Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed

[babylonsister]

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2025/dec/06/trump-immigration-whiteness

Trump wants to recreate a white America that never existed
Rebecca Solnit
The persecution of brown people and mass deportations will not create the white country of far-right fantasy
Sat 6 Dec 2025 06.00 EST


As Donald Trump deteriorates and his grasp on power fades, he has been lashing out furiously at female journalists and ethnic groups, most recently Somali Americans. His insults land because of their animosity and his power, not their accuracy. Likewise, his administration’s attacks on immigrants are sloppy and driven by lies. It’s strikingly clear that the target is not individuals with criminal records. It’s anyone and everyone guilty of being brown. Native Americans with tribal identification cards, US citizens, people doing crucial work from construction to nursing, military veterans, college students, people sleeping in their own beds, small children: all kinds of residents of this country are under attack.

snip//

This terrorizing and demonizing pretends to be in service of recreating a white America that never existed. The US when white supremacists like Trump were young was whiter, but this was never a white country. In 1776, the 13 colonies that became the United States included a significant percentage of Black and Indigenous people (some southern states were a third or more Black). When the US annexed Texas in 1844 and then in 1848 took Mexico’s whole northern half, a Spanish-speaking population was already settled across parts of what’s now the south-west and California. The first African Muslim in what is now the United States came in a Spanish expedition almost a century before the Mayflower brought its fanatical Puritans to the shores of Massachusetts in 1620.

The persecution of huge numbers of brown people and even the mass deportations will not create the white country of far-right fantasy. Los Angeles, for example is an almost 50% Latino city, and despite the ICE and border patrol outrages, arrests, imprisonments and deportations, it remains so. The city’s very name is Spanish, a reminder of who was here first. All the hatred, all the persecution, seems like the panic of racists pretending they can stop the future of this country no longer being majority white through sheer cruelty.

snip//

The premise of the attacks on immigrants is that people of color who were not born in the US are intruders and threats, but from Los Angeles to Charlotte, North Carolina, and Chicago to Portland to New York, it’s the Trump administration’s violent foot soldiers with ICE and the border patrol that locals perceive as unwelcome threats and violent invaders. There is no more dramatic sign of the rejection of Trumpism than the thousands upon thousands organizing, showing up, risking bodily safety, arrest and felony charges to defend their neighbors. City after city has risen up to defend its own. All of Trump’s insults cannot change that.


Rebecca Solnit is a Guardian US columnist. She is the author of Orwell’s Roses and co-editor with Thelma Young Lutunatabua of the climate anthology

[Walleye]

1. Yeah, one stupid member of his cabinet wanted us to go back to 1970s station wagons

I had a 1962 Oldsmobile station wagon, and I’m here to tell you that the 2012 Hyundai accident I have now is a much much better car

[AZJonnie]

2. It is not pretending

"This terrorizing and demonizing pretends to be in service of recreating a white America that never existed". No, it pretends NOT to be in service thereof. The question of whether it did or did not ever exist is separate from the question of intent in the present case.

Don't get me wrong I love the Guardian (it's my only paid media subscription in fact other than entertainment like Netflix), but this line shouldn't have gotten past an editor.

Other than that minor misstatement, another great and astute article from the Guardian

[C_U_L8R]

3. Leave it to Beavis.

These dumbass RW racists keep wanking off to the same old disappearing promise of white utopia. So vile.

[2naSalit]

4. ...