Trumps Great American Whitewash

http://prospect.org/article/trumps-great-american-whitewash

Trump’s Great American Whitewash
Derrick Z. Jackson
January 25, 2018

Why do so many white people believe that the president has their best interests at heart?


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Why do Trump's racist messages have so much appeal? Trump delivers—loudly—what the Republicans have long promised in code. He offers up bonus time for white privilege in a changing America by tilting the Supreme Court in a conservative direction, in order to keep chipping away at equal protections in education, voting, and jobs. He has unleashed bloodhound Jeff Sessions on the Justice Department to hunt down reverse discrimination against white folks and stand down on police brutality against black people.

But Trump’s and the Republican Party’s traditional promises of lower taxes and less taxing government oversight can no longer hide the cost to white people themselves. As Trump continues to scapegoat black and brown developing nations, America has become the doo-doo hole of the developed world.

The US has the third-highest GDP on Earth, but the third-highest levels of poverty and income inequality among the 30 most advanced nations, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF). We are 49th in gender equity and the only rich nation with no form of universal health care or paid parental leave. The Republicans’ rollback of air and water protections and the attack on climate science erodes the quality of life for white Americans—and everyone else.

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With hundreds of thousands of white people dead from guns and drug overdoses alone since September 11, there are some signs that many white Americans see a cost to white supremacist politics (particularly after Trump’s comments about neo-Nazis after a white woman died during the Charlottesville riot). Recent Democratic victories around the country suggest that Trump’s actions may yet unleash a tidal wave of support for anyone with “D” beside his or her name in November.

But it will have to be a monster wave to dislodge Trump, since he will surely keep reminding white people that they sit at the apex of the American society. The seduction of white privilege has sent Caucasians of all classes rushing to the castle to help the white elites pull up the drawbridge of opportunity against the mongrel hordes.

Martin Luther King Jr. famously said poor Southern white people were placated against their own poverty by Jim Crow, which gave them the illusion of still being “better than the black man.” White America is now absorbing the cost of that illusion and experiencing the socioeconomic fragility that is second nature to African Americans, Latinos, and other people of color.