TRUMP’S RACISM IS DIMINISHING AMERICA

These are the times that try America’s soul in ways that not even Thomas Paine could have envisioned. Since 1776, our country has struggled to form a more perfect union, establish justice and insure domestic tranquility. Then along comes Donald Trump. Suddenly those noble aspirations bit the dust. They succumbed to the autocratic ravages of hate and division.

The gruesome and bizarre Trump antics of the past week, although certainly not out of character for this pathological egotist, rose to such a level of alarm that it is hard not to worry about how this sad chapter of American history ends without lasting damage to the very fabric of our nation.  

Here was the guy who used his inaugural speech to decry the “American carnage (of) crime, gangs and drugs”, calling out four congresswomen of color for criticizing the country.   As everyone knows by now, not only did Trump call them out for “not loving America”, he dug out the old racist trope of “why don’t they go back to the countries they came from”.  All four of the women are U.S. citizens.  Three were born here.

For days, we were subjected to constant debate and analysis on the insipidly stupid question of whether the president’s words were racist.  That’s like asking whether Minnesota winters are cold. As a matter of fact and law, scores of employers have been found in violation of antidiscrimination laws on the basis of telling minority group employees to go back to where they came from. 

As for Trump, his overt racism has never been a close question.  He called Mexicans “rapists and drug dealers”, said all Haitians have AIDS and that Nigerians would “never go back to their huts in Africa”.  He claimed some neo-Nazis and former KKK members are “very nice people”.  He ended a federal grant for an organization that combats white supremacism. The list is endless.

Trump, of course, says there “isn’t a racist bone” in his body.  He also says “no one respects women more than I do,” despite his boasts of grabbing them by their genitals, and that 17 women have credibly accused him of sexual assault. Facts to this president are whatever he says they are. He could hold an orange in his hand and call it an apple. Yet it would very much remain an orange.  He tried that kind of trick last week by claiming that he attempted to stop a campaign rally crowd in North Carolina from chanting “send her back”,  despite video of the event showing Trump standing in silence for 13 seconds of such chanting.  

Although the story has had longer legs than most of this president’s cataclysmic moments, it will soon fade into the data bank of Trumpian atrocities. If it is still alive by mid-week, the Donald will simply threaten Iran with a nuclear attack or fire another cabinet secretary, anything to change the subject.  Yet, the national psyche will have taken one more serious blow. The cumulative damage from this presidency is unlikely to be healed anytime soon.

That dynamic was captured perfectly on a New York Times podcast last week by conservative columnist George Will.  Here is what he said, in a broader context, about the malignant impact of Trump’s words: “. . .you cannot unring these bells and you cannot unsay what he has said, and you cannot change that he has now in a very short time made it seem normal for school boy taunts and obvious lies to be spun out in a constant stream. This will do more lasting damage than Richard Nixon’s surreptitious burglaries did.” 

Some of that damage has already been measured. Studies have found correlations between Trump’s presidency and various medical conditions, including cardiovascular issues, sleep problems, anxiety and stress and, particularly among Latinos, a high risk of premature birth due to stress.

Research by social scientists at Tufts University found a dramatic reversal in a 50-year trend of honoring a clear social norm of not openly making racist statements. Since Trump started making degrading comments about racial and ethnic minority groups, that norm has been blown to bits, according to researchers. One study showed that people exposed to Trump’s campaign quotes about Mexicans were “significantly more likely” to make similar offensive remarks about not just Mexicans but other identity groups.  They were simply following their leader.

Since Trump arrived on the national scene, there has rarely been a day without reports of racial incidents perpetrated in Trump’s name.  “Donald Trump was right,” said two Boston men convicted of beating and urinating on a homeless man because they thought he might be an immigrant.

Repeated surveys of public school teachers have demonstrated a steady increase in Trump-attributed racial taunts in the classroom.  In one study, 90 percent of the educators responding said their school climate has been negatively affected by Trump’s racist words and actions. The vast majority of them expressed the belief that the impact will be long-lasting. 

Because of a crude, mean spirited, bigoted presidential tweet, millions of young children of color will return to school next month only to be told by a classroom bully to go back to where they came from.  We have reached the point where a racial taunt and a presidential proclamation are one in the same.

Since the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, this country has slowly struggled to shape that more perfect union in the form of a multiracial, multiethnic democracy, one that would, at long last, deliver both justice and domestic tranquility for all.  The journey has had its low points (George Wallace) and its high points (Barak Obama).  On net, forward movement outweighed the backslides. Yet, in less than three years, Donald Trump has wiped out decades of progress. We now have miles and miles to go before we sleep.  We cannot let this president take us all the way back to where we came from.