of the Republican caucus bent over backwards to claim that the literal textbook definition of a racist comment was not racist.

      The response from Democratic leadership was only marginally better.  While it is true that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi rebuked Trump’s words as racist, on Wednesday, the House Democratic Caucus apparently decided that threatening sitting members of Congress did not constitute a “high crime or misdemeanor,” and voted to table Al Green’s motion to introduce articles of impeachment, (Source:  “House blocks Al Green articles of impeachment of Trump,” by Lindsay McPherson, Rollcall.com, 7/17/19).  Once again, House leadership decided that its quixotic quest for the votes of the mythic white working class voter was worth more than the actual lives of people of color, whether they were migrant children in concentration camps or their colleagues in Congress.

    Much of the press engaged in their maddening game of false equivalence.  CNN had the appallingly bad judgment to give white supremacist, Richard Spencer a platform to complain Nazis were unsatisfied with Trump’s tweets because there was not enough policy behind them, (Source: “CNN slammed for having white nationalist Richard Spencer on to talk about Trump tweets,” by Owen Daugherty, TheHill.com).  NPR’s Vice President of Newsroom Diversity and Training argued that journalists shouldn’t label Trump’s tweets racist because it somehow violates their obligation to be objective, despite the fact that the AP Style book explicitly ruled in March that journalists should ditch euphemisms and use the word “racist,” (Source:  @APStylebook, Twitter, 3/29/19).

    Although a multiracial plurality of Americans rejected the politics of racial grievance at the ballot box in 2016 and 2018, and the majority strongly disapproves of Trump, our voices are being erased by a combination of those in power who favor the eliminationist policies of Trump and those who claim to favor equality, but are still uncomfortable if their concerns are not centered and their identities are not the default. It is the second group, moderate Democrats and “responsible journalists” who labor under the mistaken assumption that the contagion unleashed by Trump can be contained by forbearance, caution and civility.  They don’t see the same danger on the faces of the crowds at Trump’s Greenville rally that those of us whose ancestors were the victims in those old lynching postcards do. We’d better make sure they see it before it’s too late. Democracy depends on it.