The Trump administration is showing us its white nationalism

Boston Globe

4 days ago

It should shock no one that such a post comes from an administration that has spent the months since President Trump's second inauguration touting its use of draconian immigration tactics. What else would you expect from an administration that is asking DHS's Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents to conduct widespread raids, building concentration camp-like detention facilities like the so-called Alligator Alcatraz in the Florida Everglades, and swiftly whisking immigrants — many who have lived, worked, and helped build communities in the country for years — off to countries where they have no connection or where they face deadly threats?
Get The Gavel
A weekly SCOTUS explainer newsletter by columnist Kimberly Atkins Stohr.
Enter Email
Sign Up
And yet media coverage of these atrocities, as well as policy discussions and advocacy calls to action, often avoid saying the not-at-all-quiet part out loud: In the eyes of this administration, being a non-white person, whether or not you were born on US soil but particularly if you or your parents were not, renders you presumptively un-American. So why aren't we just calling this what it is?
Advertisement
I suspect it has a lot to do with this country's long and tortured history on race relations, and discussions thereof. My 52 years of being Black in America have taught me that few things make Americans, particularly white Americans, more uncomfortable than talking plainly about racism in America and the forces that advance it — especially when those forces include the government.
Advertisement
Yes, we can dismiss social media posts like this as tone-deaf or ahistorical, as many comments on the post have, and just move on. But closing our eyes and ears to the administration's white nationalist agenda won't make it go away. Especially not when the agenda is being put on full display.
The post itself is like historical Wite-Out, erasing the complex, difficult, and brutal truth of western expansion. Nowhere does it acknowledge the
It also conveniently omits the Black Americans who enlisted in Buffalo Soldier regiments, often as an escape from enslavement and post-Civil War brutality in the South, only to find themselves engaged in bloody battles — all in the name of protecting white frontiersmen and their ill-gotten gains. And that is not even to speak of others, like
Advertisement
The post reminds me of the many Confederate monuments that are still found across the nation. They are hailed, falsely, as an homage to history. But they really are a warning for those in the present: This country has a long history of deciding who the
real
Americans are, and if you are Black, brown, or from a predominately Black or brown country, that doesn't include you. Remember when
The post, perhaps by no coincidence, came as DHS touted the recently passed budget's infusion of cash into draconian immigration efforts, including plans to replicate Alligator Alcatraz in other states, and an announcement that detained immigrants will no longer be granted bond hearings. Anyone not seeing the connection by this point is being willfully blind.
But who is speaking truth to this in a clear way? Democrats? No. Most of mainstream media? Uh-uh. Even academics who are otherwise dissenting to every aspect of the administration? Haven't seen it.
But you can. To your lawmakers. To your neighbors. To your local news organizations in op-eds and letters to the editor. To your neighbors and family. To anyone who will listen. Complacency and silence create fertile ground for white nationalism. Be clear about what the administration is sowing, and do all you can to spoil the crop.
Kimberly Atkins Stohr is a columnist for the Globe. She may be reached at