It’s not all that surprising that a man who began his presidential campaign saying Mexicans were rapists and drug dealers— who then went on to call for a Muslim ban, mock a disabled reporter, select a Vice President who supported gay conversion therapy, claim that bragging about sexual assault was just “locker room talk,” and refuse to decry David Duke— has been capital T Terrible for minorities. I know it shouldn’t shock me at this point, but the alarming depth and breadth of policies Donald Trump has supported that cripple marginalized communities in such a relatively short period of time still astound me.

Those policies are so deep-reaching and ubiquitous at this point, that they’re difficult to keep track of. But we have to stay on top of them in order to actively oppose them. With those hopes, here are 10 ways Trump has hurt minorities, including the blatant bombast and the insidious, lesser-known bigotry.

1. Hate crimes have skyrocketed since the election, and yet Trump remains alarmingly quiet, rarely ever even issuing so much as a tweet in condemnation (in fact, after the latest mosque bombing, White House aide Sebastian Gorka defended Trump’s silence by suggesting the hate crime was a false flag attack).
2. Trump’s policies endanger the LGBTQIA community: he favors banning trans individuals from military service, has withdrawn federal guidance to protect trans students from discrimination, wants to cut funding for researching the cure for HIV/AIDS, and has appointed numerous anti-LGBT activists (like Pence and Gorsuch) to positions of power.
3. His calls to defund Planned Parenthood threaten women’s reproductive health rights, especially low-income women— which has only been compounded by his reinstatement of the global gag rule. And repealing the ACA jeopardizes health care for women, the poor, the elderly, and the sick.
4. Trump’s xenophobic, anti-immigrant rhetoric (such as his recent call to slash legal immigration) has had the chilling effect of silencing undocumented immigrants from reporting crime as well, fearing deportation. He also seeks to slash the U Visa program which historically protected undocumented women who report domestic violence, meaning women now have to decide between silently enduring the abuse or reporting it and potentially facing deportation. (In fact, a spate of immigrant women dropped the cases against their abusers since the election.)
5. Trump has yet to give up on the Muslim Ban, no matter the many constitutional challenges and forced revisions. For now, he seems to have settled on massively slashing the number of refugees fleeing war-torn countries for sanctuary in the US and only allowing travelers from the original 6 banned countries in if they have a “bona fide” relationship in the US (to protect us from Libyan grandparents feeding us until our stomachs burst, of course).
6. Rather than reforming the criminal justice system to more equally protect everyone (not that anyone really thought that was going to happen), the administration’s policies to bring back for-profit private prisons and seemingly bring back the War on Drugs doubles down on some of the most egregious injustices. And let’s not forget Trump’s apparent support for police brutality (which, apart from disproportionately targeting Black folks and men of color, also disproportionately affects the disabled).
7. The administration’s support for cutting Pell Grants and tuition assistance programs would make it more difficult for, in particular, Black students and other students of color to access higher education.
8. Trump really hit the ground running on voter suppression (consider his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity and calls for voter purges), which tends to disproportionately affect people of color and the poor.
9. Even his climate change-denying policies create a system of environmental racism, such as by dismantling programs protecting children from lead poisoning from paint, which Black children are five times more likely to get than white children.
10. The mere fact that he’s surrounded himself with comically villainous, blatantly and despicably bigoted people like Sebastian Gorka, Steven Miller, and Steve Bannon should be enough to terrify us. Add to that the insidious bigotry of people like Mike Pence, John Kelly, and Jeff Sessions— people who can put a thick coating of polished veneer and sugar-coated diplomacy on their homophobia/xenophobia/racism to make the bitter pill supposedly easier to swallow— and the White House has created the perfect maelstrom to turn vicious hate into cold-blooded policy that will continue to cripple marginalized communities for generations to come.

The post 10 ways Trump has hurt minorities appeared first on Occasional Planet.

No black person who is opposed to Trump’s presidency wants to hear this (internally, I’ve struggled with this thought), but in many ways we are like Trump.

There’s an ugly thought going around the churches and class rooms of cynical black liberals who have decided to give up on America. “This country always elects a representation of itself. It’s a racist, sexist, hateful place and that’s why Trump won. He isn’t like us, he’s like them.”

I’ve heard it from my friends, my family, and my teacher who I usually view as a symbol of what is beautiful about this country. She wasn’t raised in an environment that valued education, but through her determination and encouragement from her own teachers, she grew to become a socially aware black woman who does her best to inspire her students to be civically minded with a positive (but realistic) view of their world. She’s given me a new appreciation of my blackness, and why what we do in our community matters. Yet even she has adopted this them against us mentality, them being Trump and his voters. In the event that she, or any despondent black liberal reads this, recall the following.

Here’s why, for couple reasons, he is us.

Minorities distrusted government & political parties way before it was cool

Remember when the Government followed through on its promise to protect minorities from discrimination, to ensure that we had equal opportunities for education, employment, and voting? Yeah, me neither!

Oh, or when it became obvious that the criminal justice system suffered from institutionalized racism that adversely affected minorities, so the government enacted the reforms necessary to ensure justice for all? Can’t seem to recall that one either.

Well surely, everyone remembers how the Democratic Party has addressed our concerns as a reward for near total loyalty, while Republicans also refrained from using our mere existence as a dog whistle to rally racists? Nope, drawing a blank there.

If none of this rings a bell for you either, it’s because it shouldn’t. There is a reason that while white trust in government often surpasses 50%, black trust in government has failed to even break 45% in the last 40 years, even with a black President. That is because years of broken promises, having our leaders investigated or assassinated, and being labeled “welfare queens” by one party, then “super predators” by the other..suffice it to say has eroded away our confidence. Then of course, there’s the lack of responsiveness to police shootings and misconduct, which deserve something more than a strongly worded letter from the DOJ.

The media hates us and the feeling is mutual

It’s always baffled us why republicans call the media, the “liberal media” That and the constant rallying against Hollywood for being too liberal and not respecting traditional American values.

From our perspective, we just don’t see it.

A liberal media would suggest some commitment to diversity, objective coverage of issues, and a progressive policy view. Those all-white panels on the networks debating whether “rap culture” is entirely or just mostly responsible for black people’s problems, or seeming to find time to run dozens of stories about black on black crime but not the declining state of our public school system. That’s not exactly our idea of liberal.

The Flint water crisis is still a thing, that a 56% black city, as of the writing of this article, still does not have clean drinking water. Buzzfeed somehow manages to find the time to write front page articles about how Trump, allegedly, has a urine fetish, but hasn’t published a full article on Flint in weeks.

Black Lives do Matter, but anyone might be forgiven for not knowing this since the disparities in policing and the racist criminal justice system are presented as a hypothesis rather than fact. One wouldn’t expect CNN to invite two pundits on to debate gravity, giving each side equal validity. That would be ridiculous, so why does it happen over whether or not a Black Lives Matter is a cop-killing hate group?

Furthermore, the idea that Hollywood doesn’t promote traditional American values is also pretty laughable. What is more traditionally American than excluding minorities from important roles, instead delegating them to non-threatening stereotypes that make the majority feel comfortable?

Hollywood seems to love black slaves, black criminals, black maids, black butlers. On occasion they love black female rocket scientists, but not enough to give them a Golden Globe.

Then there’s Trump’s message

Minorities and Trump probably don’t align on many…most…hardly any issues. However, we can definitely relate to the message of, “The media is out of touch, the government is corrupt, and the parties are run by elitists.” It might be too simplistic, but it’s not something that we can disagree with. It’s a large part of who we are, learning to support each other because we can’t rely on the government. Being forced to create our own networks and publications because of being left out by the mainstream media.

Does Donald Trump understand black people? The answer is almost certainly no. Let’s be clear, at worst he’s a bigot and at best he just pretends to be. Neither are ideal. He’s what would happen if Citizen Kane hated immigrants, had small hands, and didn’t get caught with that singer. He shouldn’t have ever been elected.

But do we understand parts of Trump? On some deep cultural level, our experience in this country would suggest yes. It’s easy to talk about how we’re different, it’s harder to accept how in some ways we are not.

The post How black people and Trump align: You’re not going to like this appeared first on Occasional Planet.

A few years back, I was searching for essay contests to enter (they were for extra credit; don’t judge), and I stumbled on one that asked me to describe the experience of being a multicultural teen living in the United States today. I just laughed a little, thinking that if whoever was asking didn’t already know, then there was nothing more I could do for them. It was a can of worms I didn’t want to open. To be fair, I did give it a half-hearted shot for the sake of the free points, but it was just nonsense. I really felt like everybody understood, because we live in America, for goodness sakes! And I didn’t need to explain it to the close-minded people who didn’t get it.

Fast forward to today–through the hours excitedly and intensely poring through news and politics, through realizations of who I am and what this crazy world is,, through needing to grow up and meeting that need (well, sorta).

Fast forward through all that, and I realize now, that their term “multicultural” was a PC euphemism  for “minority,” and being a minority was not an experience the majority shared. I also realize that maybe the reason I was so upset about the question before was because I thought minority-ness” was just about prejudices and nothing more. That’s not true. So are some hard truths and some of the fairly comedic facts of minority-ness:

1. When you have a “minority name,” roll calls of  any sort are a particular kind of torture… especially for the speaker. First comes the pregnant pause and the “oh, crap” expression (sometimes followed by “why couldn’t these parents just friggin name him Bob, gosh darn it). Then the “I’m so sorry beforehand for butchering your name.” Next the stuttering and “uh” with that look of concentration and “I haven’t felt this silly sounding out a word since kindergarten” painted all across their face. After they finally choke that out, they ask you like 12 different times how it’s actually pronounced and if they’re saying it correctly now (but they don’t really care). And the whole time they’re suffering through that, you’re just cringing. Your name in their mouth just sounds like a square peg in a round hole, and that’s not a pleasant sensation. I have honest to goodness gotten to the point that I know who comes before me on the attendance list and when I see that “oh, crap” face, I go “here!” really loudly so they (and I) don’t have to suffer through that.

2. Maintaining your culture outside its natural habitat is expensive. The few people who sell the foods of your heritage, the clothes of your native country, and the non-English movies and songs you crave can charge whatever they want (capitalism at its finest). They can overprice the crap out of anything and everything because if you want it, you don’t really have a whole lot of options and you’re just gonna have to settle for the price if you want it that badly. For instance, my family and I have made the decision to only eat halal meat… unfortunately there aren’t a whole lot of vendors in this area that sell halal meat. So, without having to compete against Walmart and Shop N Save, they can charge whatever ludicrously high price they want because we don’t really have any other option.

3. Even without the price, it just is difficult in general not to conform. All PC rainbows and unicorns and melting pot BS aside, there is a very distinct American culture, and it’s not some utopian blend of every culture. We may have once been proud of being a nation of immigrants, but that’s not really American culture today.

It’s not wearing saris or sombreros; it’s blue jeans and a ball cap. And that’s why when you look down the street and see everybody wearing those blue jeans and ball caps, you’ll wear them too. Because you want to fit in. You’ll deny it and spew something about it being more comfortable or practical, but in the end you just want to feel like everybody else.

That need fades slightly after childhood, but past that. you’ve already established your style and daily life. and you don’t want to change it. So you just stick with the conformity. Because fighting it is a lot more effort than you can really afford to give.

4. When you leave home for any length of time, you begin to crave and lust for (like a junkie, withdrawals and all) for your native tongue and spices. If you don’t live in a community of people with similar heritages, your family is your only pipeline to the customs and traditions of your culture. So being away from them from any length of time means you come home begging your mommy to cook you some comfort food and not speak English (thank goodness I won’t be going too far away for college next year and come back on the weekends). Your family is your community, and people don’t get it because “but, you can get Italian just down the street,”

5. Except when people try to capitalize on your culture, it gets diluted and American-ized into something indistinguishable. 100% guarantee, the Mexican/Italian/Greek/Chinese food commercially available is not the real stuff. It’s a slightly less spicy, slightly more sketchy, and very not right. So that “Italian just down the street” is very much not a substitute for home cooking.

6. Politicians have a never-ending quest for the majority vote… which often leads minority-ness out in the cold. Democracy means politicians compete for the majority vote and target their every action to them. That’s why Obama pursuing the African- American vote made such a big splash; it really wasn’t something typically associated with the presidential playbook.

Foreign policy can be an especially sore spot. You tend to pay particular attention to what the candidates say they’re planning on doing in your country and whether or not they distinguish between the innocent people and the often power-hungry government—and that can definitely be a major selling point.

I generally favor the politician who votes to end the war overseas and doesn’t want to “police the world” (which is code for “strong-arm and bully until they accept the American way”), because that’s a big deal for me. Every politician focuses on making sure the economy is stable and the people are happy, but foreign policy often falls through the cracks, because many times, the majority doesn’t focus on it as much as the minority.

7. When you are a member of a minority, you are the minority. Your every action is often a direct reflection upon the groups to which you belong.The way you dress, the way you speak, the way you carry yourself through every situation—especially if it’s not absolutely impeccably—becomes the next thing people incorporate into their schema for your group.

My parents tried explaining this to me since… well, forever… that the way I behave affects the way that people think of whatever group I am a part of, regardless of whether that’s my religion, my race, or my school. I thought that was wholly unfair, so I ignored it… well, I still think it’s unfair, but I do realize now that I can’t ignore it. I hate that I have to guard my every move when I’m around strangers in case something I do becomes something Muslims do—that as a minority I have to represent my entire minority. Any blunder I make in my typical human fashion ought not to be attributed to my minority-ness, but it is. And while I don’t want to give up and embrace it as an unfortunate and immutable fact of life, it is a fact of life for many people today, immutable though it may not be.

But despite all that, some of the most patriotic people in America are members of  minorities.They gave up their old lives to immigrate here, because they had faith it would be better. Even if America isn’t perfect, who is? People suffering from minority-ness worked to become American citizen because they weren’t just born into it; they created the rhetoric everyone else is now spewing, and they meant it when they said it, rather than just mindlessly repeating.

So, being “multicultural” is great and funny and sad and unfortunate all at the same time.

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