Is President Trump a racist? I don’t know. I don’t know if he believes the white race is superior, and other races are inferior in some way. I don’t know if he disparages people, or thinks less of them, or discriminates against them, because of the color of their skin.
I do know that he disparages a lot of people. He is critical of a lot of people. He attacks people in very personal ways. But in my observation, Trump has been an equal-opportunity insulter. He doesn’t much care about the demographics or the races of the people he attacks.
Certainly, his tweet suggesting that four leftist congresswomen of color “go back” to where they came from was cringeworthy, as are many of Trump’s tweets. The tweet was demeaning and offensive.
But was it racist? When Trump or anyone else criticizes or verbally attacks a person of color, is that racism?
The problem is that the calling people racist, or implying that they’re racist, has become so commonplace that it has lost its meaning. It ought to be attached to people who really do believe their race is superior, and other people are inferior because they have a different skin color. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez essentially called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi a racist. Sen. Kamala Harris implied that presidential candidate Joe Biden is racist. Colin Kaepernick and Nike decided the Betsy Ross flag is racist. They call anyone who disagrees with them racists. Anyone who insults them is a racist.
If everyone is a racist then no one is a racist. It becomes much harder to condemn the real racists. Calling Trump a racist is meaningless. Voters shrug their shoulders. The term is diluted.
Trump doesn’t just insult women of color. He insults anyone who attacks him. He cares not about convention or political correctness or hurting someone’s feelings. He was demeaning to Carly Fiorina. He created nasty little names for Jeb Bush, Marco Rubio, Ted Cruz and others. He made fun of their physical characteristics. Did that make him racist against white people?
Trump is lots of bad things. But calling him a racist is a stretch. It’s all part of victimhood and identity politics. It’s intellectually lazy.
It also hurts the cause of leftist Democrats and other Trump-haters because mainstream voters across America see that they, too, could be called racist if they get in a Twitter fight with a person not of their race.
Real racists ought to be denounced as such. Demeaning criticism ought to be condemned for what it is, not as racism.
