By David K. Shipler
Two
prominent themes of racial and ethnic antagonism have found their way into
official government policies under the Trump administration. One is the longstanding
belief that nonwhites are mentally inferior to whites, a stereotype dating from
slavery. The other, generated more recently, is the notion that whites are the
real victims, suffering discrimination under the banner of racial preferences.
President
Trump has displayed both assumptions in personal remarks and symbolic acts, and
his aides have incorporated them into federal funding and programming. Not
since the years of legal segregation, before the civil rights movement, has government
been so dominated by the ideology of white supremacy. Not in the decades of
work toward a more open society have its leaders repudiated the progress so venomously.
Trump has
demonstrated skill at tapping into the ugliest attitudes in his country, giving
them voice, and cementing them in policy. Before any investigation of the fatal
midair collision of an army helicopter and a passenger jet near Washington’s
National Airport, he speculated that “it could have been” caused by diversity
in the Federal Aviation Administration. The FAA’s DEI program, Trump claimed in
an executive order, “penalizes hard-working Americans who want to serve in the
FAA but are unable to do so, as they lack a requisite disability or skin color.”
His executive orders ending DEI—the
diversity, equity and inclusion programs that have opened broad opportunities
to minorities—ride on one of the most durable stereotypes in American culture: the
insidious belief that people of color, Blacks in particular, are inherently less
capable than whites. That age-old image, which has fostered racial bias in
hiring and promotions, now finds a comfortable home in the White House.
Since victims of racial prejudice have been favored, it seems, some whites have been competing for that victim badge, seeing themselves as deprived of the level playing field so loudly advocated by liberals fighting discrimination. A bitter grievance is nursed by some whites in or near poverty when they hear about the “white privilege” that frees the majority race of the burdens of prejudice. The resentment took on a sharp edge as whites fell into economic hardship during the Great Depression of 2008. They might have made common cause with Blacks who suffered similarly, but racial divides overcome class affinities in America.
