Donald Trump: The Last ‘Great White Hope’
By: Herbert Dyer
Tags: White Privilege, White Supremacy, Race, Donald Trump, Racism

This world is white no longer, and it will never be white again. — James Baldwin, Notes of a Native Son, 1955

It is one thing when black people, including yours truly, argue that Donald Trump’s avid, indeed rabid, support among seventy million-plus “Americans,” the vast, vast majority of whom just happen to be “white,” is grounded in rock-hard, unyielding, and historic white racism, white supremacy. When black people point to this “ideology,” this fear, this resentment we are simply stating the obvious. However, these observations are generally pooh-poohed and dismissed as “living in the past,” as unable or unwilling to appreciate all (or any) of the amazing and wonderful “progress” America has made in “race relations” over the course of this nation-state’s history.

It is quite another matter, however, when…finally…at least some people who think of themselves as “white”, those who still remain a “minority” among white people, muster the courage to not just agree with us, but say so publicly, and condemn their fellow “white” friends, family, co-workers, and associates for their obstinate refusal to face the fact that it is actually Trump’s supporters who are living in (or trying desperately to revive) a past that has passed them by.

And so, it is in a sense refreshing to see a prominent, media-savvy, rich white male, one of those who constitute the white minority and who does not support Trump, say out loud that not only the now-deposed Emperor Trump, but his dejected courtiers and subjects as well, are parading through our political consciousness and our streets just as naked as their hero.

Donny Deutsch is a regular “contributor” to the daily morning MSNBC talkfest “Morning Joe.” This morning (December 7), he was asked by co-host Mika Brezinski to expound upon Trump himself, and why Trump refuses to concede the election to President-elect Joe Biden. She referenced quotes from recent “mainstream” articles that have variously described Trump as cornered, brooding, depressed and, ominously, desperate over his loss.

Deutsch took Brezinski’s question in another direction, though. He focused not on Trump but on his followers. He referenced Trump’s appearance at yet another of his rallies, perhaps, hopefully, his final one, in Georgia, ostensibly to support the two GOP candidates in the upcoming senate run-off election on January 5.

I’ll let Deutsch speak for himself here:

Again, nothing Deutsch said is “news” to black and most other “people of color.” (To toot my own horn a bit here, I have been calling out Trump’s appeal as race-based for years. My most recent effort in that vein may be found here.)

What is “new,” is that those “well-meaning” white people like Deutsch must finally come to grips with and deal with their racist brethren and sisters. They must not just state the obvious, but do something about it.

As the quotation heading this piece notes, white racists (conscious or otherwise) must be made to, forced to if necessary, realize and understand, as James Baldwin said so long ago, that this nation has only ever been “white” in their imaginations and in the mythologies which they tell themselves and teach to their children.

For them, as Deutsch not only intimates, but says so directly, Trump represents their last ditch, final, “Great_White_Hope.” Their fear of the rising tide of black, brown, red and yellow people has rendered them mentally, emotionally and physically unable to address any of the other many “issues” and problems which negatively impact this nation-state and indeed the entire world.

Whether they like it or not, Trump will be gone in forty-four days from the official halls of power. But his exit from the heretofore lily-white White House will do nothing to temper the angst and anger of that white majority which still supports him. Without a sustained, relentless, major “intervention” from and by the less racist white minority, the racist white majority will continue to undermine and stymie any “progress” that the rest of us are trying to make. Otherwise, Trump’s final removal will only rub more salt into their wounded racial (read: racist) consciousness, and serve as a further stimulus to double-down in their dogged determination to “Make America White Again.”