President Donald Trump has made it clear that when he talks about “America First,” he doesn’t imply everybody in America.
All through his presidency, Trump’s immigration stance has been unapologetically anti-Black, anti-brown, anti-Muslim and anti-poor. However now, instantly, the identical man who blocked war-torn households from Syria and Afghanistan is rolling out the pink carpet for white South Africans?
In line with current experiences, a gaggle of 49 white South Africans, principally Afrikaners, arrived within the U.S. on a non-public constitution after being granted refugee standing by the Trump administration. Trump claims these people are victims of racial persecution by the hands of South Africa’s Black-led authorities.
He has even fast-tracked their functions by way of a program he launched in February. The South African authorities, nevertheless, has flat-out denied these claims, calling them “fully false” and mentioning that Afrikaners stay among the many most privileged and economically safe residents within the nation.
Afrikaners should not a traditionally oppressed group. They’re the descendants of Dutch and French colonizers who orchestrated and benefited from apartheid, a system of authorized, institutionalized racism that tormented Black South Africans for practically 50 years.
Apartheid legal guidelines restricted Black South Africans’ motion, stripped them of voting rights, and denied them entry to schooling, land, and jobs. White Afrikaners not solely enforced these guidelines but in addition constructed generational wealth off the backs of Black labor and land.
Now, a long time later, the Trump administration needs to border this identical group as victims?
Sure, South Africa right this moment has legal guidelines that intention to handle the historic inequalities apartheid left behind legal guidelines that present affirmative motion in employment and land reform. These should not anti-white insurance policies. They’re pro-justice insurance policies meant to shut gaps created by centuries of racial oppression. Claiming that these efforts quantity to “reverse racism” is an insult to the very actual struggling of Black South Africans, previous and current.
The narrative being pushed by Trump, and even echoed by his fellow South African-born conservative ally Elon Musk, is just not about justice. It’s about whiteness and the preservation of white privilege. By elevating Afrikaners as “refugees” whereas denying asylum to Haitians, Sudanese, Afghans, and Central People fleeing violence, Trump is sending a transparent message: white struggling, actual or imagined, issues greater than Black struggling backed by centuries of receipts.
Violent crime in South Africa is a nationwide disaster. However it impacts everybody, no matter race. There isn’t a proof of a focused, systemic marketing campaign to persecute white farmers or Afrikaners. The federal government has repeatedly condemned farm assaults and violence. So why is Trump specializing in these remoted incidents whereas ignoring the poverty, marginalization, and rising violence confronted by hundreds of thousands of Black South Africans?
This refugee program is just not about security. It’s about symbolism. It’s a political stunt designed to color Trump because the protector of a “beleaguered” white race below world risk. It’s additionally one other try and discredit Black management globally, feeding into right-wing fantasies of “white genocide” and victimhood.
Let’s not overlook that this is similar administration that ended protections for Liberians, turned away Black migrants from Cameroon, and carried out a Muslim journey ban. The identical administration that demonized Mexican immigrants as “rapists and criminals” and lower refugee admissions to historic lows. However on the subject of white South Africans, Trump rolls out the welcome mat?
We can not enable this hypocrisy to go unchecked.
The Afrikaner “refugee” program reeks of racial bias and colonial nostalgia. It reinforces the concept white individuals deserve particular consideration, even after they come from nations the place they nonetheless dominate economically. In the meantime, Black and brown refugees, a lot of whom are escaping regimes propped up by Western imperialism, are criminalized, dehumanized, and left to die.
To Black People and Africans within the diaspora, this second is a reminder of the worldwide nature of white supremacy and the way it morphs itself to guard its personal. We should ask: why are the descendants of apartheid architects seen as deserving of refuge, whereas the descendants of the oppressed are seen as threats?
