Is Trump a Racist?

Is President Trump a racist? The question presents an opportunity to reflect on racism and how we, as a nation, can overcome racism. A good place to begin is by defining who is a racist. Immediately the contested nature of racism appears. On one point there is very little disagreement. A person who participates in an association based on the belief that white people are superior to people of color is a racist. So, members of the KKK are a clear case of racists.

But what about President Trump who doesn’t appear to be a joiner and claims, “I don’t have a racist bone in my body.” Can he still be a racist? Answering this question requires considering what racism and race are. Let’s start with race. It is generally accepted that race is a ‘social construction.’ Race is not like athlete’s foot that is a nasty irritant. Athlete’s foot has an existence outside of human culture. A dog can contract athlete’s foot, but dogs don’t have any idea about race. Humans invented the idea of race and pass it from one generation to another through teachings and institutions. Not every human cultural group has the concept of race. While the exact origin of American racism is contested by historians and sociologists, the idea of skin color racism appeared in America very near the beginning of Britain’s colonization of North America. The British colonists called themselves white, and others, Native Americans and Africans, were not. More important for this discussion, they attributed negative characteristics to all non-whites and positive characteristics to themselves. White people, white institutions, white culture were superior. This means that it is possible for America to become a nation that is not based on racism.

One of the dilemmas that Trump presents is that a characteristic of racism is that white people believe that they can define the identity of other people or groups. Thus, white culture establishes stereotypes to define the presumed characteristics of other groups. These stereotypes are then applied to justify white privilege. The antidote to stereotypes is to let people define their own identity. So, if you or I say that Trump is a racist, we are participating in legitimizing one of the foundations of racism; we are denying someone the respect of allowing him, in this case, to define his own identity.

Yet, this general principle of allowing all people to claim their own identity without being judged has serious limitation. If a man says he didn’t murder his wife, we give him the privilege of accepting his statement until there is sufficient evidence that he is a murderer. To know if Trump is a racist it is necessary to consider what racism is in America. Only then can we know if he has committed racism.

Today, skin color racism is embedded in American society in three different but codependent manifestations. First, there are the insidious institutions where their very purpose is to preserve privileges for white people and to oppress people of color. The purpose of these systems is to preserve the social order, to pass on the norms and values of the society, and to socialize individuals. One of the most notorious is the criminal justice system that treats white people differently and intentionally create barriers for people of color to participate fully in American society. Other institutions that preserve racism are the educational system, the health system, and the political system.

Second, there are policies, conventions, practices, and other activities that create barriers for people of color or result in special privileges for white people. These activities preserve privileges for whites, but they are peripheral to the purposes of the institutions they are embedded in. That is, the larger purpose of the organization is not to preserve the system of racism. For example, McDonald's purpose is to serve customers and to make a profit. If they have a personnel policy that makes it more difficult for African Americans to become managers of their stores, it is not because supporting white privilege is important to their purpose. They could change the policy in a day and continue to serve customers and make a profit.

The third-place where racism is embedded in American society is in the minds and actions of individual people. The foundational form is stereotypes that are taught to each generation of children, both explicitly and implicitly. These stereotypes become part of the psychology of every American, both whites and people of color. They are the foundation that whites use both consciously and unconsciously sustain a sense of white superiority and to legitimize their experience of privilege. For people of color stereotypes are a psychological reality that often demands a conscious process of discovering and claiming a self-identity. President Obama wrote a whole book, Dreams from my Father, about his own search for his African-American identity after being raised by white grandparents and a white mother. Some have argued that all white people are racist--most famously Emory University professor George Yancy in his essay, “Dear White People,” published by the New York Times on December 24, 2015. As a wake-up call to all white Americans, the challenge is important. American society is structured so that it is impossible for white people to avoid benefiting from having white skin. And the structure of American society also embeds stereotypes and prejudices in every white American’s psychology. But there is also a problem with defining racist people in this way.

The concept makes discussing racism more difficult. There is no way to classify a member of a white nationalist organization who proclaims that white people are superior to people of color and that white people should control the government. One solution to this difficulty is to classify people who say they are white supremacist as white supremacist rather than racist. This divides all white people into two categories: white supremacist and racist. In the parallel of the man whose wife was murdered, it is the difference between a husband who confesses that he murdered his wife and all other husbands.

But, there is another problem. If we are going to define all white people as racist who are not white supremacist, then the use of the word ‘racist’ becomes redundant. To know if President Trump is a racist, we only need to ask if he is white or claims to be white. The word racist becomes useless in discussions about the role of race in American society. And the question about Trump is silly. If he is white, he is a racist. A white English woman shows us a way out of this difficulty.

Elene Guthrie wrote in the UK Huffington Post, “All white people are racist, because all white people exist in a racist power structure that we aren't actively fighting to dismantle.” This gives us another category. The category of anti-racist: a white person or a person of color who is actively fighting to dismantle racism. It is a person who says that all identity groups should have full participation in the cultural and political life of America and that no person should face greater barriers than any other in pursuing personal ambitions. Beyond describing a vision for America without racism, anti-racists are actively fighting to dismantle racism. It requires addressing all three places where racism is preserved and promoted: institutions that socialize Americans to be racist; policies, customs, and practices that support racism; and individual adoptions of social stereotypes. One is an anti-racist only if all three supports of racism are being addressed. This requires working for institutional and personal change.

In the case of the husband with a dead wife, we can distinguish between the man who sees a woman approach his wife with a knife but pretends not to notice while she murders his wife and the man who seeing his wife threatened does everything possible to preserve her life. To be an anti-racist Trump needs to address the role of stereotypes in his own life and actively work to dismantle institutional forms of racism.

With the three categories we can ask a more precise quest: Is President Trump a white supremacist, a racist, or an anti-racist.

Trump has been accused of being a white supremacist sympathizer, but so far, he has not directly promoted a white supremacist ideology or taken action to establish white people as the sole leaders of America. So, until he proclaims himself a white supremacist, by the definition of the term he is not a white supremacist. He also does not fit the category of an anti-racist. He has not used the office of the president to dismantle or reform institutions like the criminal justice or the education system so that they no longer promote and sustain racism. He has not challenged stereotypes, but he uses them to promote his political agenda. So, we cannot call Trump an anti-racist.

This leaves only one category that he can be assigned. We can only conclude that President Trump is a racist.