black history: donald trump’s election is just the latest reaction to fear of losing white privilege

Donald Trump is the backlash (some have said the whitelash) of white Americans to the escalating fear of loss of white privilege. His election is the latest in a series of reactions to people of goodwill protesting and demanding equality.

By Nick Douglas*, AFROPUNK contributor

The Founding Fathers were elite white landowners and 40% owned slaves. The Constitution and the Articles of Confederation were written to enforce their domination and privilege. The Articles of Confederation in 1781 enacted the policy of counting slaves as three-fifths of a person so that slave states would receive disproportionate representation. Slaves were counted for representation purposes but could not vote or exercise any other rights. This arrangement clearly enforced the white privilege of slaveholders. It also allowed 1% of the population to maintain disproportionate power over the Supreme Court, the presidency and Congress for more than 80 years.

When free people of color began to exercise their power to vote after 1783, white legislators and citizens reacted fearfully, by systematically disenfranchising free men of color all over the U.S. In 1783 free men of color could vote in 10 states. By 1860 they could only vote in five.

This has a terrible parallel with the gutting of the Voting Rights Act in 2013 and the 20 states under Republican control that imposed voting restrictions targeting people of color. These same states were formerly under federal supervision for their history of voter disenfranchisement during Jim Crow. Many consider the voter suppression that occurred in these states as one of the contributing factors to Trump’s victory.

In the 1820s and 1830s free people of color and white Americans of goodwill began to seriously agitate for the abolition of slavery, forming anti-slavery groups and activist organizations like the Underground Railroad. White legislators reacted to anti-slavery activism by unleashing a torrent of legislation aimed at controlling free people of color and slaves, who were just 14% of the population. Legislators in some states even prohibited speech by white Americans that would “agitate slaves to revolt,” a direct violation of the First Amendment. The Nat Turner Revolt in 1831 added to white fears of slave revolts. The 1% of citizens who were slaveholders whipped up fears in poor whites to get them to go along with more restrictive measures against free people of color and slaves.

KKK parde in Washington, D.C. in 1925

Today, police shootings of unarmed people of color have sparked protests in cities like Ferguson, Baton Rouge and Philadelphia. In 2015 in reaction to a spate of these killings the group Black Lives Matter was formed. Local officials have reacted by using curfew laws and vagrancy laws to restrict protests. Trump has used the protests to whip up the fears of white Americans by declaring we must restore “law and order.”

In 1815, under General Andrew Jackson, a potent coalition of Native Americans and free people of color helped defeat the British at the Battle of New Orleans. Just two years later Jackson witnessed a different coalition of escaped slaves and Seminole Indians defeat the militias of Florida and the U.S. Army in the first Seminole War. In 1829, when Jackson became president, he signed the Indian Relocation Act to vanquish these formidable coalitions, moving the “Five Civilized Native American Tribes” to lands west of the Mississippi. The Indian Relocation Act served two purposes, separating the potential coalition of black Americans and Native Americans and opening up millions of acres of Native American land in the Southeast to white farmers.

Today Trump’s rhetoric of mass deportations of illegal immigrants or people of the Muslim religion would serve the same purpose of breaking up potentially powerful coalitions.

Trump supporter in Chicago

Anti-slavery and anti-colonialism Senators like Charles Sumner opposed the annexation of the Republic of Texas as a shallow ruse to acquire more land and enlarge slaveholding territory. Texas was added as a slaveholding state in 1845 and its annexation led to a series of events that caused the Mexican American War in 1848. The war ended in the annexation of California, Arizona and New Mexico for a measly $15 million paid to the Mexican government.

Trump’s reaction to the problem of illegal immigration and our current relationship with Mexico has been a shallow ruse to enact racist policy. Trump threatened to build a wall along the border and make Mexico pay for it, return millions of illegal immigrants to Mexico, and end NAFTA. His rhetoric about NAFTA never mentioned our border with Canada, our largest trading partner. With the passing of the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments, former slaves and free people of color were given U.S. citizenship and the right to vote. By 1876 and the end of Reconstruction people of color were electing local, state, and national officials. White legislators and citizens, again afraid the power wielded by people of color would threaten their white privilege, began to disenfranchise voters of color. They implemented grandfather clauses, poll taxes, and literacy tests for voting. Groups like the KKK, the Night Riders and White Knights formed to intimidate, terrorize and kill people of color who were exercising their rights as citizens.

Trump called for his supporters to monitor certain election sites for “voter fraud,” fearful of blacks, people of color and whites of goodwill voting in large numbers against him. This reaction is eerily reminiscent of the intimidation of protests and voting rights used during the Jim Crow era, when white Americans feared losing privileges they had enjoyed when black Americans were disenfranchised. Trump’s avid supporters are KKK members and white supremacist groups like the Oath Keepers. The Oath Keepers appeared as an unwelcome vigilante group during protests in Ferguson, Missouri after the Michael Brown killing.

At the turn of the century the build-up of black wealth and prosperity triggered an era of white-initiated riots, intolerance and lynchings, destroying many black neighborhoods nationwide. In 1909 the NAACP was formed by a concerned coalition of blacks and whites to combat these evils. The NAACP has continued to function to improve the lives of all Americans since its founding in 1909.

In July of this year candidate Trump’s reaction to an invitation to address the NAACP during its convention was to refuse the invitation. His refusal speaks for itself. The National Council of La Raza refused to invite Trump to speak after his “vilification of the entire community.”

White American’s historically fearful reactions to blacks and people of color exercising their political power after the Civil War, at the turn of the century, and during the civil rights struggle of the 1950s and 1960s spawned home-grown terrorists groups like the KKK and the White Knights. Activist groups like the Freedmen’s Bureau, Comité des Citoyens, NAACP, ACLU, SNCC and the Black Panthers were formed to combat these home-grown terrorists.

Trump, like elected officials after the Civil War and during Jim Crow, welcomes hate group’s support—he refuses to disavow and condemn these hate groups. This is no coincidence. Trump’s election is the fearful reaction to the inroads groups like Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, LGBT activists and women’s rights activists have made against white privilege over the last 30 years. Trump’s election and rhetoric of fear has emboldened groups like the KKK, neo-Nazis, Oath Keepers and other hate groups to resurface. Since 2015 more than 100 new hate groups have surfaced in the U.S.

Civil rights demonstrations throughout the U.S. in the 1950s and 1960s exerted worldwide pressure to shame America to end Jim Crow. Finally the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act were signed by Democratic President Lyndon Johnson.

In response to gains made in the 1970s for women’s reproductive rights and by people of color against discrimination in hiring and segregation in housing, Ronald Reagan was elected as president in 1981. His racist policy of “constructive engagement” with apartheid South Africa was denounced and negated by activists worldwide, who successfully boycotted South Africa and forced an end to the apartheid regime.

During the last year, news and protests of the racial killings in the U.S. combined with Trump’s hateful rhetoric about these incidents has sparked a nearly unanimous worldwide reaction of condemnation of Trump and his political views. The demographics of the country are inevitably changing to a white minority in the next decade. Many white Americans fear that change, believing cooperation and coexistence with Americans of color is a zero-sum-game. Trump’s election and his hateful rhetoric is a desperate last-gasp attempt to hold onto white privilege by any means.

People of goodwill must walk a fine line with Trump. We cannot allow him to implement his outrageous agenda. But we cannot let him fail either. If Trump’s policies were to ruin the U.S. economy, or draw the U.S. into a trade war or another armed conflict, we all will be affected. Unlike Republicans over the last 8 years who have tried to bring this country to a standstill by opposing any and every proposal from America’s first black president’s Administration, we cannot afford four years or even a year of continued political standoffs dealing with income equality, our crumbling infrastructure, or climate change.

Trump’s opponents must be bolder than the hate groups. First they must not leave the country for Canada or New Zealand. This would be doing exactly what Trump supporters want, less activism and less opposition to their policies. We must not waste time trying to win over the hearts, or change the minds of Trump supporters. They have clearly shown where their allegiances lie. This is not a teachable moment. We must isolate Trump and his administration like the plague that they are. No groups of goodwill should accept or extend any invitations from Trump or anyone in his administration. Trump, his supporters and his administration should be made to understand that hatred and bigotry is not welcome in the U.S. We must fight back as we have historically, by forming coalitions with all people of goodwill. We must fight and end voter suppression in states currently engaged in this practice. And get rid of or modify the antiquated and useless Electoral College system. We must turn out to vote in record numbers in the 2018 mid-term elections, actively opposing Trump’s policies of hatred, inequality and extremism by becoming politically involved on the local, state, and national levels.

If you look at American history, and you know your black history, people of goodwill have always banded together and found a way to defeat evil forces within the U.S. and to move our country forward. We need to show ourselves and the world there are more Americans of goodwill than Trump supporters. We must show that Trump’s election is just another reaction to the fear of loss of white privilege that has always followed a period of gains by Americans of color and goodwill protesting for, demanding, enforcing and expanding their rights as citizens.

*Nick Douglas is the author of Finding Octave: The Untold Story of Two Creole Families and Slavery in Louisiana.

He has a forthcoming book: Reclaiming Black History: Finding Admirable Ancestors, a Wealth of Heroism and Traits that shatter defeatist clichés, which is a new collection of essays and articles that tell a different American history narrative. He has a contact blog www.findingoctave.com/contact.html for readers who may want to contact him.