Tuesday, January 16, 2018

Trump’s “Shithole Countries” Comment Exposes The Core of Trumpism To White People

sub-headline

Trump’s racism isn’t incidental to his political appeal. It’s the core of it.

The president of the United States just interrupted an immigration meeting in the White House to tell a group of presumably surprised lawmakers that the United States was “having all these people from shithole countries come here.”
...The sheer racism of the comments would be shocking coming from any other president. The heartbreaking, and terrifying, thing is that it’s not the least bit surprising coming from Donald Trump.
This is a man who launched his political career by pushing a conspiracy theory that the first black president was not actually born in America. This is a candidate who rocketed to the top of the GOP primary polls by calling Mexicans rapists. This is a president who has repeatedly attempted to act on his campaign pledge to ban Muslims from entering the United States, who has said that Haitian immigrants “all have AIDS” and that Nigerians live in “huts.”
It’s not just that Trump has consistently and unambiguously expressed beliefs like this — though he has. It’s that his willingness to say these things, out loud, is the core of his political appeal to his vaunted base. Trump won the GOP primary and the presidency not in spite of his xenophobia and racism, but because of them.


...Political scientists who study race and immigration find that they have played a central role in the transformation of American politics. Democratic support for civil rights legislation and mass Latino immigration led to a sea change in American voting, wherein white voters who feel high levels of racial resentment shifted en masse into the Republican Party....
~VOX.COM

Read More:
https://www.vox.com/2018/1/11/16880804/trump-shithole-countries-racism

Every time I read "white voters who feel high levels of racial resentment shifted" as published by a news agency dominated by white mostly male journalists, I keep wondering what this means in reality.

In my mind, imperfectly trying white people trying to be allies were in the democratic party and covert racists.
To me, this is an always and forever situation. 

That's why I figured about a third of all white people would vote for Obama in 2008. As I recall, I wasn't that far off. And I think the number of white people voting against the Orange Racist was 37% which is higher than that third I was looking for. 

So I'm trying to figure out who white journalists and mostly white researchers think moved to the republican party.

Do they really think all the white bigots -- even those who adore paternalism but who likely hate Trump-- all moved to the Republican party? 


I kinda doubt it.

I would tend to think that there were paternalistic sounding white people who were stone cold white supremacists in their heart of hearts found the courage to express their true feelings once they saw a black man in the white house in 2008. Them I'm guessing they were further emboldened by Trump's Birther movement which he later rode into the White House in 2016.

In other words, I believe some percentage of the coverts became overts --white racists, that is-- then moved into the republican party so they could follow their leader. But I do not believe the paternalistic white supremacist who thinks black and brown people can't help being inferior moved to the republican party. I think they're self-righteously happy in the democratic party as they are "on the right side of things"

I've spoken to too many of the true white paternalistics over too many years to ever believe they moved to the republiKKKlan party.

So I guess the question becomes which white people are white journalists and researchers  defining as having "high levels of racial resentment" -- because I thought all of what I call "the overt racists," the ones who believe the same thing Trump has always believed and expressed, were already in the republican party.  
There are hip-hop songs going back decades that express this belief too.

To express my thoughts on this a different way, I'm saying I don't think these high resentment white people simply moved from the democratic party to the republican party.
Or maybe I should say they did move, but they were created first. 


That is, I think there were 
low-level white resentment folk 
in the democratic party
 some of whom had white supremacist sentiments 
that experienced a huge growth spurt 
within their hearts 
upon seeing the first black president 
in the white house. 

Then Trump's birther movement came along and poured gas on that ugly @$$ fire and they became overt white racists. THEN those newly overt white racists moved to the republican party where they belong.

In other words, there wasn't just a shift of white supremacist from one party to another. There was an increase in the number of white supremacists....same as there has been an increase in the number of white supremacist hate groups in this country.

And that [white] hate group increase corresponds to President Obama being elected too.

The thing that give me hope is that there has been a blossoming resistance in about one-third of white people as well. But I'm not giving that one-third any damn cookies because it shouldn't have had to get THIS OBVIOUS for them to believe what black and brown people have been saying for decades.

Dear White Left, 


WE KNOW WHO HATES US even when it is subtle much less when it's as obvious as the Racist Orange Orangutan. 

So I suggest you take a page out of my book

If a large number of Latinos say so-and-so is talking in code and he's an ethnoracist, I believe them instead of assuming their stupid or overly sensitive. I believe them even if I can't hear the coded ethnoracism myself. I believe them because I believe Latinos are just as intelligent as I am, as my group is. 


I believe in equality which isn't believing in sameness.



If a large number of Asians say so-and-so is talking in code and he's an ethnoracist, I believe them instead of assuming their stupid or overly sensitive. I believe them even if I can't hear the coded ethnoracism myself. I believe them because I believe Latinos are just as intelligent as I am, as my group is. 

I believe in equality which isn't believing in sameness.

If a large number of Muslims say so-and-so is talking in code and he's an ethnoracist, I believe them instead of assuming their stupid or overly sensitive. I believe them even if I can't hear the coded ethnoracism myself. I believe them because I believe Latinos are just as intelligent as I am, as my group is. 

I believe in equality which isn't believing in sameness.
* * * * *
White people, in large numbers, have not been able to believe in equality in the same ways that a lot of black and brown people have because they don't know oppression from a dominant culture that e-races them. They don't experience the e-race and racist-code-talking sounds like normal speech or minor errors -- which is why I hate the term "microaggressions"  There's not a damn thing "micro" about most of the things that fall under that heading. 

White people have interrogate whiteness. This means they have to know how white people have interacted with racial others from the beginning of this country. There's no way to understand now without understanding that past the current was built upon. Taking in a solid understanding of anything is like building a house that way

This means white people have to learn their true history with black and brown people because it was whitewashed in school -- if it was taught at all. All people, not just white people, believing all the good and detailed things they learn about white history while reveling in their ignorance about the details of anybody else's history is the bedrock of white supremacy and internalized racism for black and brown folks too.

This country will elect someone worse than Donald Trump if the vast majority of white people aren't pulled back from white supremacy or black and brown people can't out vote them with about one-third of white people backing us up.

And even if we, black and brown people and a minority of white people, can out vote the white supremacists, they are going to make our lives hell for a good long while.

So the white people that are "woke" have work to do. Because we aren't cleaning up after you anymore. That time of peaceful protest where white folks beat, spit on, shoot, and arrest protesting black people are gone. That time is not coming again.

If white people want peace they better create some damn peace, right after they have whatever level fight is necessary with racist Uncle Bucky and Aunt Becky at the Thanksgiving Dinner table at the Christmas Dinner Table and every summer family reunion you attend. 

Declaring "We'll I'm not like that!" is not good enough.



  




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