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It matters when the president of the United States says hateful and racist and bigoted things. Donald Trump deserves all the condemnation he is receiving for his "shithole" comment, and more.
But it matters even more when the president takes hateful and racist and bigoted actions. He deserves even more condemnation - and more pushback - for those.
Some of these actions have been high profile, others less so. In some cases, the racism is overt or practically so; in others, racially motivated but facially colorblind policies disproportionately and harmfully impact communities of color. In some cases, the policies are just anti-poor. These anti-poor policies disproportionately hurt black and brown people, and are enabled, facilitated and rationalized by underlying racial animus.
One year into the Trump administration, it's worth reviewing the racist record of Trump, his administration, and his collaborators. Ta-Nehisi Coates has brilliantly argued that Trump was elected to be America's First White President, a man elected to the highest office in the land not just as the beneficiary of white privilege but as an advocate of white supremacy and as the negation of the black president who preceded him.
As Trump campaigned, so too has he governed:
The list could go on and on. The Justice Department, the federal defender of civil rights in modern times, is now aggressively working to advance policies injurious to communities of color. These range from aiming to end consent decrees with police departments aiming to alleviate police brutality and mistreatment of people of color, to directing the department's civil rights division to attack affirmative action programs at colleges and universities. And, the nominee to run the department's storied civil rights division has a record of working against the very rights the division is supposed to uphold.
And, again, the underlying hostility to communities of color is not just expressed through civil rights policy. Policies disproportionately and adversely affecting communities of color run the gamut from the rollback of Net Neutrality, to forced arbitration provisions, supported by the administration, that prevent class action employment discrimination claims; from clean air rollbacks and anti-environment policies that will poison communities of color, to an array of anti-union and anti-worker rules - including one undermining workers' leverage over fast-food and hotel chains.
Tallying the devastation wreaked by the Trump administration is a depressing enterprise. Recognizing the contempt for core constitutional values and the reversal of the historic racial justice gains of the last half century is even more depressing. There's no point in sugarcoating what Trump and his collaborators are doing.
Yet the resistance has been inspiring and, in many key instances, successful. Litigation and popular opposition defeated the first two Muslim bans. The voter suppression commission disbanded amidst widespread defiance. A lawsuit stopped Ben Carson's effort to undo a key fair housing rule. Trump's budget never got off the ground, in significant part because of its unmitigated cruelty. And, perhaps most inspiringly, the mobilization against Trump's racism may be improving overall attitudes in America, with researchers finding that anti- Muslim ban protests may have reduced anti-Muslim sentiment.
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It matters when the president of the United States says hateful and racist and bigoted things. Donald Trump deserves all the condemnation he is receiving for his "shithole" comment, and more.
But it matters even more when the president takes hateful and racist and bigoted actions. He deserves even more condemnation - and more pushback - for those.
Some of these actions have been high profile, others less so. In some cases, the racism is overt or practically so; in others, racially motivated but facially colorblind policies disproportionately and harmfully impact communities of color. In some cases, the policies are just anti-poor. These anti-poor policies disproportionately hurt black and brown people, and are enabled, facilitated and rationalized by underlying racial animus.
One year into the Trump administration, it's worth reviewing the racist record of Trump, his administration, and his collaborators. Ta-Nehisi Coates has brilliantly argued that Trump was elected to be America's First White President, a man elected to the highest office in the land not just as the beneficiary of white privilege but as an advocate of white supremacy and as the negation of the black president who preceded him.
As Trump campaigned, so too has he governed:
The list could go on and on. The Justice Department, the federal defender of civil rights in modern times, is now aggressively working to advance policies injurious to communities of color. These range from aiming to end consent decrees with police departments aiming to alleviate police brutality and mistreatment of people of color, to directing the department's civil rights division to attack affirmative action programs at colleges and universities. And, the nominee to run the department's storied civil rights division has a record of working against the very rights the division is supposed to uphold.
And, again, the underlying hostility to communities of color is not just expressed through civil rights policy. Policies disproportionately and adversely affecting communities of color run the gamut from the rollback of Net Neutrality, to forced arbitration provisions, supported by the administration, that prevent class action employment discrimination claims; from clean air rollbacks and anti-environment policies that will poison communities of color, to an array of anti-union and anti-worker rules - including one undermining workers' leverage over fast-food and hotel chains.
Tallying the devastation wreaked by the Trump administration is a depressing enterprise. Recognizing the contempt for core constitutional values and the reversal of the historic racial justice gains of the last half century is even more depressing. There's no point in sugarcoating what Trump and his collaborators are doing.
Yet the resistance has been inspiring and, in many key instances, successful. Litigation and popular opposition defeated the first two Muslim bans. The voter suppression commission disbanded amidst widespread defiance. A lawsuit stopped Ben Carson's effort to undo a key fair housing rule. Trump's budget never got off the ground, in significant part because of its unmitigated cruelty. And, perhaps most inspiringly, the mobilization against Trump's racism may be improving overall attitudes in America, with researchers finding that anti- Muslim ban protests may have reduced anti-Muslim sentiment.
It matters when the president of the United States says hateful and racist and bigoted things. Donald Trump deserves all the condemnation he is receiving for his "shithole" comment, and more.
But it matters even more when the president takes hateful and racist and bigoted actions. He deserves even more condemnation - and more pushback - for those.
Some of these actions have been high profile, others less so. In some cases, the racism is overt or practically so; in others, racially motivated but facially colorblind policies disproportionately and harmfully impact communities of color. In some cases, the policies are just anti-poor. These anti-poor policies disproportionately hurt black and brown people, and are enabled, facilitated and rationalized by underlying racial animus.
One year into the Trump administration, it's worth reviewing the racist record of Trump, his administration, and his collaborators. Ta-Nehisi Coates has brilliantly argued that Trump was elected to be America's First White President, a man elected to the highest office in the land not just as the beneficiary of white privilege but as an advocate of white supremacy and as the negation of the black president who preceded him.
As Trump campaigned, so too has he governed:
The list could go on and on. The Justice Department, the federal defender of civil rights in modern times, is now aggressively working to advance policies injurious to communities of color. These range from aiming to end consent decrees with police departments aiming to alleviate police brutality and mistreatment of people of color, to directing the department's civil rights division to attack affirmative action programs at colleges and universities. And, the nominee to run the department's storied civil rights division has a record of working against the very rights the division is supposed to uphold.
And, again, the underlying hostility to communities of color is not just expressed through civil rights policy. Policies disproportionately and adversely affecting communities of color run the gamut from the rollback of Net Neutrality, to forced arbitration provisions, supported by the administration, that prevent class action employment discrimination claims; from clean air rollbacks and anti-environment policies that will poison communities of color, to an array of anti-union and anti-worker rules - including one undermining workers' leverage over fast-food and hotel chains.
Tallying the devastation wreaked by the Trump administration is a depressing enterprise. Recognizing the contempt for core constitutional values and the reversal of the historic racial justice gains of the last half century is even more depressing. There's no point in sugarcoating what Trump and his collaborators are doing.
Yet the resistance has been inspiring and, in many key instances, successful. Litigation and popular opposition defeated the first two Muslim bans. The voter suppression commission disbanded amidst widespread defiance. A lawsuit stopped Ben Carson's effort to undo a key fair housing rule. Trump's budget never got off the ground, in significant part because of its unmitigated cruelty. And, perhaps most inspiringly, the mobilization against Trump's racism may be improving overall attitudes in America, with researchers finding that anti- Muslim ban protests may have reduced anti-Muslim sentiment.