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| Reynold Liang was one of the four Asian American men attacked for being in a predominantly white neighborhood in New York City. |
DONALD TRUMP almost ruined my Thanksgiving. His early morning tweets on Thanksgiving Day should raise a red flag for Asian/Americans and Pacific Islanders.
While I give thanks for so many things in my life, the current regime in Washington is not one of them.
In response to a Washington Post columnist Greg Sergent's supposition that Trump tends to attack African/Americans but let white misdeeds or insults go without response, Trump tweeted at 3:31 a.m., "MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!" - all caps.
Instead of refuting Sergent's column's claims, Trump sends a message that - as a person of color - I interpret as, "Yeah - Make America White Again."
Now, you might say I'm making a mountain out of molehill or that I'm too sensitive to racial jibes, but you have to see Trump's tweets or actions or executive orders in the overall context of Trump's political life, which I would say started when he began making birther accusations against President Obama in the spring of 2011.
“I have some real doubts,” Trump said in an interview on the “Today” show that year. He claimed to have sent his own investigators to Hawaii, where Obama was born. "I have people that actually have been studying it and they cannot believe what they're finding." Of course, that so-called evidence was never produced.
A strong argument can be made that his anti-black sentiments go back further when he took out a full-page ad condemning the Central Park Five, who were all African Americans, and who were exonerated from that brutal attack on a female jogger. Another man, confessed to the crime in 2012 after DNA evidence linked him to the attack.
Trump still thinks the five boys, now men, are guilty of the brutal crime.
But, I'm digressing from my original statement. Suffice it to say, Trump's recent tweets vs. prominent and not-so-prominent African/Americans, plus his statements after the white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, VA, demonstrate that his animus against African/Americans still warps his world view.
In his blog, Sargent argued that Trump "goes out of his way to attack prominent African Americans," including basketball dad LaVar Ball and NFL athletes protesting racial inequities during the national prior to taking to the field.
Sargent responded on Twitter: "Trump's rage-tweets about LaVar Ball are part of a pattern. Trump regularly attacks high-profile African Americans to feed his supporters' belief that the system is rigged for minorities."
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| In San Francisco, this popped up. |
For those of you who don't follow sports, Ball is the ego-driven father of some gifted sons who excel in basketball. His oldest son left UCLA early to play professionally with the L.A. Lakers. His younger son is still playing for the UCLA Bruins.
During a trip to China, young Ball was caught shoplifting along with two other UCLA players. The arrests occurred at the same time Trump happened to by in China. Trump claims he interceded and helped in the early release of the three college students.
LaVar Ball said he had the situation under control and that Trump shouldn't take all the credit for his son's release. What motivated him to respond in such an off-handed manner is not known but he has a deserved reputation for making outlandish statements to bring attention to himself.
But in reality, in the greater scheme of things in a world threatened by nuclear war, Russian meddling in U.S. elections and Supreme Court appointments, Ball is not worthy of a presidential response. However, Trump did respond in tweets posted around 2:30 a.m.:
"But it's hard to avoid noticing a gratuitously ugly pattern in Trump's responses, in which Trump vaguely suggests either that his targets are getting above their station, or that they're asking for too much and are insufficiently thankful for all that he has done for them," wrote Sargent.
Many white men who have criticized Trump don’t get the same backlash. The president has never tweeted about author Stephen King, who has publicly called him everything from “an idiot” to a “fake president.” Billionaire Tom Steyer recently started a multi-million dollar ad campaign calling for Trump’s impeachment. So far, Trump and the White House haven’t said a thing. The harshest comment about late night host Stephen Colbert's ridiculing the Trumpster almost daily, was a mild "unfunny."
Some of the prominent African/Americans that Trump attacked or belittled included ESPN reporter Jemele Hill, journalist April Ryan, NBA star Stephen Curry, Rep. Maxine Waters, D-CA., Rep. Frederica Wilson, D-Fla., and, of course, the majority of NFL players who took to their knees to make a statement about the racial inequities that still exist in our country.
Some Asian/Americans, especially those first-generation immigrants, still don't see the link between the civil rights of African/Americans and the well-being of the Asian/American community.
The growth of the white supremacy movement (with the implicit approval of the Trump regime) should concern all of us. While they make no bones about attacking African/Americans, Latinos and Muslims, history tells us they are talking about ALL people of color. Look at your skin.
"While few Asian Americans trace our roots to the Civil War, our history in this nation is deeply intertwined and impacted by white supremacy and nativism," says a statement from Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
"At the turn of the 20th century, white mobs threatened -- and even lynched -- Chinese, Filipino, and South Asian immigrants, in part for fear they would taint (white) American culture. White supremacist groups helped to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law to ban an entire ethnic group. And white supremacy birthed 'alien land laws,' barring 'non-citizens' from owning land at a time when mainly Asians could not become U.S. citizens, and anti-miscegenation laws, prohibiting interracial marriage (a law that in California specifically singled out Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and other Asians). White supremacy also paved the way for the U.S. government to violate due process and incarcerate 120,000 Japanese Americans, many U.S. citizens, during World War II -- an action upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu vs. United States and never formally overturned."
From one of the earliest recorded hate crime in the 1800s when the white supremacist group, Arsonists of the Order of Caucasians, set on fire four Chinese men who they blamed for taking jobs from white workers; to earlier this year when two South Asian man were shot, one fatally, while enjoying an after-work drink with co-workers in Kansas City, the rise of white supremacists can no longer be ignored by Asian/Americans.
Indeed, hate crimes against Asian Americans are rising and getting more violent in direct proportion to the growing boldness of white supremacists. We cannot stand idly by, nor can we ignore the growing atmosphere of hate in the day-to-day encounters on commuter trains, as we shop for holiday presents, as we meet with our friends in restaurants and bars, as our children are bullied, as our places of worship are marred with vandalism or set afire,
We are not exempt from the ignorance of racists, the hatred of bigots or the actions of the current regime in Washington.
"White supremacy drives the (Trump's) Muslim bans, seeking to ban entire groups of people based on their national origin and non-Christian religion," continues the AAAJ statement.
The AAAJ pointed two current policies that demonstrate the Trump regime's true sentiments towards Asian/Americans:
"First, when the President announced his support for the RAISE Act, an immigration bill that would gut the current family-based immigration system, which has brought millions of Asian, African, and Latin American immigrants into the U.S. and remade the racial demographics of the U.S. in the past 50 years.
"And second, when the White House redirected federal civil rights resources to undo long-standing affirmative action policies. The administration’s purported claim to be fighting discrimination against Asian Americans flies counter to all other evidence that this administration and its allies and supporters seek to advance only the interests of fellow white Americans.
The DOJ questioning of Harvard's admission policies is not so much addressing some Asian/Americans' complaints, as it is more of an attack on the concept of affirmative action, the true goal of the Trump regime.
Years ago, Filipino/American essayist and author Carlos Bulosan wrote in his classic novel "America Is In the Heart":
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Some Asian/Americans, especially those first-generation immigrants, still don't see the link between the civil rights of African/Americans and the well-being of the Asian/American community.
The growth of the white supremacy movement (with the implicit approval of the Trump regime) should concern all of us. While they make no bones about attacking African/Americans, Latinos and Muslims, history tells us they are talking about ALL people of color. Look at your skin.
"While few Asian Americans trace our roots to the Civil War, our history in this nation is deeply intertwined and impacted by white supremacy and nativism," says a statement from Asian Americans Advancing Justice.
"At the turn of the 20th century, white mobs threatened -- and even lynched -- Chinese, Filipino, and South Asian immigrants, in part for fear they would taint (white) American culture. White supremacist groups helped to pass the Chinese Exclusion Act, the first law to ban an entire ethnic group. And white supremacy birthed 'alien land laws,' barring 'non-citizens' from owning land at a time when mainly Asians could not become U.S. citizens, and anti-miscegenation laws, prohibiting interracial marriage (a law that in California specifically singled out Chinese, Japanese, Filipino, and other Asians). White supremacy also paved the way for the U.S. government to violate due process and incarcerate 120,000 Japanese Americans, many U.S. citizens, during World War II -- an action upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in Korematsu vs. United States and never formally overturned."
From one of the earliest recorded hate crime in the 1800s when the white supremacist group, Arsonists of the Order of Caucasians, set on fire four Chinese men who they blamed for taking jobs from white workers; to earlier this year when two South Asian man were shot, one fatally, while enjoying an after-work drink with co-workers in Kansas City, the rise of white supremacists can no longer be ignored by Asian/Americans.
Indeed, hate crimes against Asian Americans are rising and getting more violent in direct proportion to the growing boldness of white supremacists. We cannot stand idly by, nor can we ignore the growing atmosphere of hate in the day-to-day encounters on commuter trains, as we shop for holiday presents, as we meet with our friends in restaurants and bars, as our children are bullied, as our places of worship are marred with vandalism or set afire,
We are not exempt from the ignorance of racists, the hatred of bigots or the actions of the current regime in Washington.
"White supremacy drives the (Trump's) Muslim bans, seeking to ban entire groups of people based on their national origin and non-Christian religion," continues the AAAJ statement.
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| UCLA students protest attacks on Asians and Asian Americans on and near campus. |
The AAAJ pointed two current policies that demonstrate the Trump regime's true sentiments towards Asian/Americans:
"First, when the President announced his support for the RAISE Act, an immigration bill that would gut the current family-based immigration system, which has brought millions of Asian, African, and Latin American immigrants into the U.S. and remade the racial demographics of the U.S. in the past 50 years.
"And second, when the White House redirected federal civil rights resources to undo long-standing affirmative action policies. The administration’s purported claim to be fighting discrimination against Asian Americans flies counter to all other evidence that this administration and its allies and supporters seek to advance only the interests of fellow white Americans.
The DOJ questioning of Harvard's admission policies is not so much addressing some Asian/Americans' complaints, as it is more of an attack on the concept of affirmative action, the true goal of the Trump regime.
Years ago, Filipino/American essayist and author Carlos Bulosan wrote in his classic novel "America Is In the Heart":
America is also the nameless foreigner, the homeless refugee, the hungry boy begging for a job and the black body dangling on a tree. America is the illiterate immigrant who is ashamed that the world of books and intellectual opportunities are closed to him. We are all that nameless foreigner, that homeless refugee, that hungry boy, that illiterate immigrant and that lynched black body. All of us, from the first Adams to the last Filipino, native born or alien, educated or illiterate - We are America!When unarmed African/Americans are shot by police,'when Latinos are called rapists, drug-dealers and singled out to show their "proof of legal residency" along our country's southern border; when Muslims can't fly on airplanes without attracting suspicion; or targeted by immigration restrictions; we Asian/Americans are also being targeted, called racial slurs, bullied and harassed.
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