Aug. 12, 2017: Racists wake up America, but not Trump

White nationalists displayed confederate and nazi symbols in Charlottesville, Virginia Aug. 12.

THE DEAFENING SILENCE of Donald Trump this morning woke me up.

When he finally did say something about the violence in Chalottesville, Va., his tepid response drew flak from Republicans and Democrats.

While white nationalists openly marched through the streets of Charlottesvill, Va., clashing against police and counter-protestors, the normally quick-to-tweet Trump stayed away from any messaging on social media until his wife broke the silence with her own tweet.

The "Unite the Right" rally was originally planned to show opposition to the planned removal of a statue honoring Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee in the city's Emancipation Park.

As the clashes continued into the afternoon, the leader of the U.S., Donald Trump, stayed silent while other Republican leaders - such as Rep. Paul Ryan and Sen. Marco Rubio, both of whom are not entirely innocent in enabling the ultra far right, were quick to condemn the violence and hate. 

Oddly, Trump's immigrant wife, Melania, was the first person from the White House to note the violence. Usually, the Trump White House strategists don't like the First Lady upstaging her husband. It would be glorious if she acted on her own without consulting her husband.

Trump's failure to quicky condemn the violence that his presidency and campaign have spawned speaks volumes about where he stands and who is giving him PR advice. Trump's strategy to divide the country and to curry the favor of the disgruntled white male racists is becoming more and more apparent.

Because his wife beat him to the punch, do you think Trump felt compelled to release his own denunciation of Charlottesville violence - 45 minutes - after Melania.

When Trump finally did address the Charlottesville situation in a pre-sceduled event where he was supposed to talk about veterans affairs, his comments fell far short of condemning the white nationalists. Instead, he suggested "many sides" were to blame for the deadly violence. There was no mention of new-Nazis, the KKK, white nationalists or the alt-right.

As is his custom, he blamed everyone else but himself. Instead of taking any responsibility for emboldening the racist organizations taking part in the "Unite the Right" rally. The violence, he said,  has "been going on for a long, long time" before he took office.

Trump was getting heat from all sides, not just from his usual critics from the Democratic side of aisle. Sen. Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, the longest serving Republican senator in history, said on Twitter: "We should call evil by its name. My brother didn't give his life fighting Hitler for Nazi ideas to go unchallenged here at home."

Let's not forget, Trump has still not tweeted anything condemning the bombing of a mosque in Minnesota a week ago. Perhaps he doesn't want t offend his supporters or admit that his anti-Muslim rhetoric is inspiring violence.

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Why Charlottseville? Generally, the city is a liberal community as the home of the University of Virginia. Eighty percent of its voters voted for Hillary. 

The city council voted to remove the statues of Confederate Generals Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee. Litigation has stalled the statues' removal.

The white supremacists rallied around the statues as a form of misdirected pride in their heritage. 

Let's be clear, Lee is a traitor who tried to bring down the Union. He is not a heroic figure. The Civil War was not about "states rights," it was about the right to own another human being - slavery.

A statue to a traitor is not honoring our heritage, it's a reminder of how low people can go to rationalize evil.

The Charlottesville city council was correct in renaming the Robert E. Lee Park to Emancipation Park and the removal of the Lee statue is the correct vote.

Friday night, as a warmup to today's tragic events, about 100 white supremacists marched through the University of Virginia campus. It was chilling to see them carrying torches. The image conjured up images of the hooded KKK when they made their night rides to intimidate and kill African/Americans.

The torches being used were tiki-torches that you can buy in any garden store or Pier One outlet.  The irony is, those torches were more than likely made in China.

The white nationalists and their tiki-torches.

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PTSD: The events of the day was the removal of a scab on an unhealed wounds. All the hurt caused by the thousands of micro-aggressions that people of color suffered in their lives came rushing forth as if the wound was inflicted yesterday.

All the racist slurs, the jokes, the unintended slights, the invisibility, the feelings of being inadequate, of being told you're not good enough, the rejections, the bullying, the hurt that all these incidents caused and which I repressed in order to keep my sanity came rushing back in a series of flashbacks. 

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Who are these racists? I think it is pretty safe to say that not one of the terrorists in Charlottsville was a Muslim or one of those "bad hombres" Trump has railed against or is trying to target with his immigration policies.

The incidents brought Kurt Bardella back onto the media to explain the alt-right to cable news anchors. Bardella, a Korean who was adopted as a baby, was a consultant to Brietbart News. He quit that job when he realized the violent nature of his clients.

Various terms were used to describe the terrorists: white nationalist, neo-Nazis, facists, white supremacists, the alt-right. To me, they are cut from the same cloth. One more term that describes the demonstrators could/should be added, "Trump supporters." 

No less than David Duke, former head of the Ku Klux Klan, linked all the ultra right-wing groups to Trump in a tweet that responded to Trump after Trump condemned the violence, (but not white supremacists), 

“This represents a turning point for the people of this country,” said Duke earlier in the day at the rally. “We are determined to take our country back. We are going to fulfill the promises of Donald Trump. That’s what we believed in, that’s why we voted for Donald Trump. Because he said he’s going to take our country back. That’s what we gotta do.”

These ultra far right groups believe they have gained legitimacy because some of their members are on the White House staff as Trump advisors. Steve Bannon and  Steven Miller. They see Trump as their champion.

For someone quick to attack his critics, his refusal to utter KKK, new-Nazies, facists or white nationalists is telling. The only other group to be spared his twitter wrath is Russia and Putin.

Let's be very clear! The targets of these wackos are people of color: Asians, African Americans, Latinos. When they here Trump's campaign cry of "Lets Make America Great Again," what they hear is "Let's make American white again!."

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In the afternoon, one of white nationalists drove his car at high speed into a crowd of counterprotestors, killing one woman and injuring 19, several seriously. 

The driver was arrested and identified as James Alex Fields, Jr., a 20-year-old resident of Ohio.

A police helicopter monitoring the protests crashed killing the pilot and a passenger.  The crash is still under investigation.

Almost as an afterthought, Trump finally tweeted his sympathies for the three who died.

Atty. Gen. Jeff Sessions said that the Department of Justice will investigate the Charlottesville violence.

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Calling out the alt-right: Virginia  Gov. Terry McAuliffe, a Democrat, was did not mince words in his strong denunciation of the right-wing groups:

"I have a message to all the white supremacists and the Nazis who came into Charlottesville today. Our message is plain and simple. Go home," said McAuliffe at a press conference Saturday evening. "You are not wanted in this great commonwealth."

"You came here today to hurt people, and you did hurt people," the governor said. "But my message is clear. We are stronger than you. You have made our commonwealth stronger. You will not succeed."

"There is no place for you here, there is no place for you in America," he continued.

Finally, a politician with the guts to call out the racists and bigots.
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Poll: Americans feel race relations has worsened under Trump

At a Donald Trump rally, his supporters unfurled this flag.

MY STOMACH GROWLED. I left home without eating breakfast to run a load of errands. I was hungry. What happened next ruined my appetite. 
So my wife and I went into a restaurant in one of those look-alike strip malls in a nondescript San Francisco suburb. After ordering, my wife said, "I wouldn't have said this a few years ago, but I feel uncomfortable." I knew what she was saying. The shooting of a South Asian in a Kansas City had just happened that week.

Despite the diversity of the Bay Area, the further you go from the urban center, the whiter the suburbs gets. The ex-burbs, is where people go when they feel too uncomfortable with people of color. But even on the fringes, the burbs are getting more diverse as minorities move out of the urban centers to find their American dream.

I looked around the restaurant and noticed, except for a busboy and one of the waitresses, we were the only people of color in the place. Certainly, the only Asians. I wondered which one of them was carrying. We are not alone having that uneasiness, that air of tension was just enough to make us more aware of our surroundings. and the people around us.

The rise of Donald Trump has changed the complexion of race relations in America. Some of his followers now think it is OK to be overtly racist. For some people who used to keep their darker thoughts to themselves, it is not OK to:

• Shoot an Indian/American in a Kansas City restaurant and tell them "Go back to your country," as what hahppened a few months ago.
• Beat an Asian/American courier and then shout, "That's white power," an incident that occurred in New York City last week.
• For a teacher to have her students read about Islam, a religion that is "immoral and corrupting."
• Single out people of one religion and try to keep them from traveling to this country.
• Build a wall to keep out Mexicans.

And we've all  heard about the shootings in the black community and the deportations of  immigrant Americans.

The examples go on and on.

As Trump enters his second hundred days, the incidents of hate continue to rise. Bigotry is no longer held in check by civility.

A new Reuters/Ipsos opinion show that Americans think that race relations is deteriorating and lot of the blame can be put on the current residents of the White House.

Trump's pronouncements against Muslims and immigrants are credited with emboldening a wave of white supremacists and white nationalists of different stripes now collectively referred to as the "Alt-right."

The poll, taken from March 28 to April 3, asked more than 2,800 adults to rate the danger of racism and bigotry in America. About 36 percent gave it the worst rating possible, saying they considered racism and bigotry an “imminent threat” to the country. That is up a few points from the 29 percent who answered the same way two years ago.

“People look to emulate the president. So they think ‘if he can be terrible, I can be terrible,'” said a white law school student in Houston who voted for Hillary Clinton.

Several poll respondents expressed growing unease about race and civility, even if they had not directly experienced or seen racist acts.

It’s not just minorities who say they’re feeling tense. A respondent in Many, Louisiana, a town of about 2,700 people, said he sensed rising anger among black residents after Trump’s election.

“You can just feel the tension building, like something is fixing to come to a head,” said the 46-year old, who did not vote in the November election. “There is more of a hatred toward white people.”

It is that cultural anxiety among white people that pushed Trump over the top. "It's your last chance," Trump told his mostly white supporters during the campaign. "You might not get another chance." He didn't say race, white or black, but his supporters and people of color understood the underlying appeal to the racial preference of the crowd.

More Democrats, 46 percent, than Republicans racism and bigotry pose an imminent threat to the country. And that's part of the problem, Trump supporters dont' see the racism in their thinking and actions.

The supporters who like what Trump has done -- banning Muslims, attacking immigrants, withholding funds from traditionally black colleges -- see in him a champion in their fight to keep their position of dominance and power to which they feel they are entitled. That is what Trump means when he says he wants to make America great again, or when he tells his supporters that he wants to take America back.

The tug-of-war between those who want to keep the status quo and those who want to pull the country into a new century is what put Trump into power. The question is Trump's ascendency the old America's last hurrah, or is it the sign of the country descending into a bomb-proof bunker?

“People talk to me differently since the election, I get different looks, different comments,” said a black 31-year old food delivery worker in Helena, Alabama. “A lot of people are on edge.”

Lunch was a quickly consumed by my wife and I. No one said anything derogatory to us, no funny looks s in our direction or racist scribbings on our receipt. But I just couldn't get shake that nagging feeling of anxiousness. Things are different now.

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REPORT: Hate groups emerging from the shadows

Social media has allowed groups to share their ideology of hate with millions.

I HAVE A LOT of white friends. I work alongside many white people and we get along rather well. I have white people in my family. I fear those statements might sound like the  cliche, "I have a lot of (fill in the blank) friends." Nevertheless, they're true.

I had to get that paragraph stated right away because I don't want readers to think I'm talking about ALL white people. There is a small segment who have re-emerged in American society in a more vocal way and, some say, in a more powerful presence largely due to the recent presidential campaign.

Vox has an interesting report that should worry Asian/Americans and Pacific Islanders. It says most of our country's hate groups are rooted in white supremacy. This confirmation is nothing new for people of color but it might open a few eyes among Vox's readers.

In an extensive 2015 analysis, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) determined that 892 hate groups exist in America. Of these groups, 528 — or roughly 60 percent — subscribe to white supremacist ideologies.

“White supremacy” is a very broad term, says the Vox report, "referring to the racist ideology that whites are superior to nonwhites and should maintain political, economic, and social authority.

But under that umbrella, there are a number of factions, each slightly different in its set of beliefs. Specifically, SPLC breaks down America’s white supremacists into six subgroups: the Ku Klux Klan, white nationalists, racist skinheads, neo-Nazis, neo-Confederates, and followers of Christian Identity, says Vox.

I'm not sure when the study concluded but 2015 shows a marked spike in membership among these groups, but the highest membership grown occurred in President Obama's first term, 2008-2011. The groups membership showed a sharp decline in 2014 when Obama's popularity surged and Americans began to believe that an economic recovery was occurring. 

We can surmise - with some degree of confidence - that with the so-called alt-right wing bold enough to do Nazi salutes and shouting "Sieg Heil" in the shadow of the nation's capitol, 2016 might literally be off the charts.

How America's white supremacist hate groups have fluctuated in the 21st century

Of particular concern of the SPLC authors is  the growth of the "lone wolf" racist who are impossible to track.

“There is a social stigma attached with hate groups,” says Lenz. “In recent years, people join forums online anTrumd find confirmation of their beliefs without joining a group. And now, with Trump {nd his recent appointment of Steve Bannon, the head honcho of the alt-right website Breitbart), they can find it in mainstream politics too.”

The decline in traditional hate groups here may be, in part, a result of the alt-right movement’s growth. Ignited in 2010 with the creation of Richard Spencer’s Alternative Right blog, the alt-right has offered a community that both confirms its members’ beliefs and offers full anonymity.

RELATED:

• Trump-inspired hsate continues to ooze out of America's sewers
• Hate groups increase as campaign rhetoric incites fear, anger
• Steve Bannon thinks there are too many Asians in Silicon Valley

Hate groups aren’t truly declining — they’re just becoming more covert and secretive, says the authors. I'm not sure I agree with that. With Bannon whispering racist sweet nothings into president-elect Donald Trump's ear and some of his Cabinet picks repeating the same complaints about what they call "socialist" government programs, that isn't exactly secretive.

The so-called alt-right, a term created by Bannon, may be the newest brand, but it's belief system borrows from its predecessors in the white-nationalist movement. Combining its racist ideas with anti-women and anti-LGBTQ platforms, the alt-right has just branded itself in more palatable, modern terms. 

The more moderate GOP members have to be wary about the very volatile formula brewing among Trumps more extreme supporters. They need to be brave enough to denounce the racist, misogynistic and homophobic rhetoric and actions. All Americans should beware of this dangerous breed of haters and at the same time, support those that expose and fight against the actions of the extremists. 

The growth of the white supremacist hate groups should concern us all -- no matter what color we are. Those upcoming battles could very well occur in the streets, the Internet, the courts, the halls of Congress ... and even (irony upon irony) in the White House.

White supremacist groups are no longer hiding in the shadows or keeping their beliefs to themselves.

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