President Trump delivers a statement from Trump Tower after signing an executive order on the environmental review and permitting process for infrastructure projects.
Trump Defends Initial Remarks on Charlottesville; Again Blames ‘Both Sides’
Even members of Mr. Trump’s own military appeared to take quick offense to their commander’s words. The Marine Corps commandant, General Robert B. Neller, said hours after the president spoke that racial hatred and extremism had no place in the Marines, citing its code of courage, honor and commitment.
He did not name Mr. Trump, but in a tweet wrote that there is “no place for racial hatred or extremism in @USMC. Our core values of Honor, Courage, and Commitment frame the way Marines live and act.”
.. What he did was a horrible, horrible, inexcusable thing.”
But he refused to explicitly say that the killing of the young woman was a case of domestic terrorism, saying only that “you get into legal semantics.”
.. The president’s raw and emotional eruption during a news conference about infrastructure was a near-complete rejection of the more measured language about the unrest that Mr. Trump offered in his brief statement on Monday from the White House.
.. Again and again, Mr. Trump said that the portrayal of nationalist protesters in the city were not all neo-Nazis or white supremacists, and he said it was unfair to suggest that they were.
.. He said it should be “up to a local town, community” to say whether the statue of Robert E. Lee should remain in place.
The one thing Americans should be proud of after Charlottesville
It shouldn’t be difficult to stand up for tolerance and coexistence, but in fact it was too hard for many of Mr. Trump’s allies and apologists, who sought to excuse, soften, modify, justify and reinterpret his evasive initial statement about the events Saturday. Even national security adviser H.R. McMaster, widely respected as a straight-talking general, joined the ranks of Mr. Trump’s enablers.
.. But what punch do the right words pack when they are so obviously begrudging, belated and bestowed under the weight of overwhelming pressure?
.. If there is reason for hope at this dismal juncture, it is that Americans who stand on principle are recognized and extolled for having done so. By speaking truth to power, Mr. Frazier and others like him galvanized the national conversation and helped cauterize the wound inflicted by Charlottesville, at least for the moment. That, at least, should give Americans cause for pride.
Why are people still racist? What science says about America’s race problem.
The truth is that unless parents actively teach kids not to be racists, they will be,” said Jennifer Richeson, a Yale University social psychologist. “This is not the product of some deep-seated, evil heart that is cultivated. It comes from the environment, the air all around us.”
“When you arrive at a new high school. You are instinctively trying to figure out who’s cool, who’s not, who’s a nerd, who gets beat up? Kids quickly acquire these associations,” she said.
.. even with a TV show on mute displaying scenes with no explicit discrimination, the nonverbal body language of black and white actors interacting was enough to cause watchers to test higher for implicit bias afterward.
.. “An us-them mentality is unfortunately a really basic part of our biology,”
.. “There’s a lot of evidence that people have an ingrained even evolved tendency toward people who are in our so-called ‘in group.’”
.. White supremacist groups promote a “siege mentality” among their followers, Knowles said — rhetoric that aims to lend legitimacy to people’s racial and ethnic fears. He pointed to the slogans shouted by participants in the Charlottesville rally: “You will not replace us” and “White Lives Matter.”
.. one thing that these violent ideologies are communicating to people, and people are receptive to, especially people who are struggling, is that whites are actually the ones who are being discriminated against in society,”
.. But to challenge the deep-seated prejudices that shape our behavior, to unlearn our implicit biases, “we need contact,” he said.
.. “It’s absolutely the opposite of what white nationalists want, which is a segregated society,” he said. “We need an integrated society, and at the same time need to create as much socioeconomic fairness as we can
.. “There’s data that shows young groups like millennials are more progressive and egalitarian. But that’s usually on issues like climate change or gay marriage, usually not in their level of implicit bias,”
.. it’s simply not true that we just need to wait for the few old racist men left in the South to die off and then we’ll be fine.