How Trump’s name become synonymous with racial insults
Ever since Trump started his campaign for president he has given new life to hate.
Ever since Trump started his campaign for president he has given new life to hate.
Ever since Trump started his campaign for president he has given new life to hate.
According to an extensive New York Times report, people seem to feel freer than ever to insult and harass minorities in this country.
In the last quarter of 2016, analysis of F.B.I. crime data by the Center for the Study of Hate & Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found there was a 26 percent increase in bias incidents.
The trend doesn’t seem to be ending this year either. Partial data for the five most populous cities in America show there is a 12 percent increase.
The Trump name as a weapon
Now there is a new word being used to scare, threaten and harass people and the word is simply “Trump.” The president has made no bones about the fact he has nothing but disdain for people of color as well as immigrants both legal and undocumented.
Salem State University had hateful graffiti painted onto the benches and fence that surrounded a baseball field that read “Trump #1 Whites Only USA.”
It doesn’t end with graffiti either, an undocumented immigrant in Michigan reported that two people attacked him and stapled a note to his stomach with a racial slur on it and said to him, “Trump doesn’t like you.”
Then there was a white businessman from Massachusetts who at Kennedy Airport in New York was charged by police with assaulting and menacing an airline worker who was wearing a hijab. Among the threats he leveled at the woman, he said, “Trump is here now. He will get rid of all of you.”
Does an email make up for the lack of action?
The White House sent out an email on Friday that denounced the use of Trump’s name in ways like these.
“The president condemns violence, bigotry and hatred in all its forms, and finds anyone who might invoke his or any other political figure’s name for such aims to be contemptible,” White House spokesman Raj Shah said.
Scholars of American history say that they have not heard of a president’s name being used to exclude people the way they are seeing Trump’s name used now.
“If you’re hunting for historical analogies, I think you’re in virgin territory,” said Jon Meacham, the author of more than one book about presidents.
While we have seen many examples of white students using Trump’s name to taunt and upset minorities it happens other places as well, such as the airport and a convenience store in Wichita, Kansas. There a white man began to argue with two students, one was Hispanic and the other Muslim. He physically assaulted one before driving off and between the racist words he threw at them, he repeatedly said, “Trump, Trump, Trump.”
Hate crimes rising fast
Just after the election the Southern Poverty Law Center, they monitor hate crimes, put forth a report titled “The Trump Effect: The Impact of the 2016 Election on Our Nation’s Schools.”
They surveyed over 10,000 educators and saw there was a marked increase in situations involving swastikas, Nazi salutes as well as Confederate flags.
“Kids saying, ‘Trump won, you’re going back to Mexico,’” reported a teacher from Kansas. “A black student was blocked from entering his classroom by two white students chanting, ‘Trump, Trump,’” said a teacher in Tennessee. “Seventh-grade white boys yelling, ‘Heil Trump!’” added a teacher from Colorado.
