January 13, 2018
By now, we have all cycled through the stages of collective outrage at Trump’s vulgar, racist comments, condemning Haiti, El Salvador and all fifty-four nations in Africa as “shithole countries,” from which the United States should not receive immigrants. Our initial reaction was fury. Journalists from Joy Reid to conservative Rick Wilson eloquently vented their spleen in segments that instantly went viral. That gave way to an array of commentators citing the facts and figures of immigrant accomplishments, from the disproportionately high percentage of Nigerians with bachelors’ degrees, to the disproportionately high labor participation of Salvadorans and Haitians. It was respectability politics on steroids. Those arguments importuned, “If we prove that we are smarter and more industrious than the average American, will you acknowledge our basic humanity?”On the other end of the spectrum, Paul Ryan was a profile in spineless lack of courage, labeling Trump’s vile remarks “unfortunate”. Senators Tom Cotton and David Purdue had a sudden attack of amnesia, stating that they did not recall Trump making the comments (Source: “2 Republican senators claim to have not heard Trump’s shithole remark,” by Joe Perticone, Businessinsider.com, 1/12/18).
Trump and those who think like him are immune to arguments about the basic humanity or contributions of Black and Brown people. He has demonstrated it repeatedly over his entire adult life. The danger is that he is now the most powerful man in the world, with an array of agency heads who share his views, but merely have the discipline not to voice them. Ask yourself, why else would Jeff Sessions willingly endure serial humiliation from Trump? It is evident that Sessions will submit to endless debasement as long as he has the unfettered ability to deploy every arm of the Justice Department to disenfranchise, deport and imprison Black and Brown people.
The bitter angry feeling that most Americans are experiencing in the wake of Trump’s comments is the same one that Black and Brown people have had since Trump descended on his tacky gold escalator and kicked off his candidacy with an audaciously racist anti-immigrant screed. We waited in vain for the mainstream media to call Trump out for what he was – a corrupt, unqualified racist. Instead, the news networks aired, virtually without comment, his Bilbo-esque rants at rallies filled with frothing supporters eager to pummel the first brown face they saw. Of course, the network executives were personally horrified, but they knew that Trump was ratings gold. The combined audience of his true believers and horrified, hate-watching progressives was too lucrative to pass up. Well, now here we are.
We have crossed the Rubicon. The 45th President has openly voiced his ironclad belief in white supremacy, his desire for a whiter United States and his willingness to pursue policies of virtual ethnic cleansing to get there. All of us, every one, have no excuse not to view every policy that Trump promotes through that lens. Trump, his enablers in Congress and his echo chamber in right wing media need to be treated like the wannabe war criminals that they are. They should be voted out of office, boycotted, called out and shunned. If news organizations can print the word, “shithole” on the front page, they can call Trump, Sessions, Stephen Miller, et al, “racists.” They can remind readers that the RAISE Act being pushed by Tom Cotton seeks a return to the racist immigration policy of the United States prior to 1968. They can inform their readers that Haiti’s poverty is a direct result of the determination of France and the United States to punish Haiti for having the temerity to free itself through a victorious revolution in 1804. Tell readers that Haiti was forced to pay France back for the economic value of Haitians’ own plundered labor to the tune of 90 million francs, a sum that took Haiti until 1947 to repay (Source: “France urged to repay Haiti’s huge ‘independence debt’”, BBC.com 8/16/10). Inform Americans that the United States further impoverished Haiti by invading and taking control of its finances in 1915 at the point of a gun and then propping up murderous dictators who were free to terrorize their countrymen and raid the public treasury as long as the debt service was paid (Source: “The 1915 Invasion of Haiti: Examining a treaty of Occupation,” by Jennifer Bauduy, www.socialstudies.org, ©2015).
If you are asking what you can do, beyond the urgent task of re-taking Congress in the 2018 midterms, it would be to recognize that the discomfort and disgust that you feel after hearing Trump’s racist statements is a fraction of what Black and Latino people feel every day. Recognize that bringing this country back from the abyss will require you to give something up. It will mean that you will have to swallow your guilt and abandon the complacency that allowed you to accept Black deprivation, at home and abroad, as the natural order of things. It will mean no longer turning a blind eye to the role that the U.S. government has long played by pursuing policies explicitly designed to maintain deprivation along racial lines.
Trump has left us no choice. We cannot look away. We cannot pretend to be ignorant of our own role in bringing America to the brink of fascism. So now, each and every one of us must choose a side. On one side is sacrificing for democracy, real equality of opportunity and a commitment to living up to our country’s noblest ideals, as embodied in our founding documents. On the other side is capitulation to the darkest forces of hatred, fear and greed, selfishly committed only to our own material advantage, heedless of the human cost. As Martin Luther King, Jr. famously said, “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.” We are listening.