By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
Recently, the New York Times had an extensive interview with Donald Trump regarding his current manufactured outrages about white people now being given the short end of the stick as it pertains to work place fairness and job promotions.
Trump wants to spin the tall tale that it is white folks because of D.E.I. and the Civil Rights Act of the President Lyndon B. Johnson era who are now suffering under a ponderous load of not being treated fairly in the market.
Of course for Trump, no facts to support his inane pronouncements, just the usual heavy browed and frowned mouth jabber that is supposed to pass as wisdom or common sense.
Trump is beating the drum to inaccurately state that since the civil rights laws, it is the white race that has been booted down the economic ladder and that is why he is on a tear to destroy any programs that utilize the concepts of D.E.I.
For Trump and Steven Miller both whom follow religiously the playbook Project 2025 which excoriates the accomplishments of minorities and regrets that they are being given an equal chance to compete in the marketplace. To them the thought that Blacks and other people of color and women and those “others” are being given the right to take over white “spaces,” is an affront to Anglo-Saxon males everywhere.
Understand Trump’s abbreviated thinking. Raised as a privileged white male with all of the perks and goodies such a life affords including access to millions of dollars from his pappy, Trump’s beliefs and fantasies were formed and forged in the crucible that White is Right!
In his DNA, Trump truly believes that minorities are not on the same level as him and his compatriots and thus their accomplishments are suspect from jump street since they are not recognized as being worthy of honor or accomplishments.
Trump scorned and ridiculed both Obama and Kamala Harris, both minorities and both eminently qualified to do their assigned tasks, but to Trump they were trespassers, if you will, in and on jobs that should have been reserved strictly for those whose skin was white.
Oh sure…Trump can grin and laugh with the best of them, be it Rev. Sharpton, Ye, Don King, Ben Carson, etc. but when it comes to being serious and minorities seizing the levers of power, Trump reverts back to his innate instincts of “they are not worthy” to be in this or that position that is normally reserved for White folks.
It is not by coincidence that Trump is at war with New York Attorney General Letitia James or Lisa Cook who sits on the Federal Reserve Board or any Black man or woman who has either challenged his authority or who has demonstrated skills that Trumps finds hard to fathom can reside in a Black person.
In his heart of hearts, Trump believes as white Christian Nationalists do, that America was ordained a country by God for the white race and they only. Anyone else is a usurper including the indigenous Native Americans who were practically wiped out during the period called Manifest Destiny.
To openly disdain the proven and effective results of the civil rights laws is to present a maligned picture that people of color are not worthy and should not be given the right to at least compete on an equal playing field.
D.E.I. and the applauded civil rights laws were mere implements to allow people of color to get their head and foot into closed doors and realms of power and money that White folks take for granted that it is all theirs and theirs alone.
When those assumptions are challenged and people of color are “allowed” inside the formerly closed doors and they adequately or superiorly perform, the Trumps of the world default and malign them by saying they are not qualified.
However, who speaks to the gross mis qualifications of a Pam Bondi or a Kristi Noem or a Jim Jordan, a Brett Kavanaugh, the heads of the Department of HHS and Education or the FBI?
No one. The list goes on and on and on yet there is no media outcry from Trump about their being woefully inept at their jobs.
Why? Because white skin gives them the assumed and automatic stamp of being competent.
Contra position: If you are a minority and are applying yourself as best as you can and are taking advantage of courses that can help you prepare for a job, home making, marriage or Positive social interactions…go for it!
Do not be a victim and cry out woe is me if you are not being diligent in doing what is needed and positive to be a contributor and not a detractor! Being Black or another minority is not and should not been seen as a “freebie” to be a fool or play the system.
Don’t give your opponent ammunition to say, “Ha, I told you so about “those” people.”
The civil rights bill were designed to even the playing field and to acknowledge history’s intentional neglect of fairness and justice in America.
For people like Trump, his preferred goal is a White America ruled by whites and he is egged on by the likes of Steven Miller and others who share a common theme that America was designated for the white race; the civil rights legislation was wrong in its intents and design.
How many times has Trump said out loud that he favors emigrants from South Africa, Norway, Finland, Denmark and Sweden as he calls African countries, “sh*thole countries?
How many times has it been documented that Trump is relentless in trying to re-write history regarding slavery, Jim Crow and systemic racism in America in order fit his warped view of what America should look like.
Example at hand: Trump has recently declared that on Juneteenth Day and on Martin Luther King Jr., Day, that there will be no free admission to the national parks, but on his birthday (Trump’s birthday), there will be free admission!
Always smacking away at anything that remotely engages people of color to partake in American activities.
Trump detest the civil rights laws and its movement because it holds up a mirror to White America that all was not and is still not right with the American justice and fairness system when it comes to minorities.
In Trump’s tortured view of America, Black people and other minorities are here by his grace and favor and we should walk around as if on cotton balls so as to not upset his aberrant view of American history written of, by and for a White America only.
Crispus Attucks, Fannie Lou Hamer, Jesse Owens, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Gen. Benjamin Davis, Thurgood Marshall, among thousands of others, did not sacrifice or die so that Trump could pronounce that their living was of no benefit to America.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at Lafe5x@gmail.com