Trump and Racism Revisited
Our coastal leftist democrats and the 90% + anti-Trump
mainstream media has painted Trump as a virulent racist. Drawing on this, Bernie Sanders has called
Trump a racist to partisan crowds, and Joe Biden’s participation announcement
called Trump a racist based on his comment after Charlottesville that there
“were fine people on both sides”, which was taken completely out of context and
implied that Trump was referring to white supremacists as “fine people”. In actual fact, the “fine people” comment
pertained to innocent, non-violent protesters, (who had permits), to removing
General Robert E. Lee’s statue from the Charlottesville park. Trump soundly condemned the torch-carrying
white supremacists and neo Nazis, as well as the black-shirted and masked
antifa thugs with baseball bats that fought with the alt-right group. He expressed sympathy for the peaceful
demonstrators that were there to protest the degradation of a famous American
general.
Admittedly, Trump’s rhetoric sometimes gets carried away to
the point that he expresses what a lot of Americans think, but which is
anathema to politically correct leftists and their MSM accomplices. Talk is cheap, someone once said, and the
term “racist” is so overused by the “woke” leftists, that it has become almost
meaningless. Disagree with the
groupthink left about virtually anything, and immediately be termed a “racist”.
Many feel that Trump should keep his mouth shut and his
thumbs off the tweeter, particularly when it comes to ethnic comments which are
as natural in The Bronx or Queens on a construction site, but not so cool in
this intersectional, “woke” political environment. Inappropriate rhetoric and tweets
notwithstanding, Trump is not at all “racist” when it comes to action, rather
than words, for minorities. Trump has
always stressed the equality of “all Americans”, with no unusual special
privileges for identity groups. This is
what puts him at odds with socialist elitists in the coastal and major urban
centers and the mainstream media that back them, whose “cause celebre” is identity
politics, special treatment, reparations and glorifying of identity
groups. The link refers to action that
Trump has taken concerning minorities, rather than his sometimes provocative
rhetoric, and the equally provocative rantings of the left.
Ray Gruszecki
April 26, 2019
The left – democrats, Hollywood, the mainstream media, have
all taken up the chant “Donald Trump is a RACIST”, Racist in chief” and much
worse epithets. Whenever Trump
criticizes a politician for ineptitude or corruption, and the politician has a
tinge of color or “protected” ethnicity, leftists accuse Trump of RACISM,
XENOPHOBIA or worse. Of course Trump
doesn’t help the matter, because many of his unfiltered pronouncements and
tweets are straight from the streets of Queens and the Bronx, and not carefully
crafted to avoid adverse cries of “RACIST”, from the left or the mainstream
media.
My own opinion, and that of many Americans is that Donald
Trump is no more RACIST than many of us.
We acknowledge the differences in physical appearance or opinions of
people, but we believe that we are all Americans and have the same civil
rights, including the right to be criticized for ineptitude, or anti-social or
anti-American rhetoric. When Trump
criticizes Ilhan Omar or Rashida Tlaib, for example, who regularly spew
anti-Semitic and anti-American invective, he is attacked as “RACIST” and
ISLAMAPHOBIC”! On this score and many others, most Americans, other than the
loud and frankly obnoxious leftist elitists, agree with Trump and are color
blind in their criticism.
The referenced Article by Deroy Murdock Examines Trump’s
actual record on racism and white supremacy, and points out his many comments
and actions against it. Murdock also
lists some gaffes, which, if not, it wouldn’t be Trump. The other link illustrates that no matter
whatever positive Trump says or does, he will never be given credit by radical
leftists and their mainstream media accomplices.
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.
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 expressing 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.
This is a good dissertation on the differences between
individual and group racism and the societal effects.
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