State of Delusion: Make America Great Again is a Racist Denial of Reality
On Thursday, President Donald Trump traveled to Dallas, Texas to attend an expensive fundraiser, but before he raked in the donations, he joined a roundtable discussion on race in America. Faced with a rapidly shifting national conversation, an environment where law enforcement is being radically rethought and statues and markers of white supremacy are being destroyed, Trump is watching his presidency, predicated on racial division, weaponization of white supremacy, and toxic culture wars slip away. The event was an impotent gesture at best.
Having called the teargassing and brutalizing of peaceful protestors” beautiful,” Trump then turned to the topic of battling racism in America. “We have to work together to confront bigotry and prejudice wherever they appeal, but we’ll make no progress and heal no wounds by falsely labeling tens of Americans as racists or bigots. We have to get everybody together, we have to be on the same path…and we’ll do that, we’ll do it very easily. It’ll go quickly and go very easily.”
Shallow words from a shallow man.
What Trump fails to understand here is that America’s inherent sin of racism is not some simple task to be done away with. It is fundamental to the very existence and operation of the United States of America. It was instituted in our foundation as the Constitution was ratified, continued through our actions and expansion. It survived the Civil War, contributed to nationalist, fascistic, eugenic movements, inspired the Third Reich, and carried through the Second World War and into the aftermath, the time that bigots like Trump and those who support him now refer to as the last time America was “great.”
For Trump, racism is an almost nonexistent thing. Perhaps, if pushed, he would admit slavery was racist. Perhaps, if pushed, he would admit the Confederacy was problematic. Perhaps, if pushed, he might even admit the Civil Rights Movement had admirable, necessary goals. But in modern America, for people like Trump, the idea of racism is extinct and the last bastion for people unable to make it without affirmative action or a playing of their “race card.”
This is the true and insidious nature of American racism. It is embedded in our very core and hides behind symbols and metaphorical language, the promise of freedom and liberty and equality, the very myths of the United States that have propelled it to be the foremost world power. Only now, in the age of social media, everypresent camera phones, and a shift in demographics, the existence and strength of white supremacy is undeniable.
To deny that truth would mean all-out delusion. Even the building of a wall.
This is the essence of Trumpism and the concept of Make America Great Again. It was never about actually building a wall on the southern border or transforming America in any real and fundamental way. It wasn’t about making the economy better, though it was about expediting profit and greed. Trump’s politics and motive have always been to tamp down the call for racial and social justice in order to get back to unimpeded profit and consolidation of power.
It has been an effort several generations in the making. Following the Civil Rights Movement, Richard Nixon turned to the Southern Strategy, which gave the South and white supremacy dog whistles and an agenda that served their interests while hiding the inherent racism. Then it moved to Reaganism with its “colorblind” polices and economic emphasis, all the time promising the playing field was level and prejudice was extinct.
But it wasn’t and it hasn’t been. American capitalism, and by extension the capitalism of the world that we have birthed, is predicated on white supremacy and the exploitation of people of color. Our laws were written with the expressed intention of keeping black people in order. Our judicial system rigged against them. Our educational system was fine-tuned to keep this truth out of the public eye, and now, in a time of protest and change, the full weight of the state is being employed to keep people from realizing the actual, undeniable truth.
Make America Great Again isn’t about transforming America. It’s about returning America to a time and place where people of color were not able to give witness to their mistreatment.
The period called “The Consensus” for its post-war calm and prosperity is the time Trump wants to return to. The time of Eisenhower, the sanguine, wholesome television portraying an American utopia. A time before Civil Rights. A time where people of color, women, and LGBTQ Americans were too intimidated by fiscal, social, and violent repercussions to speak against the hegemony of white American control.
This is why Trump thinks this will be easy. Because it’s as easy as making people stop talking about it. It’s as easy as changing the subject. It’s as easy as finally constructing that impenetrable wall around his supporters that he’s been laying the bricks for for years. MAGA is, was, and has always been a cult. The deity is white supremacy in all of its continuing forms. Like Trump has said in the past, don’t believe what you see, what you read, what your eyes tell you.
Close your eyes and look again.
It’s as easy as that.
Jared Yates Sexton is the author of American Rule: How A Nation Conquered The World But Failed its People, available for pre-order from Dutton/Penguin-Random House. His work has appeared in the New York Times, The New Republic, The Daily Beast, Politico, and elsewhere. He currently serves as an associate professor of writing at Georgia Southern University and is the co-host of The Muckrake Podcast.
