Can Racism Be Overcome?

You have heard it ad nauseum.  I have even written about it before.  President Trump is regularly accused of being a racist.  Whenever the subject of immigration comes up, this old chestnut is trotted out.  The tyrant must therefore be stopped before he can reverse the results of the Civil War!

This is such egregious nonsense that it ought not be necessary to refute.  Trump is merely trying to gain control of our borders.  He wants to shut down illegal immigration and replace it with a merit-based system.  Although Canada, Australia, and England already do this, the mere suggestion that we might follow suit is greeted by howls of revulsion.

Liberals want porous borders so that they can increase the number of low skilled citizens who will eventually vote for them.  This is an open secret in Washington.  Oh yes, progressives deny it.  They also resort to a bogus humanitarianism to support their case.

Because so many ill-educated illegals are Hispanic or Black, it is assumed that this is an excuse for excluding them.  That there might be other motives for changing our immigration policies leaves the critics cold.  Indeed, a desire to make their opponents look immoral supersedes every other consideration.

Democrats do not care if illegals take jobs away from lower class Americans.  They do not care that undocumented migrants increase the crime rate.  They are likewise unconcerned about the hazards of unlawfully crossing the border or the difficulty many have in integrating into our country.

Worst of all, liberals are indifferent to the effect on respect for the law.  When they thumb their noses at federal statutes, they do not understand that this undermines other statutes.  Lawlessness is, as it were, catching.

But back to racism, Trump and his allies are smeared with this epithet because of identity politics.  If Democrats can make minorities feel they are in jeopardy, these erstwhile victims can be persuaded to support policies that go against their interests.  A case in point is blacks who do not realize their jobs are threatened by illegals.

Despite claims to the contrary, racism is not nearly as virulent as it once was.  Minorities have many more opportunities available to them.  They are also less subject to thoughtless disrespect.  This, however, does not prevent rampant hyperbole.  Individual abuses are routinely inflated to national proportions to make them appear ubiquitous.

Nor is tortured logic scrutinized to reveal its inadequacies.  A racial activist recently informed me that racism persists because whites are genetically unable to understand the plight of blacks.  Because they have never been black, they cannot appreciate the extent of the indignities.

When asked if this meant that blacks could not understand the feelings of whites because they have never been white, this sincere young person answered in the affirmative.  Sadly, that this implied racism could never be overcome went entirely unrecognized.

Let me be perfectly clear, if the races are biologically incapable of sympathetically understanding each other, then prejudice and discrimination can never be eliminated.  Neither race will recognize when it injures the other and hence both will inflict unintended harm.

But this is as absurd as the politically inspired accusations that Trump is a virulent racist.  His actions belie this allegation, whereas it is evident that individual blacks and whites are perfectly capable of interracial empathy.  Each side can imagine themselves in the shoes of the other so as to envisage the other’s challenges.

We are all—to be as blunt as I can be—human.  Furthermore, our humanity is more salient than our racial identities.  We all have the same emotions.  We all want to be loved.  We all hope to be successful.  None of us likes to be disparaged or regarded as inconsequential.

If this is so, it is time to stop building artificial barriers between the races.  Neither side should hurl baseless accusations at the other.  It is especially vital that opportunistic politicians cease exploiting vulnerable populations for partisan purposes.  Making people feel threatened when they are not cultivates a perilous defensiveness.

We need instead to listen to each other.  We need to do so compassionately and with an eye to being mutually supportive.  Only in this way can actual racism be tossed onto the ash heap of history.

Melvyn L. Fein, Ph.D.

Professor of Sociology

Kennesaw State University