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It is not a coincidence that the president chose Tulsa — where white people burned a thriving Black district to the ground, murdering hundreds — for his rally and speech on the anti-racist protests across the country. Nor is it by chance that Stephen Miller, a white supremacist, is said to be writing the president’s speech. Trump chose Miller for the same reason he chose Tulsa and Nazi imagery: to inflame tensions and give a wink to the racists who support him.
Trump’s supporters would have us believe that his many racist comments — from calling Haiti, El Salvador, and African nations “#^&#^&#^&#^&hole countries” to tweeting that young female congresswomen of color should “go back” to the “crime infested places from which they came” — are being misconstrued or taken out of context. They’ll say that the president’s detractors will call anything racist in an attempt to make him look bad.
Trump thinks Mexicans are rapists, that white supremacists are “very fine people,” and that Muslims don’t belong in America. He believes protesters should be roughed up, that majority-Black neighborhoods are dangerous, and that the exonerated Central Park Five are guilty.
The president doesn’t need to yell a racial slur for us to know he’s a racist — his dog whistles relay the same message while giving himself and his supporters plausible deniability. So yes, the upside-down triangle is racist and meant to infuriate you and to stoke his base. This is who he is and what he does.
In advance of his Tulsa speech, the president told the Wall Street Journal on Thursday that he “made Juneteenth very famous.” Apparently, “nobody had ever heard of it.” What’s that saying from Maya Angelou? When someone shows you who they are—believe them.
Posted from my iPhone/Mobile device
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