Trump's travel ban could cement racism as his most dangerous legacy
This month marks exactly 10 years since Donald Trump coasted down an escalator at Trump Tower, declared his run for US president and accused Mexico of sending drugs, criminals and rapists into the homeland. The past decade has been exercise in normalising.
When Trump threatened to terminate Elon Musk's government contracts, and Musk linked Trump to the child sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, all because of a petty clash of egos, people were riveted but unsurprised. Likewise, when Trump ordered a travel ban on a dozen countries, many reacted with a collective shrug: well, of course he did.
There was little sign of the collective uprising and airport protests that greeted Trump's so-called 'Muslim ban' – an executive order that barred travel to the US States for 90 days from seven predominantly Muslim countries – in January 2017. The president's spectacular blow-up with Musk ensured the attention cycle quickly moved on.
Yet travel ban 2.0 is no less pernicious. The proclamation signed by Trump last Wednesday bans the citizens from many of the world's poorest nations, supposedly to protect the US against 'foreign terrorists' and other security threats.
The countries affected are Afghanistan, Myanmar, Chad, Congo Republic, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Haiti, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen. The entry of people from seven other countries – Burundi, Cuba, Laos, Sierra Leone, Togo, Turkmenistan and Venezuela – will be partially restricted.
'We cannot have open migration from any country where we cannot safely and reliably vet and screen those who seek to enter the United States,' Trump said.
He cited the recent attack in Boulder, Colorado, where a man tossed a gasoline bomb into a crowd of pro-Israel demonstrators as an example of why the new curbs are needed.
An Egyptian national, Mohamed Sabry Soliman, has been charged in the attack. Yet Egypt is not on the list of countries facing travel limits, nor is Syria, whose Ahmed al-Sharaa was described by Trump as a 'young, attractive guy' after their recent meeting.
Alex Berrios, a co-founder of Mi Vecino, a community empowerment organisation, and the son of a Cuban immigrant, said: 'Trump targeted countries with Black, Brown and Muslim populations. There is no clear national security basis for the ban, but there is a clear pattern of targeting people of color. Latino and immigrant communities recognize this as a racist policy, plain and simple.'
Indeed, the list points to a 78-year-old president who continues to view large swaths of the world as drug-dealers, criminals and rapists, who finds new and ingenious ways to play white identity politics, whose 'Make America great again' mantra is coded nostalgia for an era of American apartheid.
In 1973, Trump and his father, Fred, were sued for discriminating against Black applicants by refusing to rent apartments to them in predominantly white buildings in Brooklyn and Queens. The case was settled with no admission of guilt but a requirement that the Trumps change their practices.
In 1989, after five Black and Latino teenagers were accused of assaulting and raping a white jogger in New York's Central Park, Trump took out full-page ads in several newspapers calling for the reinstatement of the death penalty. The Central Park Five were convicted and later exonerated but even last year Trump continued to assert they were responsible for the crime.
From 2011 to 2016, Trump was a leading proponent of the debunked 'birther' theory, falsely claiming that Barack Obama was not born in the US and therefore was ineligible to be president. After Obama released his birth certificate, Trump admitted the truth but never apologised and continued to refer to Barack 'Hussein' Obama.
After a 2017 white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, where a counter-protester was killed, Trump said there were 'very fine people on both sides' and blamed 'many sides' for the violence. He later tweeted: 'I condemn all types of racism and acts of violence. Peace to ALL Americans!'
In a 2018 White House meeting on immigration, Trump reportedly asked, 'Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?', referring to Haiti and African nations, and suggested more immigrants from places such as Norway.
During 2020 protests over George Floyd's murder in Minneapolis, Trump sent national guard troops to Washington and deployed federal officers to Portland, Oregon, leading to injuries. He also called Covid-19 the 'Chinese virus' and 'kung flu', linked by critics to a surge in anti-Asian hate crimes.
At last year's National Association of Black Journalists convention, he falsely claimed that Kamala Harris 'turned Black' for political gain, questioning the vice-president's heritage. And on the campaign trail Trump said immigrants are 'poisoning the blood of our country', echoing the rhetoric of Adolf Hitler.
Since returning to the White House, Trump has issued executive orders that aim to restrict or eliminate diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) initiatives. He even baselessly blamed DEI for undermining air safety after an army helicopter pilot was involved in a deadly midair collision with a commercial airliner.
With the help of Musk's unofficial 'department of government efficiency' (Doge), Trump has slashed foreign aid and gutted the development agency USAID, causing death and devastation for people in Africa and elsewhere.
Meanwhile the immigration crackdown has included the deportation to El Salvador of hundreds of Venezuelans suspected of being gang members, as well as efforts to deny enrollments of some foreign students and deport others.
The US granted refugee status to around 50 white South Africans, claiming they were victims of racial persecution and 'white genocide'. Trump ambushed South African president Cyril Ramaphosa, who is Black, with a video that falsely portrayed 'burial sites' and articles that included an image of body bags from the Congolese city of Goma.
He has also repeatedly singled out 'Congo' in Africa for emptying its prisons and sending criminals to the US. During a meeting last month with Giorgia Meloni, the Italian prime minister, he said: 'Many, many people come from the Congo. I don't know what that is, but they came from the Congo.'
Factcheckers have found no evidence to support this claim. Trump's travel ban includes the Republic of Congo but not the much bigger Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is currently negotiating a minerals deal with Washington. The Republic of Congo said the country's inclusion was a 'misunderstanding'.
Antjuan Seawright, a Democratic strategist, says: 'This is just another page from the catalogue of racism, bigotry, hate and white supremacy that Trump flips to and uses as his guide so often.
'He needs to keep putting coins in the rightwing machine because that is what keeps them going. In many ways he has to do this in order to stay true to who he is and his candidacy and Trumpism, because one of the key ingredients of Trumpism is racism, and we've seen that confirmed over and over again.'
After a decade of Trump dominance, none of it comes as a surprise any more. What was once outrageous and taboo is now routine. And that numbness, shifting of the Overton Window and reordering of US political culture may be his most dangerous legacy of all.
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