The Civil War was undoubtedly the most cataclysmic event in US history. Of the total number of Americans who have died in all wars, almost half died between April 1861 and April 1865. Although the war ended 160 years ago, Americans have been fighting it over and over again ever since. One explanation for this continuous loop of acrimony is very simple – racism.
Bigotry (of which racism is a subset) in the US is like Newton’s third law: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Yes, the US is far less racist in 2026 than it was before the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, but bigotry is still alive and well in the land of the free and home of the brave.
When America elected Barack Obama as President in 2008, there was much talk of a “post-racial” society. Those of us who sang We Shall Overcome in the 1960s had our doubts. And sure enough, Americans followed Obama by putting a bigot in the White House in 2017.
If it walks like a duck…
Donald Trump has always been a bigot. In 1973, the Department of Justice sued Trump Management along with Trump and his father, for racial discrimination in their rental properties. They settled out of court. Trump was 27 years old.
In 1989 Trump said on TV: “A well-educated black has a tremendous advantage over a well-educated white in terms of the job market.” And according to John O’Donnell, Trump told him, “…laziness is a trait in blacks … It’s not anything they can control.”
The Donald does not hide his bigotry; he’s right up front with it. Among his main campaign pledges in 2016: build a wall to keep out Mexican drug dealers and rapists; ban all Muslims… every single one; and stop being so damned politically correct. Fellow bigots knew exactly what he meant by “politically correct”. He was promptly endorsed by former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke – an endorsement since rescinded. (Trump claimed he didn’t know who Duke was, even though his father Fred was once arrested at a Klan riot). Alt-right/white supremacist Breitbart News executive chairman Steve Bannon became Trump’s campaign CEO.
Trump’s bigotry didn’t keep the Republicans from nominating him as their candidate in 2016. Trump’s bigotry didn’t prevent 63mn Americans from voting for him, 74.2mn voting for him again in 2020, or 77.3mn a third time in 2024 (31% of Americans 18 years old and above).
…and it quacks like a duck…
Trump is not subtle. He may claim he’s not racist but his words and actions prove otherwise.
After the 2017 race riot in Charlottesville during which a pro-Nazi 20-year-old named James Fields Jr drove a car into a group of counter-protesters, killing one and injuring 19 others, Trump said: “What about the alt-left … do they have any semblance of guilt?” and that there were “…very fine people, on both sides”. In other words, the KKK and neo-Nazis on one side and the counter-protest groups were equally to blame. Alt-right crypto-Nazi Richard Spencer wrote he was proud of Trump’s remarks; former KKK Grand Wizard David Duke thanked him for his “honesty”. Democrats and Republicans alike condemned Trump’s idea of moral equivalency. But not a single GOP office holder or member of Trump’s cabinet resigned.
Former president Obama responded with a tweet: “no one is born hating another person because of the color of his skin or his background or his religion…”
That reminded me of a song from the 1949 Broadway musical South Pacific, with music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II, You’ve Got to be Carefully Taught:
You’ve got to be taught before it’s too late
Before you are six or seven or eight
To hate all the people your relatives hate
You’ve got to be carefully taught
…then it’s probably…
And so it goes year after year, generation after generation. If Donald’s old man Fred was, in fact, a racist, is it any wonder the son continues to “hate all the people your relatives hate”? He has said that African immigrants come from “shithole countries”; Somalis are “garbage”; Covid was “the Chinese Virus” and “kung flu”; immigrants are “poisoning the blood of our country”, and Haitians are eating dogs and cats in Ohio. He’s also said that DEI amounts to “race-based and sex-based discrimination” (shed a tear for white men) and, in January this year, told the New York Times that, during the civil rights movement, “white people were very badly treated…” [login required].
And that’s why I am shocked, truly shocked, at how shocked, appalled, disgusted, nauseated and horrified so many seem to be when Trump puts out a recent despicable Truth Social video of president Barack Obama and first lady Michelle Obama as apes.
Trump hasn’t apologised and not a single GOP office holder or cabinet member has resigned.
To quote the late great comedian Flip Wilson in a totally different context: “what you see is what you get”.
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