Black cabinet member Mary McLeod Bethune and Eleanor Roosevelt at the opening of Midway Hall in May, 1943 [Courtesy of The National Archives and Records Administration, College Park. Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division]
While pundits and scholars continue to debate the extent to which Donald Trump’s time in office has eroded American democracy, what is clear is that the former president’s political rhetoric breached the boundaries of acceptable racial discourse in the United States.
Trump assailed Mexicans as criminals, called for a ban on Muslims, said African nations were “shithole countries”, and referred to white supremacists in Charlottesville as “very fine people”. In his final act as president, he showed no remorse for the deadly violence he instigated during the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots with his lies about a stolen election. In so doing,
Trump assailed Mexicans as criminals, called for a ban on Muslims, said African nations were “shithole countries”, and referred to white supremacists in Charlottesville as “very fine people”. In his final act as president, he showed no remorse for the deadly violence he instigated during the January 6, 2021 Capitol riots with his lies about a stolen election. In so doing,
Trump mainstreamed white supremacy and a new, more aggressive racial discourse that encouraged his supporters to resist “cancel culture”, the “woke media”, and any semblance of liberal or progressive ideas around identity and race – including using violent resistance to “take back our country”.
Take, for instance, Trump’s executive order banning federal contractors from conducting racial sensitivity training which claimed that such training indoctrinated government workers with “divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies”.
Take, for instance, Trump’s executive order banning federal contractors from conducting racial sensitivity training which claimed that such training indoctrinated government workers with “divisive and harmful sex and race-based ideologies”.
From banning diversity training to denouncing the New York Times’ 1619 Project on slavery in the US and Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which offers an analysis of US history told from the perspective of the oppressed, Trump, his allies and supporters engaged in a full-scale culture war just as a “racial reckoning” was taking place at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The massive protests in the summer of 2020, which came about in response to the violent death of a Black man, George Floyd, at the hands of law enforcement, sparked a backlash from the political right which took advantage of white American fears – real or imagined – of becoming a majority-minority. READ MORE...
The massive protests in the summer of 2020, which came about in response to the violent death of a Black man, George Floyd, at the hands of law enforcement, sparked a backlash from the political right which took advantage of white American fears – real or imagined – of becoming a majority-minority. READ MORE...
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