Something I see written about is how it's wrong to call all Trump supporters racist
and that stereotyping them as racist is bad.
And I agree that not every Trump supporter is part of the most racist groups who support
him.
Different people support him for different reasons.
I know Latinos who support him, many of whom have said racist things about other Latinos
and this points to divisions between Latinos of different skin colors and from different
countries, and the reasons these Latinos have for not supporting Trump are not the same
reasons as the reasons of white Anglos who go around waving Confederate flags.
There are a lot of articles about how poor white communities decided to support Trump
for a lot of different reasons.
There are a lot of articles saying it's bad to insult as racist a group that is already
suffering economically.
From my perspective, on the economic issue?
I will always support the right of people, especially the poor, to have their human dignity
respected and to receive efficient solutions to the problems their communities face, exactly
how wealthy people always receive efficient solutions from the government.
This does not change if the poor community in question is white and Anglo.
The other issue I see mentioned is that many communities that voted for Trump are relatively
small towns which felt ignored.
And it certainly is true that there is a tendency to focus on larger cities and ignore smaller
towns, which to my mind is itself another type of economic discrimination.
Within the larger cities, people focus on the richer and fancier areas and ignore the
problems poorer areas of the city have, and smaller towns are ignored in favor of the
large cities.
I mention this because, having lived in cities myself, I rarely heard people talking badly
about small towns or about Midwest states in poorer neighborhoods.
I started hearing people diminish these places when I went to the richer neighborhoods.
From my perspective, the small towns that felt no one was paying attention to their
problems?
That is a kind of discrimination and that must be addressed such that these communities
know their politicians will do their duty toward every town they represent.
However, economic discrimination is not the only problem facing the country.
Small predominantly white towns feeling ignored are not the only problem.
A lot of small towns are predominantly black or predominantly Latino or predominantly Asian,
and these shouldn't be ignored either.
Racial discrimination is a problem, and I will always support trying to solve the problems
of racism in the country.
I will always support respecting the human dignity of people of color, just like the
human dignity of white people is often respected.
And for that reason, I will oppose Trump's racist policies.
Since the beginning of his campaign and throughout his presidency, he has refused to recognize
the human dignity of people of color.
He started his campaign seeking support from the most racist groups by insulting Mexicans
as rapists.
He started his presidency by attacking Muslim groups and banning people from Muslim majority
countries.
He continued insulting Latinos with his response to Hurricane Maria and his unequal treatment
of Puerto Ricans as compared to the relative compassion he tried to show victims of Hurricane
Harvey in Texas and Hurricane Irma in Florida.
Trump is generally bad at showing compassion, and I insist he still is seeking power which
is why he is bad at showing compassion, but he showed more compassion comparatively to
people in Texas and in Florida than to Puerto Ricans, and even now as Puerto Ricans still
lack basic necessities his government is planning is reduce instead of increase efforts to help.
With regard to black communities, Trump has over and over tried to attack prominent black
figures, whether it's a black soldier who died in uniform, or the grieving family of
that soldier, or black politicians, or recently NFL athletes and now his insistence that a
couple NBA athletes show him gratitude because he got them released after being jailed in
China for shoplifting.
This last instance is classic Trump, claiming that neither the White House nor the State
Department did anything and that he alone was responsible for their freedom and insisting
that they and their families show him gratitude.
It's insulting on the one hand to the very government of which he is only a representative
when he takes all this credit and says his co-workers, his team at the White House and
State Department did nothing but he, the Great Trump, did everything, and it is insulting
and racist when he demands over and over again that black people lavish him with gratitude.
It's an attitude he shows much more rarely to white people.
When it's black people, Trump goes completely on the attack, so much so that he attacks
the grieving widow of a soldier who died fighting for Trump, lest we forget that he bears a
part of guilt for these deaths when he is the commander in chief of the army.
When he deals with white people, he still has trouble showing compassion but he at least
tries to.
Furthermore, Trump has again and again treated black communities as irredeemable places of
crime, all the while refusing to treat it as criminal when white people commit drug-related
crimes.
Which is to say, for him, black communities are always full of drugs and criminals, and
white communities only occasionally have drug problems and even those aren't criminal, they're
public health problems.
He treats it as a public health issue when talking about whites, and we would make more
progress by treating drug problems as public health problems rather than addressing it
through the criminal justice system, but where Trump acts in a racist way is when he treats
drug problems as crime if the affected community is Latino, oh my goodness if the community
is Latino he'll immediately mention MS-13, and he treats drug problems as crime when
it's a black community, but the moment it's a white community dealing drugs suddenly Trump
treats it as public health issue.
Now, poor white Anglo communities might have voted for Trump because some of what he said
seemed like it would help them.
Maybe they disagreed with how he acted toward other racial groups but they thought he was
the least bad option during the 2016 presidential election.
I do want to point out that if we look at the poll numbers we see that while Trump got
a strong portion of the poor white vote, he got a larger percentage of wealthier white
votes.
But still, poor white communities have supported him, and so many articles have been written
about how we shouldn't insult these communities.
I do agree that I don't want to treat any group as less than human and of course that
includes white Anglos.
I don't know every single town in the United States.
That's just impossible.
I don't know the racial issues that occur in every town in the United States.
Again, that's just impossible.
So it is equally impossible to say that everyone who supported Trump is racist or not.
But we do have to acknowledge one simple thing: that Trump has racist policies and if we oppose
racial discrimination we need to oppose his racist policies.
Trump not only refused to respect the human dignity of people of color but made it clear
he would rigorously continue to disrespect the human dignity of people of color if elected.
Yes, he said he would help poor communities, but he also would build a wall to divide the
United States and Mexico and would try to keep out Muslims.
And while he has had problems building the wall, he has still insulted Latinos over and
over and he has actually instituted a travel ban on Muslims.
All of that is part of who he is.
My belief is, based on Trump's words and actions, is that he doesn't have real policy solutions
and that he lacks a real understanding of the problems facing the country.
Just look at his approach to FBI director James Comey and generally the Justice Department.
The Department of Justice consists of agencies whose role is to enforce the laws of the country.
Their role is not to be Trump's personal attack dog.
But from his comments to the way he asked James Comey for personal loyalty, he seems
to want the Justice Department not to work for the people of the country, but to serve
only him.
That's why I see him as someone seeking power for the sake of power, not someone with any
genuine intention to understand the problems the country faces and to want to solve those
problems.
His policies against racial groups, I think, were created because he wanted to attract
the support of racist groups who agree with those racist actions.
But some communities see him differently than I do.
They see someone who can and might be willing to help them.
Is everyone who supports him racist?
Some groups are but I can't know about everyone.
And ultimately, the most important part to me is advocating against racist policies.
I can't know if someone advocates a racist policy because they have a deeply held hatred
against a racial group or for mere political convenience or for whatever reason, and since
I can't know, I want to spend my time advocating against the policies, because with policy,
we can tell if it will have a racist impact on the community.
Trump himself has repeatedly advocated racist ideas and policies.
He has spent more time talking about his racism than he has talking about any economic solution.
And as someone against racism, I am committing to opposing racist policies.
If you support racist policies, then I will argue against what you support.
I'm not going to avoid calling his policies racist just because the people who support
him don't like his policies being called racist.
I am going to oppose his policies and I will argue against his policies as best as I can.
If poor white communities want to talk about solutions to their economic problems, I will
support them in that and I will argue every day of my life in favor concrete solutions
for the problems associated with poverty.
If small towns want to talk about how politicians are ignoring them, I will advocate every day
of my life for politicians to be responsible to all their constituents.
But I will still oppose the racism of the Trump administration.
I will argue every day of my life for solutions to the problems of racism affecting the country
and the world.
I don't know if people living in poor white communities are racist.
But if the majority in these communities support Trump, and Trump himself is supporting racist
policies, then to the extent members of poor white communities advocate racist policies
I will argue against them.
On another level, it really bothers me that we care more about white communities who feel
insulted because we call racist policies what they are, we care more about that than we
care about actually having a country with less racist policies and reducing the difficulties
that people of color encounter.
I've read polls where white Anglos in the United States think they experience racism
and for example think that they won't be hired because they are white despite overwhelming
evidence to contrary.
Efforts to reduce the effects of racism are not efforts to take away what white Anglos
have.
Efforts to reduce proven discrimination in hiring practices across many industries are
not efforts to take away jobs from white Anglos.
These are efforts to allow everyone to compete for these jobs on the basis of their talent
and abilities, not on the basis of their skin color.
It's an effort for all of us to have our human dignity recognized, whatever color you are.
Ultimately, however, these tensions are inevitable when there is great change.
There hasn't been too much positive change, but there has been some improvement in terms
of racial discrimination.
In large part, Trump's ability to get into power has depended on taking advantage of
the tension that is the result of that change.
The other part of his ability to get power is due to real economic problems in the country.
The economic problems need to be addressed.
But so do the racial ones.
No small town should feel ignored, but that includes all small towns regardless of which
racial group is the majority population.
And I think we need to remember to fix both problems, and not ignore the racial ones because
we're still more afraid of insulting white Anglos than we care about the problems facing
people of color.
Không có nhận xét nào:
Đăng nhận xét