{"id":1312654,"date":"2019-07-21T18:52:00","date_gmt":"2019-07-22T00:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.postindependent.com\/parker-column-the-color-of-her-skin\/"},"modified":"2019-07-22T09:23:32","modified_gmt":"2019-07-22T15:23:32","slug":"parker-column-the-color-of-her-skin","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/local-news\/parker-column-the-color-of-her-skin\/","title":{"rendered":"Parker column: The color of her skin"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
Kathleen Parker<\/strong>
IMAGELOADER<\/em><\/figcaption><\/div>\n<\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON \u2014 Going out on a limb here: Donald Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things.<\/p>\n

Not to name call or anything.<\/p>\n

And all of those observable facts seem to sit quite well with his base of supporters, most Republicans of Congress and, apparently, with the evangelical Christian community whose members have ceded the floor to crickets.<\/p>\n

Not even the chilling moment at Trump\u2019s Wednesday rally in North Carolina when the crowd chanted \u201csend her back\u201d can apparently budge them from their repose. The chanters were referring, of course, to Rep. Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., one of the four women of color known as \u201cthe Squad.\u201d And the crowd\u2019s clarion Trumpeter was the president himself, who, though he didn\u2019t start the chant, certainly seemed to enjoy it.<\/p>\n

His expression during the 13 seconds that he allowed the chant to reach its desired pitch was most chilling of all. His jutting jaw, his down-the-nose gaze, his seeming serenity in the eye of a storm \u2014 all spoke louder than the metronomic mass surrounding him.<\/p>\n

The king was pleased.<\/p>\n

That moment encapsulated Trump\u2019s re-election strategy and reminded everyone of three years ago when retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn led the 2016 Republican Convention in a similar chant aimed at Hillary Clinton: \u201cLock her up!\u201d (We\u2019ll resist the temptation to remark on the three-syllable limit when Republicans think aloud.)<\/p>\n

In the language of \u201cCriminal Minds,\u201d Trump is escalating. Lock her up. Send her back. What\u2019s next? One shudders to wonder.<\/p>\n

This recent episode can be dissected in several ways. First, the four women comprising the Squad are \u201cof color.\u201d They are minority women, in other words, by virtue of race or ethnicity but also by religion (two are Muslim). Women aren\u2019t a voting minority, or even a numerical minority, but they retain minority status in most measurable ways, from income to political power.<\/p>\n

Thus, the Trumpeter was able to offend pretty much everyone group-wise \u2014 other than, of course, white males. There the GOP goes again.<\/p>\n

Discussions the past few days about Trump\u2019s strategy or purpose have been clarifying if not precisely revelatory. Some have said it isn\u2019t necessarily racist to call out people who just happen to be of color. Others say, no, no, no, Trump was merely saying that these women, who, indeed, have said outrageous and offensive things (to some), ought to either get right with America (meaning white people) or skeedaddle.<\/p>\n

How did he put it: \u201cIf they don\u2019t love it, tell \u2018em to leave it.\u201d<\/p>\n

This was Trump\u2019s attempt at clarifying the tweets that started this whole saga, basically that the four representatives should go back to their horrible, filthy, corrupt countries, by which, one presumes, he meant some of those \u201csh-thole\u201d countries he identified in 2018. Of course, the only woman not born in the U.S. is Omar, who came here over 20 years ago as a refugee from Somalia.<\/p>\n

To many Trump supporters, his \u201csh-thole\u201d comment, which Trump denied saying though he admitted to using \u201ctough\u201d language, was likely viewed as an off-the-cuff remark not intended for public consumption. That\u2019s fine to a point. We all say things privately that we wouldn\u2019t dare utter elsewhere. However, what comes out of one\u2019s mouth in private is what is inside one\u2019s head, no matter who doesn\u2019t hear it.<\/p>\n

This is who Trump is. This, and I quote, is what he thinks: Nigerians will never \u201cgo back to their huts\u201d after setting foot in America; Africa sends its \u201cworst of the worst\u201d to the U.S.; Haitian immigrants \u201call have AIDS.\u201d<\/p>\n

These cruel remarks are easily disproved. Nigerian-Americans can boast a median income that exceeds the American average. Forty-three percent of immigrants from \u201csh-thole\u201d African countries have at least a bachelor\u2019s degree, compared to only 33 percent of all Americans.<\/p>\n

The larger point, however, is that Trump obviously feels comfortable dismissing people of color as primitive, diseased and worse. Attributing stereotypical, denigrating characteristics to a group of people belonging to a particular race is the definition of racism. That the four women just happen to also be of color is more than a blip precisely because of Trump\u2019s consistent, default bigotry.<\/p>\n

Republicans and evangelical Christians who fail to condemn this president\u2019s use of the pulpit to preach down (not up), to employ and incite abusive language, to essentially put a target on a duly elected congresswoman\u2019s back \u2014 can be presumed to concur and, therefore, to be complicit in whatever further degradation or violence follows.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the plain and awful truth.<\/p>\n

Kathleen Parker\u2019s email address is kathleenparker@washpost.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

via:: Post Independent<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Kathleen ParkerIMAGELOADER WASHINGTON \u2014 Going out on a limb here: Donald Trump is a racist. And a sexist. And a xenophobic nationalist. Among other things. Not to name call or anything. And all of those observable facts seem to sit quite well with his base of supporters, most Republicans of Congress and, apparently, with the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[160],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-1312654","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-local-news"},"acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-06-21 02:26:38","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"KSKE Ski Country","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske","push-errors":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1312654"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1312674,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1312654\/revisions\/1312674"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1312654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1312654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alwaysmountaintime.com\/kske\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1312654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}