Deafening Dog Whistles
The Trump administration’s politics of white grievance extends overseas
I didn’t think there was much left for the Trump administration to do that would get under my skin, but they continue to prove me wrong. When I read that they had fast-tracked the resettlement of 59 white South Africans to the U.S. because they were “victims” of racial discrimination, I couldn’t believe what I was reading.
Trump said the decision to expedite the refugee status of these Afrikaners, descendants of the Dutch settlers who ruled over the black majority in South Africa dating back to colonial times and in 1948 instituted apartheid, the system of legalized segregation that relegated blacks to the bottom rung of the political and socioeconomic ladder in their homeland until it was overturned in 1991, was due to white “genocide” and a policy of land expropriation. However, to date, there is no evidence of either occurring. Although the black majority has ruled in South Africa since 1994, there has been little change in the privileged status of the white minority:
Since Nelson Mandela won South Africa's first democratic elections in 1994, the once-ruling white minority has retained most of its wealth amassed since colonial times.
Whites still own three-quarters of private land and have about 20 times the wealth of the Black majority, according to international academic journal the Review of Political Economy.
Less than 10% of white South Africans are out of work, compared with more than a third of their Black counterparts.
What makes their unjustified categorization as “refugees” more outrageous is that Trump has essentially slammed the door shut on refugees from other nations who are enduring war, famine, poverty, disease, political or ethnic oppression, and other forms of calamity. Moreover, he is attempting to revoke the Temporary Protected Status of hundreds of thousands of refugees currently in the U.S. and deport them back to the hell they thought they’d left behind.
Why are these other nations not entitled to the same consideration as these white South Africans, whose suffering, without evidence, exists primarily in their imaginations?
A look at the list of nationalities under Temporary Protected Status provides the answer:
Venezuela – 344,335 individuals
Haiti – 200,005 individuals
El Salvador – 180,375 individuals
Honduras – 54,290 individuals
Ukraine – 50,205 individuals
Afghanistan – 8,245 individuals
Nepal – 7,875 individuals
Syria – 3,865 individuals
Cameroon – 3,265 individuals
Nicaragua – 2,925 individuals
Ethiopia – 2,330 individuals
Burma (Myanmar) – 2,320 individuals
Yemen – 1,840 individuals
Sudan – 1,190 individuals
Somalia – 555 individuals
South Sudan – 155 individuals
With one exception, the refugees come from populations with brown or black skin. The only outlier is Ukraine, a nation that has agitated Trump since he attempted to extort President Volodymyr Zelensky by threatening to withhold military aid already appropriated to Ukraine by Congress unless he manufactured falsehoods against his expected political rival, Joe Biden and, before that, accused them of election interference in the 2016 presidential race to deflect blame from Russia. His vendetta against them is personal.
Do you doubt this conclusion? Let me remind you of a statement Trump made in his first term, as recounted by The Atlantic’s Ibram X. Kendi:
On January 11, 2018, during an Oval Office talk with several U.S. senators about protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador, and African countries in a new immigration package, President Donald Trump unleashed a word that Americans aren't accustomed to hearing from their president.
“Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?” Trump reportedly asked. (He later denied having said this.)
Months earlier, Trump had reportedly complained that Nigerian immigrants would never “go back to their huts” and Haitians “all have AIDS.” He doubled down at the Oval Office meeting. “Why do we need more Haitians?” Trump said. “Take them out.”
In their stead, Trump spoke of taking in immigrants from great European countries like Norway, and also from Asian countries, since they could help America economically.
Senator Dick Durbin (D-IL) alleged that Trump used the inappropriate language described in the account, and Senator Lindsey Graham (R-SC), who was also in attendance at the meeting, told his South Carolina Senate colleague, Tim Scott (R-SC), that Durbin’s account was “basically accurate.” The fact that he went on to speak favorably of immigrants from Europe, and offhandedly mentions Asia because of their presumably positive impact on the American economy, tells you of the racial hierarchy that resides in his mind. It’s not too dissimilar from apartheid’s classification system, where whites had the most privileged status, followed by Indians, Coloureds (multiracial people), and Black people.
This is the logical progression of the politics of white grievance, which for over a century has been the backlash directed at any attempt by people of color to claim their rights and dignity as humans and image-bearers of God. Jim Crow laws, lynchings, and the domestic terror of the Ku Klux Klan were the byproducts of a white backlash against the Civil War and Reconstruction, which sought to put Blacks and whites on equal footing politically and economically.
The civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s, the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1968, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Chicano Movement, the Black Power movement, affirmative action, the election of of a black President in Barack Obama, the 2020 protests against racially-motivated murders and police brutality in the wake of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, and George Floyd, the expansion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives in government, industry, and academia - any effort to provide an accurate account of history, address the inequities that have persisted for centuries and metastisized into a systemic issue, and uplift those who have been oppressed has been met with a strong and sometimes even more aggressive backlash.
The sweeping, aggressive nationwide campaign against DEI is supposedly based on unfair treatment of white people. However, when they use the phrase “DEI hire” to describe a person of color or a woman in a particular role, it’s clear what they are implying: that they are unqualified for the role they occupy because of their race or gender. The racism and misogyny inherent in those assumptions are barely disguised. As someone who has studied DEI for years and was almost chosen for a diversity role at the university where I worked, I know its faults and failures, but I also believe they can be corrected, and one doesn’t have to throw out the baby with the bathwater.
Moreover, DEI has never been about hiring or admitting unqualified people over qualified ones. That’s one of many lies its opponents have manufactured to stir white grievance to a boiling point. DEI is about intentionally casting the net on the other side of the boat and finding a bounty where you didn’t think one existed. It’s about extending one’s vision beyond the familiar and comfortable, and finding gems where one doesn’t typically search for them. It doesn’t have to be about quotas, and it doesn’t have to be at the expense of qualifications. It is about intentionality in searching for talent in different places than before, and expanding one’s mind, heart, and universe as a result.
However, white grievance forbids the expansion of the mind, lest one be adversely affected by what they learn. The attempts to recast history to eliminate any references to the atrocities committed against non-white people are another example of the backlash I described previously. I wrote about this some time ago when the state of Florida was debating a bill to forbid the accurate teaching of American history in public schools:
The bill, in part, declares “An individual should not be made to feel discomfort, guilt, anguish, or any other form of psychological distress on account of his or her race” as a result of public school instruction on topics related to "slavery, racial oppression, racial segregation, and racial discrimination.” I wonder how they intend to equip teachers to determine whether or not someone’s feelings are hurt?
Frankly, I would be concerned about a child that didn’t feel discomfort from discussing such topics. In fact, our sense of righteousness and justice should lead us to feelings of sorrow or anger at humankind’s savagery toward other humans. It’s when we allow ourselves not to feel, to numb ourselves to the horrors of the world, that we give license to those horrors to repeat themselves. As I’ve stated in the past:
“If people feel that way when they hear these stories, perhaps that’s the Imago Dei within them spurring them to do something to make it right rather than engaging in a pity party or an angry response.”
Even if we aren’t culpable in the stories being told, we should be disturbed by them, shocked by them, and therefore determined that they shouldn’t happen again.
Trump has set his sights on the Smithsonian Institution, especially the National Museum of African American History and Culture, ironically for its “effort to rewrite our Nation’s history, replacing objective facts with a distorted narrative driven by ideology rather than truth.” Truth be told, that is what he is seeking to accomplish by whitewashing American history so that only accounts that glorify the nation and its history can be taught or displayed.
Even the South, which failed in its attempt to break away from the United States so it could continue to hold Black people in bondage like livestock, built an entire mythology called “The Lost Cause” to assuage its sins against humanity and clothe itself in nobility. It boggles the mind when one considers that the losing side in a war seldom gets to write the history of the conflict in their favor, as I indicated in a question:
In what nation are the losers of an insurrection allowed to honor the insurrection by erecting monuments, flying flags, and naming buildings, roads, cities and towns, and national military installations after the leaders of the failed insurrection?
Trump’s appeals to white fear and grievance in America are justified, in his mind, by what he believes is happening in South Africa. While the majority Black government over the years has been extraordinarily fair and patient with the white minority despite the atrocities they committed against Black people for decades, they still believe that being subject to Black rule is persecution. A popular saying goes, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality feels like oppression.” Although they are still privileged by several measures, they are no longer calling the shots, and they fear that loss of control.
I think the accusations of illegal immigration as a liberal plot to overrun the U.S. with non-white people, which is a modern interpretation of a long-held conspiracy theory of white people being overrun by non-white or ethnic migrants, and the projections of the U.S. becoming a “majority minority nation” by 2044, has a specific segment of Americans sympathizing with the South African “refugees” because they believe that could be them in the not-too-distant future.
However, when that time comes, the situation in America will mirror that in South Africa in another fashion: as in South Africa, the white minority in the U.S. will still possess the overwhelming majority of the nation’s wealth and private property, be disproportionately represented in the highest-paying jobs and professions, and own the most generational wealth to bequeath to their heirs. The world’s legitimate refugees would be ecstatic to be “oppressed” in that manner.
Jesus’ brother James warns the privileged that their deeds have not gone unnoticed by the Lord:
Look! The wages you failed to pay the workers who mowed your fields are crying out against you. The cries of the harvesters have reached the ears of the Lord Almighty. You have lived on earth in luxury and self-indulgence. You have fattened yourselves in the day of slaughter. You have condemned and murdered the innocent one, who was not opposing you. (James 5:4-6)
I’ve often wondered if the fears of the white grievance movement are motivated by the possibility of retribution from those who hold them responsible for their oppression. I think Nelson Mandela, who had every reason to be bitter and desire revenge against his jailers, who brutalized him for 27 years, modeled the best of humanity after he gained his freedom. He showed the world what forgiveness and reconciliation looked like:
Minds that seek revenge destroy states, while those that seek reconciliation build nations. Walking out the door to my freedom, I knew that if I didn't leave all the anger, hatred, and resentment behind me, I would still be a prisoner.
Mandela popularized the saying, “Resentment is like drinking poison and then hoping it will kill your enemies.” White grievance assumes the consequence of not being in control is being victimized, but God doesn’t play zero-sum games. He commands us to act in love and leave vengeance to Him:
Do not repay anyone evil for evil. Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone. Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:
“If your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink. In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”
Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21)
Those who exploit white grievance and the fears associated with it will have their day with the Lord, of that I am confident. That frees me to do good, not just for the people who are suffering under these racially-charged policies, but for those who are carrying them out. I don’t know what that looks like in its entirety, but I think it means acting in peace, even when speaking out against injustice, and taking on their scorn and vitriol and, if it comes to it, their punishment, with grace. The dog whistles are louder than ever, but the voice of the Lord, through the Holy Spirit within every believer, can drown out the sound of grievance without ever raising the volume.