After his father mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren with a reference to the Trail of Tears, Donald Trump Jr joined in by adding, “Savage! Love my president.”
Ashley Feinberg of the Huffington Post flagged this Instagram post on Sunday of Donald Trump, Jr replying to his dad’s Trail of Tears racism with more racism, writing, “Savage! Love my president.”
This made nary a blip on the radar, as Andrew Kaczynski of CNN pointed out:
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Why is a racist joke from the president’s son about genocide not a bigger story? Do we just expect this from Don Jr. ?https://t.co/NpgUug9F5L
— andrew kaczynski (@KFILE) February 10, 2019
The media is very busy covering real scandals about what Democrats did in the 1980s.
Blackface and posing with KKK members is never okay and I’m not defending that, just putting it in context regarding current impact on people today.
My point about the Virginia scandal has always been that the people who are impacted by racism should be the people who decide whose behavior is problematic and who should be tossed from office. White people don’t get to decide who is most offensive. White people should listen to people of color on this.
Well. Rather surprisingly to that end, a Washington Post-Schar School poll found African Americans saying by a wide margin that Gov. Ralph Northam (D) “should remain in office despite the offensive image.”
“Despite their incredulity at his explanation of the yearbook page, a slim 53 percent majority of Virginians say they accept Northam’s apology for the photo.”
Louise Butler of Richmond is African American who grew up in the city, and she told the Post that she was confident that he was now committed to advancing racial equity.
Perhaps the issue here is what a politician is doing today. Are they protecting voting rights, do they care about our justice system’s systemic, inherent racism, do they want to help protect healthcare and education for all Americans, do they care about working families. The policy agenda that works to care for all people looks starkly different than one that does not (see Trump/GOP’s tax scam for more on this).
There is no dispute that America is in deep need of an honest conversation about racism and that is something that white people have an obligation to hear if they really want to inaccurately pretend racism is no longer a problem. But we have a racist in the White House. Yes, a racist. If someone uses racism as a political tool to protect their own ability to enrich themselves and their own status, they can be called a racist. I would argue that deliberately using racism to divide the have-nots is actually worse than being a have-not who falls for it.
A racist president who actually endorses and pushes racist policies that end up killing migrant children and offers his supporters money to beat up people of color who are protesting him should be a bigger story than decades old racism. Donald Trump also mocked the massacre at Wounded Knee while attacking Warren. The massacre killed between 250-300 children, women and men.
Neither are okay. But one is a bigger story.
Donald Trump’s racism and his son’s racism are current, they are evident in current policy, they are dangerous and divisive, and they are not merely lowbrow ‘entertainment’ as they are often treated, even though covering them makes this writer feel like I’m doing a stint covering the rantings of a drug-addicted star for TMZ.
It was not my choice for this family to be in the White House, but they are and they should be held to the same standards to which we hold everyone else.
Donald Trump, Jr is old enough to know better than to emulate his father’s racism, but instead it provides a cheap thrill. The kind of thrill that harming a large group of vulnerable people gives the kind of person who should never have the kind of power over other Americans that Trump and his son have.
The Mueller indictment that Don Jr. thinks is coming can’t come soon enough.
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Sarah has been credentialed to cover President Barack Obama, then VP Joe Biden, 2016 Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, and exclusively interviewed Speaker Nancy Pelosi multiple times and exclusively covered her first home appearance after the first impeachment of then President Donald Trump.
Sarah is two-time Telly award winning video producer and a member of the Society of Professional Journalists.
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