Trump’s State Racism
Terry H. Schwadron
Oct. 18, 2025
Recorded violence by masked camo-clad Homeland Security agents this week against protesting U.S. citizens on the streets of Chicago drew mere shrugs from the Trump administration this week, as does the continuing evidence that the ICE raids are salted with racial goals.
Multiple incidents were captured on film of protestors thrown to the ground or detained in cuffs, or observers, including Chicago police officers, tear-gassed by federal agents frustrated by opponents of the mass deportation efforts there and in other communities in the nation. The deportation issue is morphing into a street war.
Despite a widening condemnation at what seems Homeland Security-induced violence, Donald Trump’s government is ignoring criticism to publicly doubling down on seeing the far more isolated instances of citizen attempts to heckle, block or otherwise interfere in deportation arrests.
Rather than upset over opposition Team Trump seems pumped up, with new reason to . justify deployment of armed troops or federalized National Guardsmen from Texas. In Trump’s own language, the disorder that only he can see in our city streets like Portland arises from five-year old Black Lives Matter protests following the police murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis.
Having secured a U.S. Supreme Court decision allowing the use of racial profiling to identify possible Latino migrants without proper documentation, the administration even is dismissive that it is using outwardly racist tactics to arrest citizen suspects and to hold them incommunicado until they can prove citizenship.
On Wednesday we learned that the Trump administration already is working to remake the asylum system, slashing the program and rebuilding it specifically around allowing White refugees. The goal is to rig the review system for White refugees from South Africa or those from Europe who fear their anti-immigrant politics makes them targets. Apart from the factual inaccuracies involved — only Trump, Elon musk and white Sourh Africaans see a campaign of terror against White farmers — that’s not how the refugee program came about or whom it is intended to protect.
Despite Trump’s denials, what we are witnessing is outright state racism and should be called out as such. Racism, sanctioned or not, is among the few criticisms that Trump seems to let under his Teflon skin.
Longstanding Attitudes
Trump’s attitudes on race have been evident through years of public action. His long incorrect campaign against Barak Obama’s birth certificate, his incorrect drive to call for the death penalty for the acquitted Central Park Five, his business’ refusal to rent apartments to Blacks, defeated attempts banning travel from majority Muslim countries are just part of that list.
Add in this week’s Supreme Court hearing that showed majority interest in gutting what remains of the Voting Rights Act to allow Republican state legislators to eliminate Black — and Democratic — representation in Congress.
Toss in Trump’s continuing targeting of prosecution or legal undercutting of Black city mayors and officials he sees as political enemies. Consider the barring of museum displays that tell the story of slavery as somehow anti-American or non-patriotic or his ridiculing of athletes who felt compelled to drop to a knee in silent protest over race in America.
Trump’s dismissals of federal workers, accelerated by the shutdown, are disproportionately affecting Black women. Indeed the health care access issues underlying the standoff have a greater effect on racial minorities because of income levels.
Who is most hurt by unequal banking, insurance, housing rules or supermarket deserts, or court-ruled police misconduct that Trump wants to overlook now. Who is most affected by elimination of diversity, equity and inclusion programs that now outline the basic Trump governmental vision?
It is as if Trump wants to remake a pluralistic nation into a state where he says he sees no racial difference, but success only comes to those who are White and Christian.
Trump insists he is no racist, but the accumulating record hollows those statements. Even in his grand peace gesture in the Middle East, Trump’s brusque dismissal of concerns for Palestinians — he is ready, he says, to move out 3 million to make way for luxury development in Gaza — carry strong racial overtones.
The Trump changes come in a context, of course — one in which coarseness about identity, the debate about privilege, jobs and hiring practices, and one in which we’re seeing social media posts from groups on divided political sides conflate hate remarks with opposition. This week, attention turned to continuing hateful speech in the posts shared by Young Republicans and the White Christian nationhood pushed by the assassinated Charlie Kirk, who received a Medal of Honor in the White House on Tuesday.
Whatever Trump’s personal outlook is one thing. Enacting racism through executive order and policy as state policy is quite another.
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