Gordon L. Weil
Terry Moran, an ABC correspondent, recently wrote on his
social media site that Stephen Miller, a Trump aide, is a “world class
hater.” What’s worse, he made a similar
comment about President Trump. That got
him fired by ABC, which is going to great lengths to placate Trump. Also, reporters should not express their personal
views of people they cover.
Are Trump and his administration racist, sexist, or
antisemitic, degrading some groups to favor the preferred club of white men? In one form or another, this charge has been
made against Trump ever since he began running in 2015.
One easy explanation is that Trump himself is not racist,
but that he sends signals to biased voters that he sympathizes with them to gain
their political support. His attitude
may encourage more open prejudice against Blacks, women, Jews and others. But Trump usually avoids saying the wrong
thing.
With one truly major error.
When he equated virulent, antisemitic rioters in Charlottesville with
peaceful demonstrators, (“good people on both sides”), he either unmasked innate
racism or carried too far his exploitation of the understated racism of his
backers.
It Trump is not a racist, he would rank as an opportunist. He exploits other people’s prejudice. He attacks
anybody, and has his own distinctive style of discrimination when it comes to
people he regards as an inferior opponent or a “loser.”
The signal that he dismisses you comes when he gives you a
demeaning nickname. Clashing over the
handling of the L.A. riots, Trump labelled California Gov. Gavin Newsom as
“Gov. New Scum.” Not only is this
unacceptable in civil society, but such childish name-calling by a bully is yet
another sign of what looks like a fifth-grader’s mentality.
After nationally recognized events revealed institutional
racism, official agencies undertook programs to encourage diversity, inclusion
and equity. DEI became a way of ensuring
that minorities that had been subject to discrimination would be encouraged to
enter the mainstream life of the country.
This awareness of embedded racial discrimination came to be
called “woke.” It applied to efforts to ensure and promote open access to equal
treatment.
But it went beyond open access to provide what looked to
some like preferential access to jobs and other opportunities. In such cases, it seemed to focus on their
situation above the needs of most average people. This gave rise to understandable opposition
to woke, notably by the president.
Trump quickly exploited the concerns of those who saw woke
as favoritism. He asserts that, by
recruiting minorities and women who have historically been the victims of
discrimination, government has hired and promoted people of inadequate merit or
competence. If something goes wrong, he
can blame it on incompetent DEI recipients.
Using federal funding flows, he punishes non-governmental
entities, especially universities, for their DEI policies or alleged
antisemitism. The best way of rejecting
DEI is to swiftly remove from positions of power anybody who is the member of a
group that may have benefitted from equal access, regardless of their
competence.
But even that is not enough.
Not all the history of a country is exemplary. Slavery and Jim Crow racism in the U.S. is a
matter of fact. The exclusion of women
from their rightful place in the professions and public life is also beyond
debate. Yet, Trump’s anti-woke policy demands
rewriting history to downplay past injustice, reopening old wounds.
If Trump is not a racist, he has given racism and its
supporters aid and comfort and allowed them to become more public without
embarrassment. He has undone decades of
progress toward a more equal society and reversed it. If not done out of
conviction, it is done for political gain.
He has also tried to distort and exploit
discrimination. The Gaza conflict raised
strong opposition to Israel’s extreme measures in its over-retaliation for the
horrendous and despicable Hamas attack. Its
actions, including starvation, seem aimed at the ethnic cleansing of the area.
Trump charges people with being antisemitic if they show
sympathy for innocent Palestinians, who themselves have lived under Hamas control.
Opposition to Israeli official policy toward
innocent Palestinians amounts to antisemitism.
When an incident occurs, he sharply criticizes the anti-Jewish
attackers, but shows no sympathy for the Jewish victims.
If we are to believe that the U.S. is better off now resulting
from the war against DEI, ask those who have suffered.
Do Blacks, Hispanics, Jews, and women feel more comfortable
in Trump’s supposedly merit-based society than they did before he returned to
office?
Can universities, heavily punished for the excessive
outbursts of a few students, continue to produce world-class research?
Is the government now more competent and unbiased than
before he came to office?
Where does it end?
