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Trump's 'go back' racism is crude, but may be dangerously effective
It’s ugly and yet, as a black British person, I find a certain relief in witnessing the US version of this problem. As our leaders are fond of saying, we have more in common than divides us. Both our nations are in the grip of populist movements. Both have governments that consistently attack the identities of people of colour in a race to the bottom for nativist, nationalist support. Both have depicted immigration as an existential threat, and both have policies that are merging questions of immigration status into questions of race.
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Americans are more likely to acknowledge the existence of the kind of racism about which British people remain in denial. The problem in the US is that racism still has its uses. The question for the next presidential election will increasingly be, how many are willing to be complicit in the cost of that racism in exchange for the benefit – in this case, the support of an electoral base fired up by the president’s reviling of migrants and people of colour.
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Yet it would be wrong to be dismissive of rhetoric as racist as this. Its intended purpose is certainly to play on the fears our racialised pasts have deposited in the present. But that can be a very reliable political strategy
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Americans are more likely to acknowledge the existence of the kind of racism about which British people remain in denial. The problem in the US is that racism still has its uses. The question for the next presidential election will increasingly be, how many are willing to be complicit in the cost of that racism in exchange for the benefit – in this case, the support of an electoral base fired up by the president’s reviling of migrants and people of colour.
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Yet it would be wrong to be dismissive of rhetoric as racist as this. Its intended purpose is certainly to play on the fears our racialised pasts have deposited in the present. But that can be a very reliable political strategy
[link:https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/jul/16/donald-trump-racism-uk-congresswomen-hostile-environment|
Excellent article... worth a full read at the link. We certainly have much in common at the moment
