1. Kat Chow is a founding member of NPR's Code Switch, an award-winning team that covers the complicated stories of race, ethnicity, and culture. She helps make new episodes for the Code Switch podcast, reports online features for Code Switch, and reports on-air pieces for NPR's shows like Morning Edition and All Things Considered. Her work has led readers and listeners on explorations of the gendered and racialized double standards surrounding double-eyelid surgery, as well as the mysterious origins of a so-called "Oriental" riff – a word she's also written a personal essay about. The following are excerpts from Kat Chow's May 5, 2017 article headlined "As Chinese Exclusion Act Turns 135, Experts Point To Parallels Today". (Begin excerpts) A Chinese man stands on a pedestal surrounded by a harbor as a cartoon imitation of the Statue of Liberty. His clothes are tattered, his hair is in a long, thin tail, his eyes squint. The words "diseases," "filth," "immorality," and "ruin to white labor" float around his head. This man is the center of an iconic image from 1881 called "A Statue for Our Harbor," made by the cartoonist George Frederick Keller. The image reflects the widespread anti-Chinese and anti-immigrant sentiment of the time, and was used to drum up support for the passage of the Chinese Exclusion Act, which turns 135 on Saturday. The law limited Chinese immigration and barred them from becoming naturalized U.S. citizens. Experts point to the parallels between the political climate of the exclusion era and today: a close and contentious presidential election that stirred anti-immigrant sentiment; the growing economic anxiety of white Americans; and policies that would drastically shape the country's immigration laws. On Saturday, a group of Asian American activists are organizing a rally in San Francisco to acknowledge the anniversary of the Chinese Exclusion Act and to "learn from our past and prevent it from repeating," according to Cynthia Choi, who works with Chinese For Affirmative Action, one of the groups organizing the event. "This is important for the Chinese American and broader Asian American community, to stand up against the new targets to this new form of exclusion, for us to say it was wrong 135 years ago and it's wrong today," Choi said. "We're in a unique period where... accurate information is not as easily attained, so there are a number of people who are on the fence, who are confused about the policies, who — more dangerously — feel as though this doesn't affect them." Then And Now: Race And Class "Beginning in 1882, the United States stopped being a nation of immigrants that welcomed foreigners without restrictions, borders or gates. Instead, it became a ... gatekeeping nation," Erika Lee, a professor at the University of Minnesota, wrote in her book At America's Gates: Chinese Immigration During The Exclusion Era, 1882-1943. "In the process, the very definition of what it meant to be an 'American' became even more exclusionary." The Chinese exclusion law was the very first time in American history that immigrants were barred because of their race and class. In 1882, when Congress passed the law, there were 39,600 men and women from China who arrived in the U.S. Just three years later, there were only 22, according to early records that Lee came across in her research..... Lee said that anti-immigrant measures in the 1880s — and today — were driven by both working class people and elites, as well as those who had a "vested economic interest in border walls and detention centers." The Chinese Exclusion Act set the groundwork for immigrant detention centers and the country's first large-scale deportation of a single immigrant group. Specifically, the exclusion era brought an expansion of the federal government in terms of hiring more immigrant inspectors, whose responsibilities included working as interpreters and at the detention facilities. As for today's parallel? Lee points to companies that are vying to build a U.S.-Mexico border wall, and the question of whether there will be more privately-owned immigrant detention centers under President Trump. Lee says that today's equivalent is the proposed so-called "Muslim ban," because it singles out specific groups of people for discrimination. "The fact that we don't explicitly name Muslims [in the executive order] is more of a reflection of how our racial sensibilities have changed over the past 135 years, in terms of being more polite in our racism." And, Lee says, like the proposed ban — which Trump says will be in place until vetting procedures are strengthened — the Chinese Exclusion Act was also originally proposed as a temporary law. The exclusion act was meant to be law for a decade but lasted 61 years. It was repealed in 1943 with the Magnuson Act, when the U.S. wanted to foster an alliance with China in the war against Japan. In 2012, Congress passed a resolution formally expressing regret to Chinese Americans for the exclusion law and other discriminatory measures. But while there are many links between the exclusion era and today, there are also important differences. Trump's immigration orders have created "one of the most divisive eras around immigration" in history, Lee told NPR. And his policies have had wide-reaching consequences for immigrants that have been met with protests across the country. "I cannot think of another time or a set of laws that has the promise to transform immigration so dramatically at every level," Lee said. Trump's policies have included banning refugees, increasing border security and interior enforcement, expanding deportation and expedited removal, reforming the H1-B visa program and attempting to enact a travel ban. Still, Lee said, what's different is the nationwide grassroots efforts and legal challenges that have sprung up against Trump's immigration policies. "There were no protests in support of Chinese immigrants [during the exclusion era in the U.S.]," Lee said.... In 1885, a student named Saum Song Bo wrote a scathing open letter in a New York newspaper. He was struck by the irony that the U.S. was erecting the Statue Of Liberty three years after passing the Chinese Exclusion Act: "That statue represents Liberty holding a torch which lights the passage of those of all nations who come into this country. But are the Chinese allowed to come? As for the Chinese who are here, are they allowed to enjoy liberty as men of all other nationalities enjoy it? Are they allowed to go about everywhere free from the insults, abuse, assaults, wrongs and injuries from which men of other nationalities are free?" Liberty, for Bo and many other immigrants in that era, felt out of reach. (End excerpts) Source: https://www.npr.org/sections/codesw...inese-exclusion-act-and-a-proposed-travel-ban
2. Jodi Jacobson is president and editor in chief of Rewire.News, where she leads a team of professional editors and journalists reporting on health, rights, and justice. Previously, Jacobson worked internationally on public health, gender equity, and human rights, as well as on environmental and demographic issues. The following are excerpts from her August 17, 2017 article headlined "Media Memo: Yes, Donald Trump Is a White Supremacist" (Begin excerpts) ....I have to ask: Why are we afraid to call this what it is and Mr. Trump who he is? If someone in power—here the president of the United States, otherwise considered the most powerful man in the world—consistently and persistently promotes and upholds the values of white supremacy and white nationalism, and both cultivates and depends on maintaining his power through these ideologies, why do we stop short of naming what it is? In my opinion, Mr. Trump has shown us who he is and we have consistently refused to believe him. By upholding the systems of white supremacy that continue to at best disenfranchise and at worst kill people of color, Trump is in fact aligned with the white supremacist movement. I say this using my personal yardstick (or bullshit meter if you prefer) that it’s not what you say, it’s what you do. And in Trump’s case, it is both what he says and what he does. Throughout his life, throughout the past ten years, and especially during his campaign, Donald Trump has done everything one would imagine a white supremacist could do. And in the first months of his presidency, he has outright encouraged white supremacy: Every policy he is putting in place reinforces white supremacy and many of his cabinet picks have deeply racist backgrounds and positions. By avoiding the reality of what we are facing right now, the culmination of years of racist “dog-whistling” and howling wolves, we allow ourselves to dismiss what white supremacy is, and how not only Trump but all of us are complicit in it. Worst of all, we prevent ourselves from moving forward. You cannot change a thing you refuse to name or to face. White supremacy is not just about a Nazi chanting with a tiki torch on the streets of Charlottesville. It’s not just about Richard Spencer convening a group that shouts “Heil” at the end of a meeting. It’s not just about hoods or burning crosses or nooses. It’s not just about David Duke and Roy Moore and people who clearly have no compunction about stating who they are. White supremacy is about everyday life in the United States. White supremacy is a system of laws, policies, and economic barriers. It is voter disenfranchisement and outright false and disproven claims of voter fraud by people of color and undocumented immigrants, all meant to intimidate specific groups of people and keep them from the polls. White supremacy is inherent in every voter suppression law ever passed and most especially the deluge of such laws being passed throughout the country. White supremacy is the Supreme Court deciding to gut the Voting Rights Act and the encouragement by a presidential candidate that white vigilante groups “go to certain areas” to monitor who votes. White supremacy is the establishment of a “voter fraud” commission run by Kris Kobach and Mike Pence, both of whom have been instrumental in voter suppression. White supremacy is erecting statues and flags to people who revere the legacy of slavery. White supremacy is saying that maybe Black people had it better under slavery. White supremacy is using legal, religious, and economic justifications to subjugate people and then keep them down. White supremacy is redlining, job discrimination, and lack of reparations. It’s the economic segregation of neighborhoods and schools, and the underfunding of schools for children of color. White supremacy is claiming that we need “affirmative action” for white students and undermining access to higher education by the poor and people of color. White supremacy is Willie Horton ads and “playing to your base.” White supremacy is “welfare queens,” and drug testing and claiming that people who are too ill or disabled or otherwise unable to work are “lazy.” White supremacy is never investing in a community and then writing them off as “carnage.” White supremacy is “stop and frisk” and the filling of private prisons with people of color for “crimes” for which white people never pay. White supremacy is making Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-AL), who was denied a federal judgeship due to allegations of racism, the United States Attorney General, and using the United States Department of Homeland Security to deport individuals for traffic tickets while warmongers, bank presidents, and wealthy people steal in broad daylight and get away with it. Every day. White supremacy is having white nationalists like Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and Sebastian Gorka in the White House. White supremacy is riling up hatred against immigrants, people of color, the poor, LGBTQ persons, and women (though it’s important to note that white women have espoused and benefitted from white supremacy). It’s calling groups like Black Lives Matter—which fights for equality and against police brutality—”terrorist groups.” White supremacy is questioning former President Barack Obama’s birthplace. It is defining an entire religion, Islam, as the enemy, and blaming Muslims for the act of every radical, while deflecting attention from U.S. domestic terrorists and the role played by white fundamentalist religious groups in condoning such acts. White supremacy is calling white nationalists who come to intimidate a city “nice people.” It is calling those who come prepared to defend protesters “terrorists,” but encouraging white militias to carry guns wherever they please. White supremacy is rampant in this country. And even many of us who think we have no role in that system, do. We need to call this what it is. We need to recognize our role in it. And we need to deal with it. Only by acknowledging and dealing with our white supremacy past and present, and only by seeing this president for who he is and what he is doing can we move forward. Anything less than that is not enough. (End excerpts) Source: https://rewire.news/article/2017/08/17/media-memo-yes-donald-trump-white-supremacist/
3. Margaret Kimberley writes the Freedom Rider column for Black Agenda Report, where this essay originally appeared. The following is full text of her September 22, 2017 article headlined "Is Trump a White Supremacist? Yes, But So is America". (Begin text) In recent days a foolish controversy has swirled regarding president Donald Trump. At issue is whether or not he can be labeled a white supremacist. There is no need for conjecture on this point. He most certainly is a white supremacist. But asking the question is utterly useless in a country whose very founding was a white supremacist project. Racist structures impact every facet of life in this country. Race determines where we go to school, live, work, or even if one is employed at all. Recently released data showed that black Americans are the only group in the country whose median income has decreased since 2000. Asians, whites, and Latinos have all experienced some degree of income growth during this period. Income inequality is worse for black people now than it was in 1979. Even black families who manage to scrape their way into middle class status are more likely to see their children slip back into poverty. But anti-black racism is the sine qua non for all discriminatory practices. It is the most persistent and pernicious of all the biases extant in American life. Black people are at the bottom economically because we face more discrimination than anyone else. The never ending settler colonial project is dedicated to oppressing black people at every juncture of their lives. It is true that racists no longer feel the need to hide their ideology. Not that they hid it very well before the Trump presidency. It is true that racists are now emboldened as individuals and that danger to black people cannot be minimized. But what was life like for black people before inauguration day in January 2017? Before Trump became president we had the worst outcomes economically, the greatest risk of being incarcerated, or of being treated badly in a multitude of ways on a daily basis. It is an error to be swept up in useless argument about whether the current president is a white supremacist without also discussing the racist underpinnings of American society. Trump made overt racism acceptable and that does change the precarious nature of black life in the country. But we always live on the edge, hoping to improve our lot as individuals without falling victim to the worst the system can mete out to us. The self-proclaimed alt-right have upped the ante by triggering faux outrage. The outrage is phony because it never speaks to the ways in which racism makes life easier for white people every moment of their lives. Their most mundane activities are often tinged with race-based privilege. Inherited wealth gets them money, property and educational opportunities for their children. White people get jobs because their friends and relatives get them in the door. Yet most of them would bristle if they were told that these actions are in fact racist. That is the danger in asking whether or not Trump or any other individual is a white supremacist. The system allows every white person to be a supremacist as they carry out their daily lives. No one should be allowed to pat themselves on the back because they dislike Donald Trump, march around in a pink ***** hat or pull down a Confederate monument. He and his most racist supporters are the lowest hanging fruit. The banality of business-as-usual racism is rarely called into question. And that makes it every bit as dangerous as Trump’s presence in the White House or the love he gets from self-identified white supremacists. We had a white supremacist nation even when the president was black. Barack Obama was indeed the more effective evil. He is now proving it by doing what former presidents always do. He is lining his pockets giving speeches to the banksters who stole what little wealth black people had managed to earn. But he had better manners than the erratic and, yes, bigoted Donald Trump and he went out of his way to make nice even as he worked to enhance the neo-liberal and imperialist projects. Obama never prosecuted killer cops or thieving bank executives. He destroyed Libya, Africa’s most prosperous nation. But white racists still hated him and he benefited from their animus. They gave him the Teflon coating that Trump can only dream about. Donald Trump has singlehandedly managed to both boost and minimize white supremacy. It is true that David Duke and his ilk are back in the news. But the most entrenched aspects of white supremacy are minimized in favor of shooting fish in the barrel of Klansmen and neo-Nazis. Trump is the white supremacist leader of a white supremacist nation. Racism existed before he was elected. It will continue when he leaves office because millions of people profit from this system and see no reason for it to change. (End text) Source: https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/09/22/is-trump-a-white-supremacist-yes-but-so-is-america/
4. Chris Edelson is an assistant professor of government in American University’s School of Public Affairs. The following is full text of his November 21, 2016 opinion piece under the headline "Opinion: Welcome to Trump’s White (supremacist) House" and the subheading "Racists and white nationalists moving closer to center of U.S. power". (Begin text) Many Americans, especially after this recent election, have become deadened to cries of outrage over actions or beliefs that undermine basic values of fairness and equality. We’ve become numb to wild accusations that, for example, President Barack Obama is a “tyrant” or “dictator.” Similarly, when we hear President-elect Donald Trump described as a racist and his close advisor Steve Bannon as being a champion for white supremacists, we naturally assume this must be more of the same hyperbole and partisanship. It is a serious mistake, however, to assume that the alarms raised against Trump and his team are simply more of the same. This is not a partisan matter, as is clear from the fact that prominent Republicans including Mitt Romney, Ana Navarro, and even Paul Ryan (at least before the election) have recognized Trump’s uncomfortably close relationship with racists. It is a matter of seeing the evidence before us and expressing outrage at un-American racism, anti-Semitism, and other bigotry. Trump paved the way for his presidential campaign by gaining attention as a “birther” who, without evidence, accused the nation’s first black president of not being a real American, and perhaps being a secret Muslim. Former Secretary of State Colin Powell put it bluntly and accurately: birtherism is racism. This was hardly the first time Trump had endorsed racism, but it gained him a national platform and attracted the interest of white nationalists and white supremacists, who flocked to his cause once he began his presidential campaign. Earlier this year, one white supremacist declared “Virtually every alt-right Nazi I know is volunteering for Trump.” Former Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke endorsed Trump. This is no coincidence. Racists thrilled to Trump’s brash declaration that he would not be bound by political correctness as he hurled slurs and false stereotypes at Latinos, Muslims, blacks, and women. Trump described Mexican immigrants as rapists and drug dealers in the first speech of his campaign and argued a Mexican-American judge’s heritage disqualified him from presiding over a case involving Trump University. Trump retweeted “fake statistics about black people supposedly murdering whites” (Trump’s “source” was a racist twitter account). He called for a ban on immigration to the United States by Muslims and retweeted dozens of messages from at least 75 white supremacist accounts, including an anti-Semitic imagefeaturing Hillary Clinton, a Star of David and a pile of cash. The Southern Poverty Law center concluded that Trump was “mainstream[ing] white nationalist memes.” White supremacists took notice. After Trump retweeted the Clinton/Star of David image, the founder of the neo-Nazi website Daily Stormer proudly announced “Glorious Leader [Trump] Tweets Hillary Image with Dollars and Jew Star.” The leader of the American Nazi party endorsed Trump, saying his victory would be “a real opportunity for people like white nationalists” to play a more prominent public role in American politics. The American Nazi leader is right. Trump’s victory has emboldened white nationalists and other racists to come out of the shadows and, indeed, take on prominent roles in the White House itself. Bannon, who made Breitbart into a platform for white nationalists and euphemistically describes himself as an “economic nationalist,” is set to take a role as a senior advisor to the president, after serving as CEO of Trump’s campaign. Trump has nominated Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions to be his administration’s attorney general. Sessions was rejected by the Senate in 1986 when he was nominated to a federal judgeship after testimony that Sessions had repeatedly referred to a black federal prosecutor as “boy”, called a white civil rights lawyer “a disgrace to his race”, and described the NAACP as “un-American”. As a senator, Sessions opposed protections for civil rights and earned the praise of Bannon’s Breitbart News site for his opposition to immigration reform. As Ana Navarro puts it, Sessions was “considered too racist to be a judge in [the] 80s, [but now could be] Trump’s AG.” Also, Trump plans to name Michael Flynn as National Security Advisor. Flynn has described Islam as a “malignant cancer” and called fear of Muslims “rational.” Flynn has endorsed the work of a white nationalist writer who argues that “diversity is code for white genocide”. Flynn retweeted an anti-Semitic tweet that warned “Not anymore, Jews. Not anymore.” Duke has applauded each of these picks for top positions in the Trump administration. Reviewing Trump’s selections, journalist Jonathan Chait concluded that Trump is “building [a] team of racists.” This is not hyperbole, it is the reality unfolding before our eyes. None of this is set in stone. Donald Trump was elected president, not king. I am confident that most Americans want no more of racism, white nationalism, the KKK, or the American Nazi party. But these voices are poised to play a central role in the Trump administration. This can be stopped if people speak out and members of Congress take action. If we are silent, the white nationalists who cheered Trump on and worked to elect him will be vindicated as their champions take a seat at the center of American power. (End text) Source: https://www.marketwatch.com/story/welcome-to-trumps-white-supremacist-house-2016-11-19
5. Bryce Covert is a contributing op-ed writer at The New York Times and also writes for the New Republic, The Nation and other outlets. The following are excerpts from her August 17, 2017 op-ed piece entitled "Trump’s White Supremacist Economic Agenda". (Begin excerpts) ....The core of Trump’s economic agenda is protectionism and America First policies. And they go hand in hand with an ethno-nationalist agenda that is about protecting white jobs and white people. ...Buy American campaigns and pledges aren’t new to Trump. They date back as far as the American Revolution, but the first big wave was launched in the early 1930s. Newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst started a Buy American and Hire American campaign that he said would put “America First” as it came back from the Great Depression. It was explicitly racist, aimed particularly at Japanese immigrants, who he called the “Yellow Peril.” It wasn’t just that buying American products would block foreign exports, but that the campaign would also block foreign people. “We have as much RIGHT TO EXCLUDE CERTAIN IMPORTS, DANGEROUS to our AMERICAN STANDARDS AND IDEALS, as we have the right to EXCLUDE certain IMMIGRATION which is a MENACE TO OUR AMERICAN STANDARDS AND IDEALS,” one of his newspaper stories declared. His fear-mongering about Japanese people helped lay the groundwork for their forced internment during World War II. The same themes cropped up when Buy American resurfaced in the 1970s. The enemy was again Japanese people and the cars they were exporting to the U.S., hurting the domestic manufacturing industry. The campaigns characterized Asians, both immigrant and native-born, as “sneaky” and dangerous. There was even violence against Asian-Americans; one Chinese-American, Vincent Chin, was killed by two white autoworkers. “Buy American presumes an imagined economic nation that pits working people in the United States against those of other countries, casting them as the enemy,” writes historian Dana Frank. “From there, it’s often been a quick step to racial distinctions and attacks.” Trump’s trade agenda is no different. It is explicitly modeled on protecting American jobs from foreign aggressors. He’s attacked trade deals like NAFTA and the Trans-Pacific Partnership as creating “carnage” and economic suffering on our shores, allowing other countries to “rip us off.” He says he’ll renegotiate these deals while also promising to levy huge tariffs on imports from countries like China and Mexico, nations that he argues have undermined American jobs. Support for such protectionist policies is steeped in race. According to the research of Alexandra Guisinger, trade does not directly impact most Americans. But there is still strong support for a tough stance on the issue because it is seen as protecting white workers. Unlike redistributionist policies like welfare, in which the beneficiaries are imagined to be black and support is therefore weak, the redistribution involved in trade—from consumers who risk paying higher taxes to manufacturing workers—garners support because everyone assumes the beneficiaries are white. These policies aren’t necessarily in and of themselves racist, nor are people who want these things for our country white supremacists by default. Plenty of politicians and economists have long called for the protection of American manufacturing in order to create jobs. But it’s the way that they are framed by the Trump administration and the problems they are supposed to solve that indict them as such. Look at the way Trump has paired them with other policies. One of his first moves once in office was to institute a ban on immigration from a number of majority-Muslim countries. He has cracked down not just on undocumented immigrants, but even legal immigrants seeking to enter the country. Protecting Americans and American jobs, for Trump, is coupled with keeping these “others” out. His economic populist ideas are the brainchildren of White House adviser Steve Bannon. Bannon’s ties to white supremacy are hard to dispute. He boasted that Breitbart News, where he was long a chairman, was “the platform for the alt-right,” an outlet that published the likes of Richard Spencer, one of the organizers of the Charlottesville rally. In a 2015 interview, he suggested that “when two-thirds or three-quarters of the CEOs in Silicon Valley are from South Asia or from Asia” it could undermine “civic society.” In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter shortly after November’s election, Bannon declared, “I’m not a white nationalist, I’m a nationalist. I’m an economic nationalist.” But then he went on to describe a view very much in line with white nationalism: “The globalists gutted the American working class and created a middle class in Asia. The issue now is about Americans looking to not get fxxxed over.” Citing Andrew Jackson, the slaver whose policies led to the death of thousands of Native Americans, he said they were building an “economic nationalist movement.” It’s become painfully clear what color that movement is. Even Trump’s talk about rebuilding “our” country’s infrastructure so that “our” people can be proud again echoes these sentiments of us versus them. The “them” is people who are not white Americans, but foreigners and outsiders. His vision of the country is not one in which we are proud of our diversity, but of the spoils that we rebuild and then keep for “ourselves.” Trump’s comments on what happened in Charlottesville shocked many for being blatantly sympathetic to white supremacists. But even his supposedly populist economic agenda has been steeped in white supremacy since the beginning. This is the core agenda of the White House: protecting white Americans from the threat of people who are not like them. (End excerpts) Source: https://newrepublic.com/article/144390/trumps-white-supremacist-economic-agenda
