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Donald Trump recently sat down for an interview with Time magazine, during which he repeated a sentiment often echoed by white-and-aggrieved America, which insists that it is white people who are facing racism and discrimination in a country where white people still represent the overwhelming majority.
Trump was asked about polls that show his supporters believe “anti-white racism” is now a greater problem in America than racism suffered by Black people and people of color, to which the former president responded, “There is a definite anti-white feeling in the country, and that can’t be allowed either.” (It shouldn’t be lost on anyone that a so-called champion of American freedom is now telling Americans how they’re “allowed” to feel.)
Here’s a question that I often ask but have never received a plausible answer to: In a country that is more than 60% white and where white people dominate every important entity in Western society — from the corporate world to state and federal governments to all aspects of the justice system — and are the only overwhelmingly represented racial group in popular culture (TV, film, broadcasting, and, up until recent years, advertising, etc.), who exactly are white people being oppressed by?
Last week, I reported on Iowa State University President Wendy Wintersteen telling the state’s Board of Regents that her school is complying with the state’s newly adopted law requiring public colleges to overhaul (read: eliminate) their DEI programs on campus.
“So one of the first things we did was establish learning communities so that a young man, young white man, from rural Iowa, could come and be in a learning community and find the place where they could belong,” Wintersteen said.
Here’s what I wrote about Wintersteen’s remarks and that of the presidents of the other two big public colleges in Iowa, the University of Iowa and the University of Northern Iowa:
Apparently, in Wintersteen’s caucasity-infused mind, young white men from rural Iowa are having a difficult time finding a place where they comfortably fit in while attending a school that is—*checks notes*—more than 72% white. Actually, all three schools are overwhelmingly Caucasian. The University of Iowa is also 72% white, and the University of Northern Iowa is a whopping 83% white. In fact, no other individual racial group at any of the three schools comes in at more than just over 7%. At both Iowa State and UI, Black students represent less than 1% of the student body.
So, why are these school administrators showing all of this concern for white students, of which there are plenty, while shutting down programs that are meant to aid students of color, of which there are relatively few? Well, once you figure out that there is no practical answer for that question, you will have figured out that the white conservative war on DEI, critical race theory and “wokeness” is really just a modern manifestation of exactly how white supremacy operates.
The implications are no different when it comes to the statement made by Trump, whose advisers have said they will rescind all DEI-related executive orders signed by President Joe Biden if he is elected, according to the Times. Trump is also the man who, while in office, spearheaded the propaganda-reliant attack on critical race theory, and issued an executive order banning diversity training in the workplace. Now, Trump is promising to end all DEI programs across America if he’s elected again.
The big takeaway here should be that, for Black people, getting the nation to truly acknowledge and correct its anti-Black nature has been a 400-year-long uphill battle that rarely results in antiracist laws being passed. However, when white people start crying Caucasian tears over what they perceive as anti-whiteness (again, despite being the most prevalent and powerful racial group in the country) policies change and legislation gets signed to appease them while the most powerful people in and outside of the U.S. government fall right in line with them, their anti-white paranoia and their seething racial resentment.
Hell, I haven’t even mentioned the fact that the guy who is complaining that there exists a “definite anti-white feeling in the country,” is the same guy who once declared, “Laziness is a trait in Blacks,” and, more recently, generalized Mexican migrants as rapists and drug dealers, compared South American migrants to Hannibal Lecter, and called them “animals” who are “not human.” Trump is far too concerned with this “anti-white feeling” for someone who denigrates brown immigrants this way but wishes the U.S. received more white immigrants from “nice” European countries.
Was this vague “anti-white feeling” the reason the Department of Justice filed a lawsuit against Trump over anti-Black housing discrimination in the ’70s? Was anti-whiteness being displayed when he told Black and brown congresswomen to “go back where they came from,” despite them all being born and/or raised in America? When Trump was advocating for the military to shoot Black Lives Matter protesters in the street the year before he inspired an angry white MAGA mob to go full “KnuKKK if You BucKKK” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, was he not, as usual, displaying his thinly veiled anti-Black feelings?
The hypocrisy and caucasity-infused delusion would be laughable if it weren’t being weaponized against Black people so often. Again, Trump’s remark, as well as the intent behind it, is white supremacy in action. If there is a growing “anti-white feeling” in America, he and his MAGA cohorts are a shining example of why that might be.
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