Trump —Racist—Revisited
Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Special to The Greanville Post |Commentary No. 15
The Southern white poor were controlled by the plantocrats via the myth of “white supremacy.” Many still are.
Over four years ago, on BuzzFlash, I published a column on Donald Trump entitled “Trump is the Race Card.” Yes, Trump is a blowhard, and no he doesn’t have any real programs to offer that would have a chance of solving the problems he likes to list (some real; some imagined. His new [old by Repub. standards] “immigration” policy is a bad joke [see below]). But like just about every other political commentator on our side around, I still find it irresistible to launch broadsides at him.
In a recent column for The Greanville Post, I placed Trump in the Repub. tradition of anti-immigration doctrine that began with those Know-Nothings who were part of the Republican Party from the beginning. Looking backwards, in this space I am re-visiting a 2011 column (edited down, to be sure), showing, if nothing else, that Trump’s racism is nothing new. Except that this time around, it happens to be directed at Latinos. One does not need to emphasize the point now made by a number of observers that the only thing different between Trump and the “Main-line” Repubs. is that he says out loud what has been Repub. doctrine, signaled by dog-whistles, for years. (And of course now, following the Rightward Imperative of the Repubs., the so-called “mainstream” candidates, from Rubio to Walker, are even jumping on the openly racist specifics of the Trump immigration bandwagon.) And so:
Not so long ago in a land not at all far away, part of it was ruled by a tiny oligarchy of very wealthy large landowners. They made their wealth in part off the backs of unpaid farm laborers for whom they provided nothing more than minimal food and shelter, in part by trading in those laborers as property, and in part off the backs of another group of (much smaller) landowners/small farmers, who were generally poor, although definitely better off than the aforementioned unpaid laborers. Actually, the latter two groups had much in common. They worked hard, got nothing (in the case of the first) and precious little (in the case of the second) for their labors. They were both dominated and exploited by the oligarchy. One would have thought, in fact, that the two groups of laborers might actually join forces and struggle to improve their respective states in life.
White sharecropper shack in the Tennessee valley, 1930s. Abysmal poverty and backwardness were the rule among this class of people.
Trump’s racism is nothing new. But the only difference with the “Main-line” Repubs. is that he says out loud what has been GOP doctrine for years.
A Hollywoodesque Southern mansion, not in Georgia, as in Gone with the Wind, but in Mississippi. The white oligarchy lived well and aimed to keep that way of life by any means necessary, including the conscious brainwashing of their fellow whites.
But of course this did not happen in the slaveholding South (or the other non-Southern slaveholding states before the First Civil War either). For in the South in particular, the ruling oligarchy had, over a period of two centuries since slaves were first brought to North America in 1620, very carefully nurtured the false doctrine of white supremacy. They trumpeted this doctrine even though there had been interbreeding between European settlers and African slaves from the earliest days and the coloring became quite muddled. Given that inbreeding, the grouping “black people” in particular was a totally artificial construct and of course still is. But logic and facts never troubled the Right back then any more than they do now.
Whatever could be said about the status and living standards of the poor whites in the South, the oligarchy could and did always buy them off with the notion that whatever else was going on in their lives, they were somehow “superior” to the “blacks.” Of course, the doctrine of White Supremacy and its power over the “white” people of the U.S. has never gone away. In fact, its presence and wide-spread influence on the thinking of United States folk of all kinds to this very day is a major indicator of how the South actually won the First Civil War.
Race is still the trump card for the Right. And Donald Trump used it back in 2011-12, just as he uses it now. Trump is a former Health Care Single-Payer supporter, a former pro-choicer, a former supporter of other liberal causes. But now he is apparently really running for the Repub. Presidential nomination. The racist issue he is using this time around is of course “immigration.” But racism is nothing new for Trump. In 2011-12, when he appeared to be, or at least claimed to be, running for the Repub. nomination, it was the so-called “birther issue.”
Yes, the State of Hawaii had produced a birth certificate and the President eventually released it. Yes there were the also the contemporaneous birth announcements in Honolulu newspapers. But the Right knows better than to confuse any of its adherents with facts. There is still an ample “birther movement” and Trump still refuses to affirm that he is convinced by the existence of a Hawaii state birth certificate. (Of course, it doesn’t matter where Obama was born. He had a U.S. citizen mother and therefore is a U.S. citizen; just ask Ted Cruz, who was born in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, of a U.S. mother.)
Trump knew full well what the facts were. But how better to distinguish himself from the rest of the undistinguished Repub. field than to openly play the race card, using the dog whistle of “birtherism” resting on the foundation of the Doctrine of White Supremacy that has been in place in this country since long before the First Civil War. The attack was/is on Obama’s legitimacy as a person/President, and “we all know what that means, don’t we.”
And then came the Trump attack on Obama’s credentials for and in higher education, which he is still playing. As Trump said: “I have friends who have smart sons with great marks, great boards, great everything and they can’t get into Harvard. We don’t know a thing about this guy. There are a lot of questions that are unanswered about our president.” Must have been affirmative action, donchaknow. How else could he have gotten into Columbia College and Harvard Law School? And never did release his transcripts (as if they were anybody’s business). He must have made President of the Harvard Law Review and Magna cum Laude by affirmative action too. And we know what THAT all means.
Of course, “affirmative action” has always not meant granting admissions or jobs preferentially to discriminated-against minorities, but rather simply giving them equal opportunity to apply and be considered on their own merits. However, that fact has never stopped the racists from using “affirmative action” as a weapon in their race war. Yes indeed. Race was the trump card for the Right and for Trump himself, back then, and it still is.
Postscript I: On Trump’s immigration “policy.” 1. Build a wall. There are already substantial sections of a wall, built at great expense. They apparently are not too effective. 2. Ramp up deportation. Deportation already runs at a fairly high rate under the Obama Administration. Obama’s first Homeland Security Sec. Janet Napolitano ramped up “border enforcement” in the mistaken belief that doing so would call off the Repub. dogs on the immigration issue: ho, ho, ho. 3. Pay for a wall by increasing visa fees: ho, ho, ho. Quoting from Seinfeld: “You can’t be serious.” 4. End U.S. citizenship for persons born in the U.S. of undocumented aliens. Well that would require amending the U.S. Constitution, and actually echoes the fictitious “30th Amendment” to the U.S. Constitution passed by a fictitious future Republican government, as told in chapter four of my book, The 15 Percent Solution, (which was written in 1994-95 --- based on what some Repubs. were already talking about back then).
Postscript II: The Duopoly Watch aspect of all this is that a) no one on the Democratic side will really go after Trump, and indeed the rest of the Repubs., on his/their racism, and b) the Obama Administration can hardly boast about its vastly increased anti-immigration enforcement measures, about which, apparently, only a minority of the Latino community is aware.
Postscript III: For a brief review of Repub. lies about the true state of immigration policy presently, see Robert Reich’s comment at: http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/31899-focus-trumped-up-myths-and-downright-lies-about-immigration. To which one could add that if any significant number of working age undocumented immigrants were deported, given the many very important jobs they hold in many US industries, the U.S. economy would suffer a severe downturn, if not collapse.
Postscript IV: It now turns out that Trump employs undocumented immigrants. One has to wonder. Were e-verify to be applied to all of his enterprises, how much would he have to pay in fines, and how much would his profits drop?