A few weeks ago, Jemele Hill tweeted that Trump was a "white supremacist", and the Trump administration reacted predictably. If you've read at least a few of my political blog posts, you know I'm on Jemele's side here, but I also found myself playing a little devil's advocates inside my head regarding the specific charge in Jemele's tweet. Specifically, I wondered if it was technically accurate to call Trump a "white supremacist". Now, I firmly believe that anyone who calls participants in a Nazi march "very fine people" deserves to be called a "white supremacist", but the pedantic part of me ( which is a pretty damn big part of me ) couldn't help but wonder if Trump is really a white supremacist deep in his heart, or is he is just pretending to be a white supremacist to secure the votes of white racists ( Because let's face it, Trump can't be re-elected without the enthusiastic support of white racists. I'm not try to say most Republicans are racist, but I am saying that most white racists in this country vote Republican, and if those white racists stay home on election day, Republicans have no chance at wining a national election. )?
I also spent some time thinking about if there is any practical difference between being a white supremacist in one's heart or pretending to be a white supremacist, and this led me to the following thought experiment:
Consider a wealthy white man from New York City who owns a large national chain of restaurants in the 1960s. This man grew up in a multi-racial neighborhood, has many close Black friends, has a multi-racial board of directors at his company, and considers himself to be a supporter of Dr. King's movement. This man eventually gets wind that the operators of most of his restaurants in the South have placed "Whites Only" signs in the windows of his restaurant. The man decides that he should do something about that, and he instructs his regional managers to get those signs out of the restaurants windows. He faces great resistance from these managers, but after he make it clear that the regional managers jobs are on the line, he soon finds that about 10% of his restaurants have had the signs removed, and his managers have assured him that they can get the rest of the "Whites Only" signs removed within a year. He knows that a lot of those regional managers are just stalling, but he's happy with the progress he's made and he vows to himself that he'll keep pushing and prodding his regional managers until all his restaurants are integrated.
However, a month later the first financial reports arrive from his integrated restaurants in the South. He learns that the revenue from those restaurants has dropped precipitously. The white patrons left those restaurants in droves as soon as they noticed Black people were allowed in, and there were not enough new Black patrons in those restaurants to make up for the lost revenue from the loss of the white patrons.
After learning this, the wealthy owner decides he doesn't want to lose any more revenue, and indefinitely suspends his program to integrate his restaurants in the South. He complains to his friends that the South is full of backwards white supremacists who are not ready for integrated restaurants yet.
Now with all that in mind, who do you think is a bigger white supremacist. Is it ...
1) A racist patron who refused to go to one of the restaurants the wealthy owner was trying to integrate.
OR
2) The wealthy owner himself.
In my mind, despite his personal feelings about race relations, the wealthy owner is the much bigger white supremacist, because his actions have done more to promote that institutional supremacy of the white people than the actions of an individual that refused to enter a restaurant because he saw a Black person it it.
Applying the same kind of logic to Donald Trump, I believe I can now confidently say that Donald Trump is a white supremacists without any reservations. Regardless of what he might feel deep down in his heart, his actions and his words during his presidency have given comfort and support to white supremacists.
If you are using you power and influence to help white supremacists, then you're a white supremacist in my book, regardless of what your personal feelings may be.
So, to make a long story short, Jemele Hill was right, and a lot more of us should be echoing what she wrote in that tweet.
Rich
