The Racist Next Time

Trump rode bigotry to the White House. The next Trump could too.

- By Nathalie Baptiste

When the major media outlets finally called the presidential election for Joe Biden, huge numbers of people around the country took to the streets to celebrate. But as they popped champagne, danced alongside their neighbors, and cried tears of joy, the question of what would come next loomed ominously. The election may have been a referendum on a second Trump term, but with more than 70 million votes in his favor, it was clearly not a referendum on Trumpism, or on the deep injustices that animated his rise to power and captivated large swaths of Americans.

Still, now that he has been defeated, let’s take one last look (promise!) at Trump’s history of racism. In the 1970s, the Department of Justice sued him for refusing to rent to Black people. After a white woman was raped in New York City’s Central Park in 1989, he called for the five Black and Brown teenagers who were wrongfully accused to be executed—and kept railing against them even after dna evidence proved their innocence. And then came his obsession with Barack Obama’s birth certificate. Trump’s presidential run began with his description of Mexican immigrants as rapists and criminals, a foreshadowing of a presidency in which anyone perceived as different or disagreeing with him would be subjected to taunting tweets, at best, and cruel policies, at worst. Trump and his sycophants banned Muslims from entering the country, separated children from their parents at the border, and blocked refugees from settling here. But we know all this.