The Trump administration has left absolutely no doubt that the Republican Party is the party for white supremacists, neo-Nazis, alt-righters, white nationalists, and all of the other garden-variety bigots. In April, Pew Research published its annual survey on Race in America, which further clarified the difference in attitudes about race between the two major political parties:
As a lifelong racist, it is only fitting that Donald Trump heads such a party. After all, in October 1973, the Justice Department sued him for violating the Fair Housing Act by refusing to rent to people of color. Although that case was settled in 1975, Trump was sued yet again in 1978 for failing to live up to the original settlement terms. There was simply no way he was going to allow the law to restrict his chosen expressions of bigotry. But then, he never did believe that laws applied to him. He still doesn't.
On the day Trump declared that he was running for the Republican nomination, he declared all Mexican immigrants, regardless of immigration status, are rapists and drug dealers:
When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best. They’re not sending you. They’re not sending you. They’re sending people that have lots of problems, and they’re bringing those problems with us. They’re bringing drugs. They’re bringing crime. They’re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.
...
It’s coming from more than Mexico. It’s coming from all over South and Latin America, and it’s coming probably— probably— from the Middle East. But we don’t know. Because we have no protection and we have no competence, we don’t know what’s happening. And it’s got to stop and it’s got to stop fast.
Once elected, in order to stop the browning of America, he attempted to build a wall on our southern border. And then he decided to kidnap the children of families fleeing violence in Central America. Forced from their homes by gangs and wars, people walked thousands of miles taking only what they could carry in hopes of finding refuge in the one land that they believed could provide them asylum. Instead of mercy, they encountered brutality and unspeakable heartbreak as their children were taken away, destination unknown.
The thinking from the White House appeared to be that if they could create a situation on the border that was worse than the conditions they were fleeing, most migrants would return to their countries of origin. In an instant, he turned America from a beacon of hope into a vast chain-link prison of despair.
Within a week of assuming power he issued Executive Order 13769, “Protecting the Nation from Foreign Terrorist Entry into the United States,” banning the entry of citizens from seven mostly Muslim nations. Coincidentally, Trump had no business interests with those seven nations. Although it has been repeatedly revised, the racism behind that order was very clear to most courts who weighed in on the case.
Within a year of taking office, he was making his animus for people of color profanely clear:
President Trump grew frustrated with lawmakers Thursday in the Oval Office when they discussed protecting immigrants from Haiti, El Salvador and African countries as part of a bipartisan immigration deal, according to several people briefed on the meeting.
"Why are we having all these people from shithole countries come here?" Trump said, according to these people, referring to countries mentioned by the lawmakers.
This should not have been surprising considering his comments after an activist, Heather Heyer, was killed by a white supremacist during the Charlottesville protests in August 2017. Trump officially gave his blessing to those same white supremacists, opining that there were “very fine people, on both sides.”
Well, these very fine people (VFP) have decided that banning abortions suits their agenda very nicely. Last year, a fairly high-profile forced-birther, Kristen Walker Hatten, revealed herself as a white supremacist. Although according to a report on HuffPost she denies being one, she is condemned by her own words.
Hatten added that while she is proud to be white, she does not identify as a white nationalist or a white supremacist because she believes all races have a right to their own homelands.
...
Throughout the history of the abortion wars, a great deal of violent energy has been generated at the confluence of anti-abortion activism and white supremacy. The first known murder of an abortion provider was committed by a former Klansman. The kinship isn’t hard to understand: Both are movements of the status quo, dedicated to preserving a white patriarchal order.
Today, white supremacists emboldened by Trump’s election are a lot more explicit about their political fellow-traveling. Neo-Nazis have been showing up at March for Life rallies around the country. A Rewire analysis found that the Family Research Council, a powerful evangelical anti-abortion group, is also deeply influential among white supremacists on social media.
Last year, Rewire.News took note of the rise of the alt-right’s participation in forced-birther efforts:
Attacks on reproductive rights are nothing new, but fascist groups’ infiltration of anti-choice groups and recruiting around anti-choice organizing in their genocidal agenda is an escalation. Leaked conversations between white supremacist groups using the Discord messaging site show users discussing recruiting members based on their opposition to abortion rights. “March for life never has effect until White Nationalists join [sic],” the Discord user “Commander Davis” said in the Traditionalist Worker Party chatroom, a now disbanded neo-Nazi group. March For Life is a decades old radical anti-choice movement and protest popular among Republicans. President Trump addressed the March for Life rally in January.
In September, white supremacist Rep. Steve King of Iowa gave an interview to an Austrian far-right propaganda magazine. During that interview:
King discussed his belief in the superiority of European culture over others. He talked fearfully of falling fertility rates in the West and spoke at length about his belief that Europe and America are threatened by Muslim and Latino immigration.
“If we don’t defend Western civilization, then we will become subjugated by the people who are the enemies of faith, the enemies of justice,” King said.
America’s falling fertility rates are of great concern to the VFP, as well as Trump, as is evidenced by his willingness to lock children of Central American refugees in cages and his evident satisfaction in tearing apart existing families within the United States to eliminate non-white people from his nation. That isn’t enough to balance the fertility rates of Latinas in the United States, which far exceed those of white women.
According to the CDC, in 2017 the total fertility rate (TFR) in the United States had fallen to 1,765.5. The 2018 provisional TFR is 1,728: the provisional number of births in 2018 has fallen to its lowest level in 32 years. In order for a society to sustain itself, it needs a fertility rate of 2,100 births per 1,000 women. Since 1971, we have generally failed to meet that criteria. But lately, the demographics have changed.
In 2017, the TFR for white women was 1,666.5. What frightens the VFP is that the TFR for black women was 1,824.5. Even worse was the 2,006.5 TFR of Latina women. In 2017, whites accounted for 61 percent of the population, blacks were 12 percent, and Latinos were 18 percent. If abortion is banned for all, and if the Trump immigration edicts remain in place, it is safe to assume that white people will remain in the majority, as there are more white women than there are women of color—today.
Rewire.News examined some of the “heartbeat” forced-birth laws that effectively revoke a woman’s reproductive choice and have become quite popular in red states.
At the outset, it’s important to note one thing: As Rewire.News‘ Denny Carter recently wrote, “at six weeks’ gestation, there is no heart, there is no heartbeat, and there is no fetus. Instead, there is a ‘fetal pole,’ a thick area alongside the yolk sac that extends from one end of an embryo to the other. What can be measured in six weeks is electrical activity in that pole.”
The legal team at Rewire.News looked into the current status of the heartbeat laws in eight states, and the challenges to them. Looking at the TFRs of these states makes a strong argument that the attempt to restrict reproductive choices might be race-based. Keep in mind that 2,100 births per 1,000 women are needed to maintain a society. In each state, the lowest TFRs are those of white women.
Total Fertility Rates in Forced-Birther States
state |
total tfr |
white |
black |
hispanic |
United States |
1765.5 |
1666.5 |
1824.5 |
2006.5 |
alabama |
1821.5 |
1762.5 |
1765.5 |
3085.0 |
georgia |
1788.0 |
1686.5 |
1745.5 |
2443.0 |
kentucky |
1903.5 |
1870.0 |
1894.0 |
2739.5 |
louisiana |
1876.0 |
1781.5 |
1904.0 |
2712.5
|
mississippi |
1851.5 |
1812.5 |
1844.0 |
2605.0 |
missouri |
1813.0 |
1766.0 |
1922.5 |
2122.5 |
ohio |
1826.0 |
1755.5 |
2046.0 |
2221.5 |
south carolina |
1731.0 |
1657.0 |
1668.5 |
2569.0 |
One way to change these rates is to mandate motherhood and hoping, perhaps, that since there are more white women capable of reproduction, they will soon outnumber the mothers of color. However, that assumes that Latina and black women are not currently obtaining the majority of abortions, which directly contradicts the favored right-wing talking point portraying abortion as black genocide.
Or, as Jamal Smith recently wrote for Rolling Stone:
Ending reproductive rights in America has never been about anything holy. Anti-abortionists like to remind us of Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger’s statements about eugenics or claim they’re trying to stop a “black genocide,” but their movement was born to keep white patriarchy alive. And it is white men who are the primary beneficiaries of such policies.
To be fair, the purported aim of these bills is to force the Supreme Court to reverse all or part of the Roe v. Wade decision. The current makeup of the Court and indications from Justice Clarence Thomas make clear that this is, indeed, likely to happen.
Justice Clarence Thomas opened a 20-page concurring opinion, in which he likened not just abortion but also birth control to eugenics, by taking shots at his Supreme Court colleague Ruth Bader Ginsburg.
The irony in Thomas’ statement is that abortion will become a tool of eugenics, but it will be used to boost white women’s birth rate, instead of reducing the birth rate of women of color. Sadly, our courts now contain a majority of unqualified, or barely qualified, right-wing jurists who feel it necessary to uphold the white male privilege that is endemic in this white supremacist nation.