Trump:
"We do not know what led to this crash but we have some very strong opinions and ideas, and I think we’ll probably state those opinions now.”
Nothing triggers my Republican-oriented readers so much as my writing that racism exists in America and that Trump appeals to that racial animus.
Republican frustration with me is not ameliorated by my saying Trump is very skilled at it. His racialized message puts him in sync with the American electorate. Democratic readers get frustrated with me, too, because my saying Trump understands American racism better than do Democrats is a criticism of Democrats.
I lived in Boston during the busing era, 1973-1975. Tribal thinking was rampant. The Irish -- and by that I mean the great-great grandchildren of mid-19th century Irish immigrants -- disliked their rivals, the Italians -- the grandchildren of early 20th century immigrants from Italy. Boston self-segregated into ethnic neighborhoods. People profiled each other: Irish, Italian, Polish, Jewish, Black, and Brahmin (the old New England gentry WASPS.) I was an outsider within this system, a visitor from Oregon, a noncombatant nobody.
Under the locals' veneer of equality and a pretense of respect for everyone as individuals, I saw widespread profiling, stereotyping, and prejudice. There were two big divides that cut across ethnicities. Christians were in a different tribe from Jews. Whites were in a different tribe from Blacks.Trump is simultaneously cynical and toxic while being politically very effective. Trump appeals to tribal grievance with his attacks on diversity. Underlying this is his presumption that Black people are intellectually inferior. Therefore, attempts to recruit Black employees means that Whites are injured and that standards must have been lowered. The premise is that we cannot have both diversity and merit. A great many people are not offended or surprised by Trump's "common sense." It sounds about right to many people -- which is why he felt comfortable saying it and it was his top-of-mind thing to blame for the crash.
Reporter question: “You have today blamed the diversity elements but then told us that you weren’t sure that the controllers made any mistake. You then said perhaps the helicopter pilots were the ones who made the mistake.”
TRUMP: “It’s all under investigation.”
Q: “I understand that. That’s why I’m trying to figure out how you can come to the conclusion right now that diversity had something to do with this crash.”
TRUMP: “Because I have common sense. OK? And unfortunately, a lot of people don’t. We want brilliant people doing this. This is a major chess game at the highest level. When you have 60 planes coming in during a short period of time, and they’re all coming in different directions, and you’re dealing with very high-level computer, computer work and very complex computers.”
Trump is threading a needle and winning in both directions. When Democrats observe Trump's overt racism, Republicans call it Trump Derangement Syndrome. When Democrats observe --as I am now -- that he is appealing to widespread tribal prejudice, Trump calls it an attack on Americans. How dare Democrats say Americans are racist. (It's just that Blacks are too stupid to compete fairly and everyone knows it, so it is about merit, not race.)
Trump is letting systemic racism work for him. He can both use it and deny it. He provides a pathway for fellow Americans to do the same. We aren't prejudiced against inferior tribes. It is just merit. It is just common sense.
Trump is getting praised for scrubbing American history of signs that the majority culture is prejudiced. We can relax and feel good about ourselves. America is okay. We are okay.
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15 comments:
Racism in America is starting to look as hopeless as Israel/Palestine.
If you think that racism is a one-way street, then you are ignorant (and probably a lifetime resident of the Rogue Valley). EVERY ethnicity has racist members. (Some) Blacks hate Asians. (Some) Asians hate Blacks. (Some) Light-colored Blacks hate dark-colored Blacks. (Some) Japanese don't like Chinese. And it goes on...... Anyone who thinks that only Caucasians can be racist is stupid.
I think that was Peter’s point anonymous, people are naturally tribal and form bounds in their group. After about 150 members the Hunter gatherer groups needed to break up to keep functioning. I’m guessing when it was those guys, not us guys aspersions began to exist.
I published the above comment to reveal to readers the difficult of having a comments section in a blog. Many people are poor readers, with limited ability to process new information. The very text and meaning of my blog post was that prejudice is widespread among Americans of all types and ethnicities. I did not exempt Blacks. I am acutely aware of the prejudice against Asians and the prejudice against and by Blacks. So there are two lessons in the above comment. One is that poor readers are part of the American electorate. The second is that people see what they want to see, not what was right in front of them. The commenter wanted to think that I wrote that prejudice was in one direction only, so she read it that way.
The problem that Peter overlooks is that the quest for “diversity“ has been taken way too far. Here is just one of many examples:
There was a perception of discriminatory hiring in symphony orchestras. “Not enough“ of the musicians were from favored minorities; so a policy of “blind auditions” was implemented.
Musicians would audition from behind a screen. You couldn’t see them at all, and therefore could only judge them based on the quality of the music they played. Seems like a brilliant solution, doesn’t it?
But, as it turns out, blind auditions did not increase the numbers of favored minorities “enough“. So then a movement emerged to get rid of the blind auditions so that the favored minorities could be discriminated in favor of.
Here’s another example: back in New York City in the 1970s, “too many” black applicants were flunking the written test for police sergeant. A black police organization sued the city, claiming the test was biased, and the city responded by saying to them, “OK, why don’t you create a test we’ll use that one.”
So the black organization created a test, and the city adopted it. Once again “not enough“ blacks passed the test, and once again the black organization sued the city, claiming that the test they had created was biased.
The attack on competence and excellence has been part of this movement for decades. Calling people “racist“ for noticing this is a big part of how liberals and the Democratic Party lost the working class.
Trump is just appealing to his base, and his base is getting bigger every day. Even white women love the SOB. So be it. You get what you want. So, every day you see craziness in the headlines by Trump and people really don't take him seriously. But, guess what, he is serious all the time. There are no trial ballons. He has everyone under his thumb and there's nobody to stop him. Not Congress or the Senate or the Supreme Court. A perfect setup for a Dictator. Don't think he won't take advantage of that. He will change the country in ways you wouldn't think possible. Well, good luck to us.
As noted, “racism” has become both vague and all-purpose. I remember years ago when the SAT verbal was assailed because words like “yacht” were fatally foreign to the experience of black students. I doubt many non-black students had been on one either, but never mind. It would have been unthinkable back then to posit with a straight face that the math portion was “racist” too, yet we’ve managed to get to that point as well.
Trump’s scattershot blame response today to the airport tragedy reflects what many warned of when corrective gerrymandering of group outcomes became the norm in combating “systemic” racism. A fatalistic, cynical perpetual-victimhood or infantilization mentality on one end of the unwholesome tribal-consciousness spectrum; a lazy, sleazily opportunistic, supposed self-fulfilling prophecy on the other.
It’s a fact that white, straight men, regardless of their abilities, are hired, promoted and elected over more qualified women and minorities. If a white, straight man is tall and/or good-looking, his odds are even better. Attempts at remedying this have come up short, resulting in the scenarios that MT points out. Of course, the devil is in the details. In the case of the orchestra, in order to have minorities represented musicians need to have access to the same opportunities as their white counterparts, which starts years before they are old enough to audition. This, and many other attempts to diversify are well-intentioned but unfortunately, their failure confirms racial bias for those who believe that way already. DEI initiatives are meant to encourage employers and others to consider all people for jobs, not just white, straight men. A simple concept that has proven to be very difficult to accomplish. The reality is that there are not enough straight, white men to do all the work, so smart employers began expanding their recruiting years ago as a business decision without a lot of fanfare. It will be interesting to see what happens now that Trump has eliminated DEI programs in the government. Will racism and sexism prevail or will pragmatism?
Years ago, the majority of doctors and lawyers were men. Now it's about equal and most people believe either gender is qualified. High profile Black attorneys are opening people's minds as well. It's too bad that people have to see it to believe it, but this appears to be the case.
The U.S. was built on the yearning for freedom by Whites, and by the blood, sweat and tears of enslaved Blacks. The U.S. was one of the last countries to ban slavery. After it was finally abolished in 1865, Blacks suffered a reign of terror and oppression for another hundred years. Apartheid was the law of the land, and Whites murdered Blacks by the thousands publicly and with impunity in the most barbaric ways imaginable, then sold postcards of the spectacle. Segregation was finally abolished with the passage of the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts, but the malice that spawned such atrocities couldn’t be legislated. As the social data makes clear, racism remains a serious problem in the U.S.
When Trump decided to run for president, his only political experience was chief blowhard for the racist birther movement. There were plenty of more qualified candidates, but Republicans went for the racist and the electoral college made him president. Now he’s back and nothing has changed. Aside from further enriching his elite billionaire contributors and retribution against those who tried to hold him accountable for his crimes, one his main missions is to eliminate any programs that seek to alleviate some of the ongoing disparities between Blacks and Whites in health, wealth, education etc. The racists who helped put him in office like to whine that they are the ones being discriminated against. The average White household only has about eight times the wealth of the average Black household. They’re losing their White privilege.
Racial resentment directed at white people is not a winning political message. The recent election should have made that clear to anyone who bothered to look.
But “some people” (tm) seem determined to not get the point, and to virtue signal instead about how much more moral and upstanding they are vs us benighted normal folks who just want to treat everyone the same.
Our Daddies taught us the right words to remember ‘cause they created shock and awe. Imbedded like a virus contaminating quick judgements,
verbal gems stuck ready to launch and spit forth. And the relief in yelling them in secret or at a passing car out a muffled window. Oh Joy!
So much harder to swallow , tight lipped , smiling sucking in the breath,
Reforming passive sterile phrases that retreat into bland and acceptable.
Daddies words never leave you. And Donald gives permission to be Daddies boy or girl.
Pointing out that racism remains a problem in the U.S. is simply stating the facts. It doesn't really matter what you think of it as a political message, because I'm not running for office.
It’s telling that White Nationalists would appropriate a term from the Black vernacular and twist it into a pejorative they use against Blacks, gays, those who seek justice for all and who oppose white-washing American history. Wanting to help those we have oppressed is denounced as “virtue signaling” and/or “reverse discrimination.” So fine, call me “woke” progressive or whatever. I’d much rather be a bleeding heart than a bleeding hemorrhoid.
By the way, “bleeding heart” was first used as a pejorative by Westbrook Pegler, a reactionary columnist castigating liberals in Washington for their focus on “a bill to provide penalties for lynchings.” So, this is really nothing new – it’s just Trump taking us back to when he considered America great.
If racism remains a problem in this country, the solution is not reverse discrimination; not affirmative action, not DEI, not the bureaucratic enforcement of equal outcomes regardless of talent or ability.
Equal standards applied to everyone is the solution.
We do have equal standards, but those who have been subjected to unequal treatment need help meeting them. Why do you have such a problem with that? The solution is equal access to healthcare and quality schools.
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