Trump is the mask torn off of who we white people are and have been

Abstract

Currently, most white people seem to think that Trump and his values are some cruel, insane, accidental distortion of US society. In counterpoint to this view, I argue that he is not. Instead, Trump is mainly the ‘liberal’ or ‘conservative’ mask torn off of who we white people have been and what we have allowed in our name. This country was built on a foundation of the genocide of about 80% of the Indigenous People and the theft of their land. We followed this with Black slavery, which provided money and power in both the North and the South to make the US a powerful nation worldwide. Furthermore, though we fought a civil war over slavery, within 20 years, power in the South was returned to the slave masters, and Jim Crow was born, which continued the psycho-social-cultural and economic exploitation of blacks and which we followed with the New Jim Crow. We also stole the land of the Indigenous People of the Southwest by conducting an imperial war and breaking treaties. Today, before Trump, we have had state sanctioned (police) murder without consequences of people of color, persistent xenophobia toward varying groups across our history, the rape and murder of women though there is very little of the reverse, a capitalism that is dependent on poverty and wages people cannot survive on, widespread climate denial, extensive hunger and homelessness, among other deleterious conditions. However, that the white wealthy power elite led us down this path is not an excuse. We went along. For the crumbs they offered, we chose them over our true sisters and brothers. We whites are simply not who we say to ourselves we are. Our history and our sociology do not support our self-view. To have any chance, then, to move forward toward a more humane, equitable, inclusive, caring future, we must recognize and take responsibility for who we really are today and who we really have been.

Keywords:

• White supremacy
• Whiteness
• white racism

Notes

1. ‘Regime’ is a word that has many different meanings in many different contexts—different national contexts, different academic contexts, and even different cultural contexts. Merriam-Webster online (n.d.) defines it as ‘2 a: mode of rule or management, b: a form of government, c: a government in power, [or] d: a period of rule’. However, google.com’s (n.d.) own dictionary defines it as ‘a government, especially an authoritarian one’, thus raising the possible issue of a potentially negative connotation. In contrast, many scholars use it in a more neutral, descriptive sense. Stone’s work (1989) on ‘regime theory’ might be the classic example of this. In his well known and widely respected book, Regime politics: Governing Atlanta, ‘regime’ has no negative connotation; it is just descriptive, much like the Merriam-Webster definition. Thus, to understand the meaning the author intends, the context must be examined.

2. Having grown up as a serious Christian in a small, overwhelmingly white Midwestern town, I have long been deeply appalled at right wing and evangelical hatred of people who are different than whites in any way. This hatred spewed forth on many so-called Christian radio and TV stations is such a deep violation of the Jesus message of love and inclusion that it is almost unthinkable. Their New Testament must be vastly different than the one I have read.

3. I am not addressing foreign policy here, though it is often as hideous as domestic genocide and slavery. See Chomsky & Naiman, 2011, for that history.

4. While technology is to some extent driven by an internal logic, it is mostly being driven by the capitalist need to increase profit rather than by human need.