If you think Racism won Donald Trump the election, you missed the point again

This is a small extract from Michael Brull's excellent article in newmatilda.com, Nov 9, 2016 'If You Think Racism Won Donald Trump The Election, You’ve Missed The Point… Again'. 

 

44th President of the United States of America, Barack Obama. NCLR President Janet Murguía dubbed Obama the “deporter-in-chief”

Crude racism is bad, institutional racism is complicated

Many media elites eventually reacted with horror and disgust to Trump. He has said many awful things about minority groups, particularly Mexicans and Muslims. Traditionally, Republicans are supposed to dog whistle. They’re not supposed to make crudely racist comments. Yet as Matt Taibbi showed, that was all it took for him to win the Republican primaries, as the public saw that they were getting the real deal, who wouldn’t be cowed by political correctness.

Trump also benefited immensely from the free media coverage he got from each new outrageous comment he made, blandly reported on across US media.

Trump didn’t make coded appeals. He gave voice to the cruder, more extreme racists of America, like David Duke and the KKK. He also offered a kind of validation to those with less extreme concerns and anxieties about Mexicans and Muslims, who felt they lived under a stifling political correctness.

This kind of racism is the kind that respectable, educated types know is never okay and should be condemned. The respectable type, however, has been firmly established as bipartisan wisdom.

Take Trump’s rhetoric about Mexicans, building that wall, and the need to deport illegal immigrants. Such rhetoric was ugly, and hurtful.

Now consider the actual record of the constitutional law professor President, Obama. In February 2014, the Economist reported that:

America is expelling illegal immigrants at nine times the rate of 20 years ago (see article); nearly 2 million so far under Barack Obama, easily outpacing any previous president. Border patrol agents no longer just patrol the border; they scour the country for illegals to eject. The deportation machine costs more than all other areas of federal criminal law-enforcement combined. It tears families apart and impoverishes America.

The Economist pondered why Obama would oversee such an “illiberal, cruel and pointless” policy. The “Machiavellian explanation is that it motivates Latinos, who associate such barbarism with Republicans, to keep voting for the Democrats”. Obama apologists claim that:

“He is merely following laws written by nativist Republicans. This is a cop-out. As president he sets priorities for the executive branch, which cannot catch and prosecute everyone who breaks any of the gazillions of federal rules. He can find ways to slow the deportation of harmless immigrants and concentrate on those who have committed serious crimes. He has already delayed action against those who arrived as children.”

In March 2014, the largest Latino advocacy organisation in the US finally broke with Obama. It was the last major Latino organisation to defend Obama’s record. NCLR President Janet Murguía dubbed Obama the “deporter-in-chief”. She complained that “He can stop tearing families apart. He can stop throwing communities and businesses into chaos. He can stop turning a blind eye to the harm being done. He does have the power to stop this. Failure to act will be a shameful legacy for his presidency.”

In late 2014, under pressure from activists, Obama issued an executive action to reform deportation policy, and protected up to 5 million undocumented people in America from deportation. Then in 2016, he stepped up deportations again, ordering the deportation of thousands of children without any court hearing. Lisa Mascaro reported that weekend raids, targeting parents and children, “threatens to blur what had been a stark contrast between the party’s position and that espoused by leading Republican presidential candidates, most notably Donald Trump, who proposed tough ways to keep migrants out”.

Indeed.

Trump’s comments about Mexicans and undocumented people have been reprehensible. But the actions of the deporter-in-chief have already had a horrendous effect on millions of human beings.

The result was that fewer Latinos were willing to back the Democratic nominee this time. In 2012, Obama won 71 per cent of Latino voters, whilst Romney got 27 per cent. This election, Clinton got 65 per cent of the Latino vote, to Trump’s 29. Trump did better among Hispanic voters than Romney did. Trump also did better among black voters than Romney, and Clinton did worse than Obama.

Was the diminished Latino enthusiasm for the Democrats a product of privilege? Had they internalised more racism in the last four years? Or have they simply become disillusioned? They had voted for a President who promised hope and change, and he turned out utterly vicious.

Whilst media types were comfortable denouncing the racist rhetoric of Trump, Obama’s deportations proved more controversial. As many lives as he destroyed, that was merely a policy dispute.

To win an election, you need enthusiastic supporters. Trump had enthusiastic racists on his side. The Democrats would have found it harder to get enthusiastic anti-racists on their side, because of their lousy record.

Take Trump’s infamous call to build a wall. Jorge Ramos noted that Clinton voted for building a fence on the border with Mexico in 2006.

“What’s the difference between your idea and Donald Trump’s idea on building a wall with Mexico?” Ramos asked. Clinton denied wanting to build a wall.

“Well, I voted for border security and some of it was a fence… I don’t think we ever called it a wall. Maybe in some places it was a wall.”

This kind of distinction between Trump and Clinton may have contributed to Latinos responding to Trump in a comparable way to how they responded to Romney.

Source: newmatilda.com, Nov 10, 2016

Peter B Collins weekly podcast - FBI Comey runs rogue agency that's above the law

 

* when Comey refused to indict Clinton in July, he was called courageous and non-partisan by Dems who now demand Comey’s scalp

* corporate media moves quickly to minimize the story, inject more confusion, and tell Clinton voters to ignore the noise

* blogger Tyler Durden asks if Attorney General Loretta Lynch interfered with FBI investigations into Clinton Foundation, and the Carlos Danger laptop

* Spencer Ackerman reports that a formal complaint has been filed with Office of Special Counsel, demanding Hatch Act investigation of Comey

* will Huma Abedin be thrown under the bus?

* almost all the information we have is based on anonymous leaks

* at The Guardian, Trevor Timm gives a partial list of Comey’s sordid record

Listen to Peter's broadcast Oct 31, 2016 to find out what he thinks.  Note this broadcast was made prior to James Comey's second announcement on Nov 07, clearing Hillary Clinton once again.

Standing Rock and Imperialism Itself

The Dakota Access Pipeline was originally scheduled to cross the state of North Dakota north of Bismarck, the state capital (pop. 70,000). But then the route was shifted 40 miles south, to the south, to pass by the Standing Rock Sioux reservation (pop. 8200).  This is sovereign territory of the Sioux, whose reservation straddles North and South Dakota and whose members include Hunkpapa Lakota and Yaktonai Dakota.

The Sioux are a nation of about 170,000 people, divided linguistically into the Lakotas, Dakotas and Nakotas concentrated in what are now North and South Dakota. We know that there were some in what is now either Wisconsin or Minnesota in 1660 because French traders met them and recorded the encounter. They may have advanced into the Dakotas only after that.

(I mention these details only to suggest that the Sioux have not “always” been in their current zone. Native American tribes—like Germanic, Celtic, Slavic, Turkish or Bantu tribes elsewhere—migrated and settled over time, and sometimes reached a new territory simultaneous with the first Europeans’ arrival.

For example: the Apache may have migrated into what is now the U.S. Southwest some 500 years ago, just as the Spanish conquistadors were arriving. Since they spoke an Athabaskan language, it seems likely that they descended from people who had lived in Alaska 500 years earlier. They had wandered a long way from home.

The Inuit, who originated in Siberia over 10,000 years ago, entered Alaska’s North Slope around 3000 BCE and started spreading out throughout the islands of the Canadian Arctic Peninsula around 1000 CE reaching Greenland in a short time. They arrived on that large island around the same time that the Scandinavians did. Both had come a long way. We should always question the “My people have always been here” allegation. The native/settler dichotomy is simplistic. We all come from somewhere else.)

The Standing Rock Reservation’s boundaries are defined by the Fort Laramie Treaty (or Horse Creek Treaty) of 1851, which exchanged Sioux recognition of “the right of the United States Government to establish roads, military and other posts, within their respective territories” on their territory for a U.S. commitment “to protect the aforesaid Indian nations against the commission of all depredations by the people of the said United States, after the ratification of this treaty.” They are confirmed by another treaty signed in 1868.

Back to the Dakota Access Pipeline. According to the Bismarck Tribune, the route was changed due to concern that the DAPL, built by Sunoco and projected to send 500,000 gallons of oil every day from North Dakota to Illinois, would endanger the water supply to the city’s residents.

(These by the way are 92% white, 4% Native American, 4% other.  Full disclosure: my father was born and grew up and was raised in North Dakota, as was his father before him. I visited Bismarck multiple times in my childhood. One of my mother’s brothers worked in government there. It is a very white place.)

The water issue is the first issue (of two) raised by those protesting the DAPL raise. The Missouri River that constitutes the reservation border is the people’s only source of water. (Specifically, Lake Oahe, which is a large swelling within the river straddling the two Dakotas.) It is at present quite pure. The pipeline will flow beneath it. The Army Corps of Engineers has assessed that it will pose no threat to the water, but the people point to reports that pipelines leak. The Standing Rock Sioux are arguing in court that the pipeline directly violates the tribe’s rights as a sovereign nation because it will hurt its drinking water resources.

Quick Google search: AP reports that from 1995 to the present, there have been over 2,000 significant accidents involving oil and petroleum pipelines in this country, producing billions of dollars in damage. Incidents rose from 2006 to 2015 by 60%. From 2013 to 2015, an average of 121 accidents happened every year. The Yellowstone River pipeline leak spilled 50,000 gallons of oil into the Glendale, Montana water supply in March 2015. 6000 residents were for a time instructed not to drink the water, like Flint residents were in 2014, although that involved a different poisoning issue.

Just check out Wikipedia’s list of pipeline accidents in the U.S. in the 21st century.

It includes this entry: In January [2005], a Mid-Valley owned and Sunoco operated pipeline ruptured, spilling 260,000 US gallons (980,000 L) of oil into the Kentucky and Ohio rivers. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency fined the companies $2.5 million for the spill.

In other words, the Standing Rock Sioux have good reason for concern about the quality of their environment and health at Sunoco’s hands, and for outrage at the manner in which the Army Corps of Engineers conducted its environmental impact assessment.  And the very fact that the route was shifted south from Bismarck to Indian Country precisely due to fears about water contamination—what is this but unbridled racism?

The second issue is that of sacred burial sites. This might seem less important, especially to the irreligious outsider. But the ongoing protest observances conducted by representatives of many tribes in North Dakota involve many religious practices related to identity: sacred songs and dancing, prayers, peace pipes, sweat lodge meetings, water protection rituals. They believe strongly in the appropriate handling of the burial grounds.

This does not mean demanding respect for the boundaries of a discrete cemetery site but rather the recognition that a broad swathe of sovereign land long used for burial purposes is off-limits from (to quote the treaty again) “depredations by the people of the…United States” such as typically accompany these projects. It seems reasonable to demand that recognition for burial sites, especially some of the most infuriating and provocative actions of the U.S. in relation to native peoples have involved the treatment of the latter’s remains.

The National Park Service recently built a $ 3 million boardwalk over native sacred burial sites and spent tax dollars damaging 78 such sites. It built over 200 sacred mounds without doing any impact analysis and, according to a Congressional report “know what they were doing was wrong.”  And there’s a long history of the theft and exploitation of Native Americans’ remains. Doesn’t Yale University’s Skull and Bones Society still boast that it acquired Geronimo’s skull in the 1910s?

The Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe has accused pipeline goons of “knowingly destroying sacred sites.” So this, too, is reason to oppose DAPL. But the main reason for opposition is not water purity, nor even respect for one’s ancestors, but the Sioux tribes’ aspirations for sovereignty, on land assigned them by violated treaties, as they come up against capitalist imperialism itself.

Why are the treaties so violated, still? Isn’t it all about private property, oil profits, indifference to the environment, inevitable state support to the biggest property-owners—that is to say, isn’t it all about the system itself? Which we all, in our different ways, oppose?

It was beautiful to see in Cannon Ball, North Dakota, the largest gatherings in recent times of representatives of native peoples from many tribes, and many allies from many places and movements, in defense of their rights. As it happens, the movement to stop DAPL dovetails with the bourgeoning Black Lives Matter Movement and the networks formed out of Occupy Wall Street and the disillusioned Bernie campaign. Young people of all ethnic backgrounds are realizing that capitalism and imperialism suck, and that the shameful history of slavery and racism needs to be recognized and repudiated.

Add to this the realization that Native Americans are rallying against Big Oil and in so doing benefiting all of us. And then imagine an anti-war, anti-Hillary movement that channels the energies of these several movements for economic justice, racial justice and native rights into a revolutionary movement focused on the real problem of imperialism itself, which the new president will likely personify.

Source: Counterpunch, Nov 08, 2016