Stop those “riggers”
Trump uses racist tropes in his verbal attacks on prosecutors and similar.
Donald Trump’s aggressive response to his fourth criminal indictment in five months follows a strategy he has long used against legal and political opponents: relentless attacks, often infused with language that is either overtly racist or is coded in ways that appeal to racists.
The early Republican presidential front-runner has used terms such as “animal” and “rabid” to describe Black district attorneys. He has accused Black prosecutors of being “racist.” He has made unsupported claims about their personal lives. And on his social media platform, Truth Social, Trump has deployed terms that rhyme with racial slurs as some of his supporters post racist screeds about the same targets.
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While this is a well-worn strategy for Trump, his latest comments come at a particularly sensitive moment. On a personal level, a bond agreement signed on Monday by Trump’s lawyers and Fulton County District Attorney Fani Willis imposes restrictions on his communications, including those issued through social media. And more broadly, experts worry Trump’s broadsides will worsen online vitriol and inspire violence.
Of course they will. That’s why he issues them.
Even before Trump was charged in Georgia last week with multiple criminal counts related to his efforts to overturn the 2020 election, he spent days assailing the prosecutor in the case with unfounded accusations and race-related attacks.
He wrote online that Willis was a “rabid partisan.” He ran an ad that claimed without evidence that she hid a relationship with a gang member she was prosecuting — an ad she called “derogatory and false” in an email to staff obtained by The Associated Press. He lobbed accusations that Willis, the first Black woman to hold her role, was “racist” and using the indictment as a “con job.”
After the indictment was filed, Trump sent an email highlighting parts of Willis’ background. Under a heading titled “A family steeped in hate,” Trump’s email notes her father’s identity as a former Black Panther and criminal defense attorney, as well as Willis’ stated pride in her Black heritage and Swahili first name, which means “prosperous.” Willis has been open about her father’s history and her heritage.
Trump calls other people “steeped in hate.” You couldn’t make it up.
Trump’s reaction to the Georgia charges match how he has responded to earlier indictments and investigations.
He has slammed Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg, who is Black, as a “Soros backed animal” even though George Soros, the Hungarian American and Jewish billionaire who conservatives frequently invoke as a boogeyman, doesn’t know and didn’t directly donate to Bragg, according to a Soros spokesman. The former president also claimed Bragg was a “degenerate psychopath” who “hates the USA.”
In a message last September on Truth Social, Trump referred to New York Attorney General Letitia James, who is Black, as “Racist A.G. Letitia ‘Peekaboo’ James.” The nickname is similar to a term used to insult Black people.
And so on and so on.
If you run into a racist in the morning, you ran into a racist. If you run into racists all day, you’re the racist. (with apologies to Elmore Leonard)
The thing that really sets me on edge is this constant claim by Republicans and conservatives that liberals “Hate America.” Even Oli London and Pierce Morgan* get into it (not even American,) agreeing that Megan Rapinoe “hates America” because she kneeled for the anthem. As much as she bothers me about her trans stance, the idea that she hates America is just stupid jingoism. This constant refrain from conservatives that they are the “real America” is deliberately insulting to those of us that don’t wear the lapel pins or put flags all over our houses, bumper stickers reading “My Country, Right or Wrong.”
I don’t even know what they mean since they hate the government, which is kind of what defines the country as a unit for patriotism. They hate the government but love the cops which are the enforcement units of the government. It’s all just a big ol’ bundle of nonsensical.
*The fact that a royalist like Pierce, who so clearly can’t stand Meghan Markle because she has the temerity to be American and marry into the Royal Family, feels like he can judge who is and who isn’t a real American is particularly galling.
Trump hates the government, doesn’t he? Just hates it, that’s why he’s trying his best to destroy it.
“My Country, Right or Wrong.”
When right to be kept right, when wrong to be set right.
I don’t recall who said the latter part, but it is the way to think about it.
I’m sorry, and I’ve absolutely no love lost for the Tangerine Scream, but I absolutely cannot take seriously anyone who writes about racism but capitalises “black” as an adjective (and especially, as Freddie deBoer is wont to do, if they contrapose capitalised “black” with a decidedly uncapitalised “white”). It has become a meme — in the classical sense — at this point, so the author may not even understand why he or she has adopted its usage, but it is of a piece with the same bullshit word magic that got us to…well, to where we are now, where telling the truth to delusional cultists can get you fired or fined or worse.
Black people are not helped by mutilating English grammar on their behalf, and not by fisking every word of a narcissist to extract every racist inclination it might contain.
#4 – It is in fact perfectly reasonable to capitalize Black when it’s used to describe people – because in this context it’s the name of an ethnic group, not a colour.
For example, if you are talking about a black dog and a black cat and a black shirt, black has the same meaning in all of those examples. But if you are talking about a black dog and a Black woman, the word is being used in quite a different way. To put it another way, the woman in question is Black but she is not black (except probably her hair).
Another example: there is a metal called copper. Things that look similar to that metal can be described as copper too. But members of the indigenous tribe are called Copper.
Because “he’s black” could mean a color he is wearing, or that he was tarred and feathered, burnt to a crisp, or in a foul mood, among other things. But “he’s Black” means he is of the African diaspora. Same with white and White, but applying the style inconsistently is not good writing.
Black and White are also capitalized in chess, when referring to the player, which is a relevant exception.
Thanks, the librarian (whose comment was delayed because first-timer), that explains it very well.
Just so.
Thank you, thelibrarian. I think that what astounds me is the triviality of what many people get exercised over. I can only suppose it gives them an excuse to ignore the real issues.
@Mike Haubrich # 2 It’s Piers Morgan
@Jim Baerg #3 Stephen Decatur, a US naval officer
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Stephen_Decatur
Colin, thank for the link. Some interesting bits from that capsule history of the quote:
Stephen Decatur, 1816: Our country – In her intercourse with foreign nations may she always be in the right, and always successful, right or wrong.
This version is disturbing. Wanting the country to be successful even if wrong?
Alexander Slidell Mackenzie, 1846: Our country! In her intercourse with foreign nations, may she always be in the right; but our country, right or wrong.
This is the version I’m familiar with. It seems reasonable.
Carl Schurz, 1872: The Senator from Wisconsin cannot frighten me by exclaiming, “My country, right or wrong.” In one sense I say so too. My country; and my country is the great American Republic. My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.
This seems even better; it calls for correction.
Tim,
I remember that on the commentary of this very blog, not too long ago, you as much as promised not to read anything I wrote ever again because you and I had a trivial (but, from my point of view, still fun and elucidating) disagreement over the consequences of empowering the government to regulate speech on the Internet. Now, in my opinion this does not make us Internet enemies as much as people with different points of view (and, then as now and forever more, I endeavour to address you with a collegial respect), but you seemed to have gotten pretty exercised about it.
Which is fair enough. But if you’re going to chime in with passive-aggressive comments indirectly targeting me like a child in high school, I would ask that you keep your promise and ignore me. Install an app to hide what I write or replace it with “Der Durchwanderer is a doodyhead” or something else appropriately adolescent, if you simply cannot help yourself through willpower alone.
Also, and not for nothing, this very blog is often about getting exercised over the intentional misappropriation of grammar and the abuse of the English language (often for political purposes); our not-so-humble host rather frequently inveighs against examples in this vein to general fanfare, even occasionally admitting that whatever at issue is a particular bugbear of hers and not intrinsically important. We, her readers, should naturally expect to enjoy the same courtesy.
thelibrarian,
Thank you for providing the meme-ified, Bowdlerised explication of the distinction in usage.
Firstly, taking the rule “ethnic determiners should be capitalised when used as adjectives” as read, it still isn’t the actual reason word magicians campaigned to get people to start capitalising the group determiner “black”. Namely, because “black” is not an ethnic determiner — there being many hundreds of ethnic groups found amongst those now globally designated “black”, and the North- and South Americans for whom the modern term was more-or-less invented are generally ethnically American-Canadian or Latin-Brasilian or one of any of several dozen Native American groups.
Secondly, the rule in English to capitalise “black” when referring to people is all of three years old, emerging on explicitly political grounds after the George Floyd incident and subsequent cultural revolution. Here is The New York Times introducing the style change, along with The Atlantic (who also at least argue that “White” should be capitalised on similar identitarian grounds); both published in the wake of George Floyd, both basing their arguments on an essay from W. E. B. Du Bois from a hundred years previously. Here is HuffPo, citing the changed AP style guide (though possibly also mentioning the Du Bois essay under the lede). Here is the Columbia Journalism Review justifying its decision to capitalise “black” but explicitly omit “white” from the same usage.
Thirdly, this same movement, driven by the same ideology, is currently attempting to colonise the German language — where no adjective is ever capitalised under any circumstance except as part of a title or name — with the same usage on the same grounds. I present the short explanation in the original with my translation:
The article indeed goes on to capitalise “Schwarz” as an adjective every time it appears (though one marks that they allowed one through in the justification above, perhaps as a Freudian slip). I cannot emphasise enough how much this is a bastardisation of German grammar for explicitly political purposes. The “proper noun” fig-leaf simply does not apply to this language — you can see that above, where I (rightly) capitalised “African” where the original (rightly) has “afrikanisch-“.
This is all word-magician Hocus Pocus perpetuated by racial identitarian activists and, in the case of the English language in North America, gobbled up by institutions with the same breathtaking rapidity, and for the same vapid reasons, as the gender religion has been. At least for now, this specific brand of linguistic nonsense in German is confined to activist quarters, though there are other bits of sociopolitical word magic that have become ubiquitous here, on grounds just as flimsy and objectionable.
For a bit of fresh air from someone still able to think for themselves, here is an argument from an anti-racist activist in Britain who is not convinced that this word magic will help the cause, at least not in Britain.
And I am sorry Twiliter, but no, absent any strong context to the contrary, “a black person” or “a white person” contains no ambiguity that can land on a person’s colour of dress or any other attribute other than their race. It simply will not do to pretend otherwise.
Since this is already a link-fest and will be stuck in moderation until Ophelia reviews it, and just in case Tim (hi Tim!) is still reading and wanting to scold me yet again for “ignor[ing] the real issues”, here is an actually-useful piece of anti-racialist writing that deserves to be read and discussed much more widely than either the latest diatribe against the putrid orange’s outbursts or my exegesis against activist grammar.
“our not-so-humble host”
I’m the humblest person in the universe!!!!!!!!
@13 Correct. If I describe someone as white as a ghost, or black as the ace of spades, there is no capitalization. And yet, in some instances, Black and White, when capitalized, do refer to people of either the African or European diaspora. I also don’t capitalize white *person* or black *person* because it’s explicit that I’m referring to a person, and capitalization would be redundant. That’s my personal style anyway, and after all, it is a style thing. Again, if I refer to myself as black, it could mean any number of things, but if I refer to myself as Black, then that’s something very specific (and untrue). Overall I tend to agree with you about how the capitalization is used, but I have managed to adjust over the years. ;)
P.S. It is possible to be humble and exacting at the same time.
Thank you, Der Durchwanderer, for the link (‘an argument’), which I read with interest, agreeing with much of it, though certainly not with all. He made some very good points. But it was all written at a very abstract level and in a high moral tone, with references to Ayn Rand among others, and I prefer the carefully interpretive and factual approach of historians like Padraic X. Scanlan, Vincent Brown, and Howard W. French in ‘Born in Blackness: Africa, Africans, and the Making of the Modern World, 1471 to the Second World War’; in his introduction to this last book, French remarks on how the ‘elision’ of the place of Africa and Africans from what is usually regarded as the history of the West ‘is merely one of numerous examples in a centuries-long process of diminishment, trivialization, and erasure of Africans and of people of African descent from the story of the modern world.’ Something that is certainly continuing in the Florida of De Santis, and elsewhere.
I’m afraid I do think the question of ‘black’ or ‘Black’ really rather trivial in comparison with, say, the British Post Office prosecuting more than 700 post office operators ‘between 1999 and 2015 for theft, fraud and false accounting because of faulty accounting software installed in the late 1990s’, and asking investigators to group suspects based on racial features’ (‘negroid types’, Chinese/Japanese types’, ‘dark-skinned European types’); or the Windrush scandal in the UK. Or, say, the attempts in Texas & Georgia to depress minority votes – both of which, I see today, have been now partially struck down by federal judges; there are similar attempts going on in other Republican states. Or (again) the approach to the teaching of African-American history in Florida and elsewhere. These are the realities I think important, because they work against creating polities in which the colour of one’s skin and racial differences cease to be important.