Wednesday, January 30, 2019

Racism and Trump

Racism and Trump

I’ve tried to reconcile in my mind whether Donald Trump has been, and continues to be, truly a racist individual. i.e. does Trump feel that whites are superior to other races, and does he take actions to marginalize those races.  He has stated on many occasions that all Americans, regardless of race or ethnic background are equal under the law.  By his actions in government, he has improved the economic status of all Americans, and he is particularly proud of raising the economic standards of black and Hispanic Americans.  So by these standards of his stated beliefs and actions, he is not a racist.

Trump’s many (90%) detractors in the mainstream media cite the numerous times that he has spiced his rhetoric with racially inappropriate comments, as indeed he has.  Of particular objection were his comments during the Charlottesville riots that there were some decent folks on both sides of the argument, and that there were rioters opposing the white supremacists that were as bad as the white supremacists. Can these truisms be held as racist statements?  Also cited is Trump’s long record of being picked up, on open mike, of being inappropriately racial.

Without seeming too much to condone his blurting of racial epithets, let’s remember Trump’s background as an Eastern U.S. and NYC construction contractor and later as a media personality. Past generations of people from the northern parts of the country like the Bronx and Queens were much more aware of their ethnic backgrounds than in other parts of the country or in the present day.  Sometimes this resulted in an under-current of racism, but for the most part it served as good-natured pride in ones origins.  For the most part, people were pragmatic, and looked at results, rather than someone’s last name or the color of their skin.  Derogatory epithets like “wop” or “polack” or “kraut” or “mick”, and yes, “nigger” were there, but many times not used in a truly hateful manner.

And of course, eventually, the world changed as minorities sought true equality, and we mostly stopped calling each other these colorful names.  Along with the recent phenomenon of political correctness, came the “social justice” police or identity nazis, who picked up every nuance of these once pretty harmless ethnic nicknames as egregious racial slurs, and “exposed” them on the broadcast and social media.  Such that any “slips” from Trump or other septuagenarians steeped in the past verbiage of ethnicity, became unpardonable displays or “dog whistles” of the horrors of racism and worse.

It is increasingly obvious that leftists reduce much of what they deem as objectionable in society to “racism”.  They manufacture supposed transgressions from what were originally quite innocent words and actions, and paint them with derogatory accusations that liberal activists try to make part of our culture and society.  So calling Trump a racist falls on somewhat deaf ears, since the left tries to paint anyone that disagrees with them as “racist”

So is Trump a racist?  I think the best answer is that he is no more racist than anyone his age and  background.  He has put his foot (or his thumbs) in his mouth, and has been caught verbalizing some racially inappropriate things.  His actions, on the other hand have not shown him to be racist, and in fact he has done more for the economic well-being of minorities than most of his predecessors. The old saw “actions speak louder than words” seem appropriate here, particularly when the words are 30+ years old, in some cases, or are sourced from heated campaign rhetoric.

This is a good dissertation on the differences between individual and group racism and the societal effects.



Ray Gruszecki
Jan 29, 2019

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