Trump provokes outrage with wild racist dog-whistle to suburban whites
As the coronavirus crisis sends President Trump’s poll numbers off of a cliff, he has been resorting to increasingly blatant appeals to white fear and racism in a desperate attempt to scare voters into giving him another term.
His most recent line of attack is the preposterous accusation that Joe Biden wants to “destroy the suburbs,” which was almost certainly fed to him by white supremacist FOX News host Tucker Carlson. On Wednesday, the president escalated his rhetoric with an appalling tweet that openly promised to segregate suburbs and cruelly dismissed poor Americans.
Promising that people living their “Suburban Lifestyle Dream” would no longer be bothered by “low-income housing,” he announced that he has rescinded President Obama’s Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing rule, which was specifically implemented to combat housing discrimination against minority families.
…Your housing prices will go up based on the market, and crime will go down. I have rescinded the Obama-Biden AFFH Rule. Enjoy!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) July 29, 2020
As many commenters on social media noted, the president’s words are so obvious that they don’t even count as a dog-whistle.
This tweet makes it clear that Donald Trump’s re-election strategy is a promise to reinforce and institutionalize the white supremacist racial caste system that white suburbs help enforce.
The suburbs are the refuge of the fearful white who moved away from the cities in order to get away from Black people and to avoid having their community resources go to improving the lives of Blacks; allowing unfair housing practices to exist help maintain de facto segregation and the police are the institution of racist violence that ensure that Blacks know their place as second-class citizens.
While the national conversation on racism and policing increases pressure on our political elite to dismantle America’s white supremacist superstructure, Trump has made it his mission to defend it.
Social media immediately erupted in fury.
Translation: I am happy to inform all of the white people living their Suburban Lifestyle Dream that less people of color will be in your neighborhoods.
This is what he has always meant by MAGA. It’s always been about a return to blatant white supremacy. https://t.co/BMtHxpOmLR
— Ahmed Baba (@AhmedBaba_) July 29, 2020
Trump tweets that he sees low income housing as damaging to the "Suburban Lifestyle Dream" and harmful to housing prices. He sees no benefit to that housing. He has one audience. And he has no problem communicating his disdain for people not in that audience.
— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) July 29, 2020
https://twitter.com/Carrion_Crawl/status/1288533502254657539?s=20
This "Suburban Lifestyle Dream" tweet will go down in history as one of your most blatantly racist dogwhistles in a huge pantheon full of racist dogwhistles.
You have 96 days left, Spanky.
— BrooklynDad_Defiant! (@mmpadellan) July 29, 2020
this is so loud and blatant that it doesn’t even qualify as a dog whistle at this point https://t.co/jnTaS3uW7J
— I’m Black and I’m not voting for Biden (@rtyson82) July 29, 2020
