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If it wasn't so grim, it would almost be funny. Okay, the decision to remove the Black Vietnam-War-era Medal of Honor recipient, Major General Charles Calvin Rogers, from a Defense Department website (and the word "medal" briefly changed to the insulting "deimedal") was indeed reversed and the long-dead Rogers is now back at that site. But, as it happens, the decisions to remove the only female four-star officer on the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Chief of Naval Operations Admiral Lisa Franchetti, as well as the Black chairperson of the Joint Chiefs, Air Force General CQ Brown, Jr., haven't been reversed, nor was the firing of Coast Guard Commandant Linda Fagan, who was later given all of three hours to leave her home. No 60-day waiver for her, not when President Trump wanted her gone, gone, gone!
In truth, what we really need to replace DEI ("diversity, equity, inclusion") is evidently a new acronym, something like AWM ("all-white male"); or perhaps TAW ("Trump all the way"); or OMW ("our manic world"); or, of course, you can simply make up your own. We're certainly in a world where, it seems, more or less anything The Donald wants, however grim, goes -- anything, that is, Donald J. Trump, or (that acronym beyond all other acronyms) DJT, desires. Worse yet, as of now, an appeals court has indeed allowed him to "temporarily implement a ban on diversity, equity and inclusion programs at federal agencies and businesses with government contracts," while court appeals on the issue are scheduled to go on for months or even years to come.
And with that in mind, let TomDispatch regular Clarence Lusane, author of Twenty Dollars and Change: Harriet Tubman and the Ongoing Fight for Racial Justice and Democracy, consider the world of DJT and just how eerily silent his Black supporters have been when it comes to more or less anything that matters. Tom
Making America White Again
The Deafening Silence of Trump's Black Supporters
During the 2024 election campaign, candidate Donald Trump's most controversial rally occurred at New York's Madison Square Garden. A comedian on the program referred to the island of Puerto Rico -- and by implication Puerto Ricans -- as garbage. He and the Trump campaign were rightfully pilloried and called out for his disgusting bigotry.
Little notice was given, however, to another noxious racist moment at the same event. On Trump's playlist for the rally was the Confederate and White nationalist anthem "Dixie." Notably, that song was played as Trump loyalist and harsh defender Representative Byron Donalds (R-FL) was coming on stage. Donalds is African American and perhaps Trump's most visible Black sycophant. While Black social media and journalists crucified Trump and Donalds over the incident, for Black MAGA supporters, the episode was simply put in the memory hole.
They were muted as well when Trump and vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance spread racist falsehoods about Haitians supposedly eating cats and dogs in Springfield, Ohio. They seemed to be the only people in the country who didn't hear what everyone else had heard -- a fabrication of stunning proportions.
Trump and MAGA's White Nationalist Rampage
The silence of Black MAGA supporters in the face of Trump's and Vance's bigotry during the campaign has carried over to the second Trump era. Now that he's president again, their voices are being quelled as his White-power, autocratic government takes shape.
The president has spent almost every day of his second term in office so far raging against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), issuing executive orders of a White nationalist flavor, attacking a federal workforce that's disproportionately people of color, and making it clear that rolling back civil rights and Black social and education advances is one of his top priorities. Nearly every move of his has involved nods to racist themes and aims. That includes his effort to defy the Constitution and try to eliminate birthright citizenship, his mass firings and funding freezes while he vanishes DEI programs across the federal government, his plan to deport millions of undocumented immigrants (of color), and even his take on the wildfires in Los Angeles and the Washington area airplane-helicopter disaster.
Trump thinks of his racialized and racist perspective on such events as "common sense." Consider that a shield for his bias against and antipathy to science and evidence, as well as his visceral inability to see Black people and other people of color in any position of authority and expertise outside of sports and entertainment.
His vitriol against the world's most marginalized and poor has led him to try to completely shut the door on illegal (and even legal) immigration -- with a single exception. Recently, he spread his arms and opened America's visa gates to Afrikaners, the Whites whom he (along with Elon Musk) has determined are an oppressed minority in South Africa. Falsely claiming that their lands have been seized by the South African government and that they face genocide, in an executive order he called them "victims of unjust racial discrimination." He also wrote on social media, "Any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship." Perhaps it's a coincidence that Elon Musk, Trump's co-president, who traffics in racist themes about race and intelligence online, is South African Apartheid-era born.
It must be strongly emphasized that Trump's executive order and his multiple social posts on the subject are not only blatant lies but align with the work of South African and American White supremacists who have falsely charged that a "genocide" is indeed occurring there. And speaking of White supremacists, add to that list his decision to release the White supremacists and neo-Nazis who were among the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 (with, of course, Trump's blessing and encouragement). With the stroke of a pen, he absolved violent and White nationalist criminals who had carried signs supporting the Holocaust and yelled racist epithets at Black Capitol police officers.
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