Proven

The claim that someone or some institution is racist is usually pretty hard to prove.

How can we definitively prove what someone's motivations are if they are careful about their rhetoric? How can we know what is in someone's heart? Is it simply a matter of eliminating all other motivations? Is it something that we can only know after they stop being careful?

This administration is actually helping to answer these questions. Turns out, you can prove when someone is racist.

Last year, in response to multiple media sources pointing out that the administration's favorite line about immigrants, that they bring crime to the United States, didn't have any real facts to back it up, the Trump administration commissioned a report about immigration, illegal or otherwise, and the associated crime rates and costs to the country. The report did not read the way they wanted it to; in fact, because it was leaked to the New York Times, we now know that the administration learned that immigrants, and especially refugees have been a net positive to our economy over the past decade, at least as much as $63 billion. But the administration chose to ignore it. White House adviser Stephen Miller even reportedly told the Department of Health and Human Services (the department that issued the original report) that the next report should not include any benefits of immigration, only the costs.

This isn't necessarily proof of racism. It could be that this administration earnestly believes that immigration is bad for the United States, despite its own reports and dozens upon dozens of other studies to the contrary. It could be that this administration earnestly believes that we bear no responsibility for the refugees coming to our borders. The problem is that other actions have proven these generous assumptions inaccurate.

This administration is only concerned about central American immigrants and people coming from "shithole countries," but wants more from Norway. The Canadian border is more than 2000 miles longer than the Mexican border, but he's only proposed building a wall at our southern border, while actually ending the proposed increased funding to our northern border facilities. Simply put, this administration doesn't like black and brown people, especially those coming from other countries.

How much proof does a population need that this president and his administration is racist?

Earlier this year, the New York Times made a list of Trump's racist statements, and while I don't think all of them are necessarily racist, the vast majority certainly are. Here are a few of my favorites:

- The federal government successfully prosecuted Trump's real-estate company in the 1970s for racist rental practices; giving preferential treatment to whites and avoiding renting to any blacks or Hispanics.

- Trump began his 2016 presidential campaign with a speech that included calling Mexican immigrants as criminals and "rapists."

- Before his campaign officially kicked off he proposed a complete ban on Muslims entering the US, including those legal citizens who are Muslim that were out of the country at the time.

- Trump falsely claimed that President Obama "issued a statement for Kwanzaa but failed to do so for Christmas."

- He has offered completely false crime statistics for some of the blackest cities in America, including Washington, DC, Philadelphia, Oakland, and Ferguson, MO.

- While meeting with Navajo World War II veterans, he publicly mocked Senator Elizabeth Warren calling her, "Pocahontas."

- He publicly called a Hispanic Miss Universe, "Miss Housekeeping."

And these are just words, for the most part. This same administration has separated families at the border to be used as political bargaining chips, refused to follow through with disaster relief funds in Puerto Rico (an American territory), and just today issued a new policy making it possible for asylum seekers to be deported before they are given a hearing!

Trump is the grandson, son, and husband of immigrants. But they were all white Europeans. His nativism isn't based on immigration reduction. It's based on brown and black immigration reduction. The man is a racist.

Stop apologizing for him. Stop making his racism okay by lauding him for not being "politically correct." Stop calling his language "racially-charged," "racially insensitive, or "racially questionable." They are racist words from a racist president who has created a racist administration.

Just to put this in even starker terms, the last time a president's administration was so overwhelming staffed with white men (to the tune of 71%) was Reagan's first term. That was when I was born. So, in my conscious memory, there hasn't been a less diverse administration, Republican or Democrat.

Our president is a racist. Let's stop normalizing it.