Trump Is Working Hard To Protect Racism And White Privilege

There is a reason this country's racists voted for Donald Trump. They recognized one of their own. Trump has always been a racist and continues to be one. As a young man, he repeatedly violated civil rights law that said he could not refuse to rent to Blacks. And even after the "Central Park 5" were shown to be innocent, he continued to call for them to receive the death penalty.

It should come as no surprise that he is now acting to erase much of the racial progress in this country. It was something he did on his first day in office. He knows he can't overturn the Civil Rights laws passed in the Johnson administration - even the GOP Congress wouldn't go that far (because they know there would be a huge backlash).

But he can act to protect white privilege, and stop all efforts to eliminate it.

The right-wing likes to quote Martin Luther King, Jr. that everyone should be judged on the content of their character and not the color of their skin. But they ignore the fact that Dr. King meant that was the ideal in a fair society - not the unfair society we live in.

The Civil Rights laws advanced our society, but it did not solve all of our racial problems. We still have a lot of racism in our societal institutions. This institutional racism (in courts, police department, schools, corporations, etc.) allows white privilege (a form of racism) to continue to exist. 

Our government was fighting this institutional racism with different kinds of affirmative action (including DEI programs) and with the Civil Rights division of the Justice Department. With a stroke of his pen, Trump is trying to do away with any programs that fight institutional racism. He has outlawed DEI in government agencies, and threatened corporations if they don't also do that. And he has suspended all actions of the Justice Department Civil Rights division.

He didn't stop there. His executive order stopping birthright citizenship is aimed at brown and black people from Latin America and Africa - not whites from Canada and Europe. 

When Trump says he wants to "make America great again", he is talking about taking us back to a time when rich white men ruled the country. He thinks the country was better when Blacks, Hispanics, women, and LGBTQ people were not full citizens. And he's trying hard to recreate that time by protecting white privilege and refusing to make sure Civil Rights law are enforced.

It's going to be a dark and troubled four years for anyone not rich, male, and white.