Is the ex president of the United States, Donald Trump, a racist person? Judging by his own words and actions, it is, although the ex president denies it. The controversy over Donald Trump and racism has not stopped since the businessman arrived at the White House in January 2017.
Opposition politicians, civil rights defenders, artists and athletes have not stopped criticizing and holding demonstrations rejecting the racism expressed by Trump.
Trump defends himself against the accusations, saying it is “The least racist person in the world.” This statement, far from appeasing the debate about Donald Trump and racism, has fueled it, because it has been taken as a mockery of those who denounce him as racist.
Trump’s racist speech
Since launching his presidential candidacy in 2015, Trump has publicly expressed a provocative speech that has fueled xenophobia and racism. His attacks have been primarily targeted at immigrants, Latinos, and African Americans.
In speeches, statements and tweets, without detours, the US ex president has expressed ideas considered racist towards these groups.
- In 2015 he referred to Mexican immigrants saying that Mexico sends “drugs, crime and rapists, and some, I assume, good people.”
- During a television debate in 2015, Trump claimed that the United States “is a country where we speak English, not Spanish.”
- In 2016 he asked for the vote of African Americans asking them: “What the hell can you lose? They live in poverty, their schools are bad, they don’t have a job ”.
- In 2017, he called for the firing of NFL players who were protesting the deaths of African Americans at the hands of the police. At a rally, he called Colin Kaepernick the first player to be a “son of a bitch” who, in protest, got down on his knees while the national anthem played.
- Last year, 2018, on the visa lottery, he said: “Countries put their names in the visa lottery. Do you think they are giving us good people? We choose, then it turns out they are horrendous and we don’t understand why. “
- At a meeting on immigration in 2018, Trump asked in reference to people from African countries, El Salvador and Haiti: “Why do we have all these people from shitty countries coming here?”
- In July 2019, Trump directed racist tweets against four Democratic congressmen with Puerto Rican, Palestinian, Somali and African American roots. He wrote, “Why don’t you go back where you came from and help repair the destroyed and crime-infested places you left there?”
The debate over Donald Trump and racism has made it clear that the US ex president tends to link crime with African-Americans. This has been determined by a study on the Trumps’s tweets. It reveals that when Trump associates crime with population groups, he almost always refers to African Americans or dark complexions.
In addition, the ex president’s tendency to use the word infest. He does it only to refer to situations that involve African-American and dark-skinned people: “crime-infested slums”, “Unauthorized immigrants who will infest our country.”
Impact of Donald Trump and racism
Trump’s relationship with racism and xenophobia is not in words. The actions of your government have been aimed at toughen US immigration policy.
The construction of a wall on the border with Mexico was one of his main promises in the 2016 election campaign. To have public money to finance the work, he declared a “national emergency.”
Donald Trump has ordered raids of undocumented immigrants who have been criticized because American children have been separated from their illegal immigrant parents. The families were also separated when caravans of Central American migrants reached the southern border of the country.
Another of its measures has been the suspension of aid to El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras, for being countries that “send us criminals on purpose.” In addition, it is considering tightening the conditions for requesting asylum in the United States.
It is anticipated that in the 2020 re-election campaign, Trump continues to fuel racism and xenophobia among the hard core of his constituents.
Trump and white supremacism
In the midst of this controversy there is debate if your performance has promoted white supremacism. It is debated whether it has revitalized the extreme right-wing sectors of the country that reject the ideology of the left by appealing to violence. It is even debated if his speech has motivated the gunmen who have perpetrated terrorist attacks motivated by racial hatred.
Trump’s statements after the 2017 Charlottesville, Virginia terrorist attack were viewed as supportive of fascist sectors. So he avoided directly condemning the extreme right, declaring that hatred, fanaticism and violence came from “many sides.”
After the Texas and Ohio shootings in August 2019, Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden harshly criticized Trump. He accused him of “fanning the flames of white supremacism” with his toxic speech, “aligned with the darkest forces in the nation.” “His words are not far from those of the attacker who declared that his attack is a response to the Hispanic invasion.”
And it is that Trump has used the word “invasion” since he became president to refer to migrants from Central America. The speech instills even more fear among sectors of the white population. They fear a supposed extinction, because by 2050 the population of Latino origin will surpass the white and Afro-American.
Beto O’Rourke, candidate in the Democratic primaries, called Trump “White nationalist”. He said that during the previous president’s administration, hate crimes have increased. “He is a racist and fuels racism in America.”
Trump explicitly condemned racism and white supremacism after the attacks, and called for the death penalty for the perpetrators of the Texas and Ohio killings. I affirm that Americans must “condemn racism, bigotry, and white supremacism, these sinister ideologies must be defeated. Hate has no place in America. ”
You may also be interested in these articles: