Another Ugly Scene in the Oval Office

With strong echoes of how he treated Zelensky, Trump recently hammered the genial South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with his racist topology. A piece about white identity politics I wrote eight years ago suggests how these ideas take root. It will be part of my new book.

White People
8/26/2017

Literally dozens of nicknames have been proposed for Trump—including “Cheeto-in-Chief” and “The Human Tanning Bed Warning Label”—many having to do with skin color. People look at Trump and see someone obviously averse to appearing in his natural shade of white. Cheeto doesn’t describe a white person.

Imagine: skin tinting from a man who endorsed white supremacy in Charlottesville and in so many ways has defended white power. Trump’s brand of white identity seems to include Jews, though he sanctions antisemitic groups. Our president is not known for being consistent. I’m Jewish but for many that’s not quite white.

After Charlottesville, Trump got a ringing endorsement from his treasury secretary Steve Mnuchin, while chief financial advisor Gary Cohn almost resigned but did not. Both have become whited sepulchers if not white Jews.

A most striking aspect of our present politics is how Trump has channeled white voters and demonized race and ethnicity. Thomas Edsall, whose New York Times columns are always worth reading, put it like this:

The furious reaction to many different historical and cultural developments—mass immigration; the success of the civil rights and women’s rights movements; the election and re-election of a black president; and the approaching end of white majority status in the United States—has created a political environment ripe for the growth of white identity politics.

Basically, the 40 percent still supporting Trump strongly believe that they are being treated unfairly; they are angry about it; and a history of racial and ethnic preferences is responsible. Trump has mobilized these people. And some of them are getting desperate for a new identity. Edsall in another piece concludes that with the acceleration of economic and social forces

many Trump voters—the neighbors, relatives, friends, parents and children of those who have become mired in this “geography of desperation”—are deeply apprehensive about what might happen if Trump fails to fulfill his promise to make America great again.

This in part explains why they have to stick with him.

But white identity is really a myth that liberals (excuse me, “progressives”) can puncture if they are smart. One way is by stressing group commonalities instead of differences as Mark Lilla has proposed.

Another was once offered by writer-critic Ralph Ellison and his friend Albert Murray. Though both are now somewhat out of fashion, they insisted that the black experience (and particularly jazz) was so integrally tied to American culture that integration was fundamental to survival for both.

“The United States is not a nation of black and white people,” Mr. Murray wrote. “Any fool can see that white people are not really white, and that black people are not black.” America, he maintained, “even in its most rigidly segregated precincts,” was a “nation of multicolored people,” or Omni-Americans: “part Yankee, part backwoodsman and Indian—and part Negro.”

Sometimes the old ideas need to come forward again.