Former Obama White House official Ben Rhodes, in his forthcoming memoir, tells of a moment of doubt the first African American president had after the election of Donald Trump on a campaign dominated by white grievance.
“Sometimes I wonder whether I was 10 or 20 years too early,” President Barack Obama said in the passage, first reported thisweek by Peter Baker in the New York Times.
I hate to say it, but I think the former president was correct.
Ten or 20 years from now, America will be much closer to the majority-minority nation it is forecast to become in 2045. A racist backlash to a black president wouldn’t matter as much.
But what was naively proclaimed in 2008 as post-racial America was instead kindling for white insecurity, and Trump cunningly exploited and stoked racial grievance with his subtle and overt nods to white nationalism. He is now leading the backlash to the Obama years and is seeking to extend white dominion as long as possible, with attempts to stem immigration, to suppress minority voting and to deter minority census participation.
● Trump pardoned Dinesh D’Souza, the Indian American provocateur who had called Obama a “boy” from the “ghetto” and a “grown up Trayvon,” had dismissed Rosa Parks, and was prolific in his use of the n-word. This follows Trump’s previous pardon of anti-immigrant provocateur Joe Arpaio.
● Trump’s new secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, hosted the previously shunned Hungarian foreign minister, following his government’s reelection on a campaign of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim demagoguery. The ruling party won by demonizing the Jewish Hungarian American George Soros, a Holocaust survivor.
.. And, finally, a new study by academic researchers in California found that opposition to welfare — another Trump fixation — has grown among white Americans. The researchers concluded that “whites’ perceptions that minorities’ standing is rising can produce periods of ‘welfare backlash’ ” — but only if they believe the programs primarily benefit minorities.