This put up was initially printed on Defender Community
By Laura Onyeneho
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, out of the blue, the identical man who blocked war-torn households from Syria and Afghanistan is rolling out the purple carpet for white South Africans?
Based on current studies, a bunch 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 purposes via a program he launched in February. The South African authorities, nevertheless, has flat-out denied these claims, calling them “utterly false” and stating that Afrikaners stay among the many most privileged and economically safe residents within the nation.
Afrikaners are usually 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 desires to border this similar group as victims?
Sure, South Africa right now has legal guidelines that purpose to deal with the historic inequalities apartheid left behind legal guidelines that present affirmative motion in employment and land reform. These are usually 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, just isn’t 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 Individuals 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. But it surely 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 tens of millions of Black South Africans?
This refugee program just isn’t about security. It’s about symbolism. It’s a political stunt designed to color Trump because the protector of a “beleaguered” white race beneath 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 applied a Muslim journey ban. The identical administration that demonized Mexican immigrants as “rapists and criminals” and minimize refugee admissions to historic lows. However relating to white South Africans, Trump rolls out the welcome mat?
We can’t permit this hypocrisy to go unchecked.
The Afrikaner “refugee” program reeks of racial bias and colonial nostalgia. It reinforces the concept that white individuals deserve particular consideration, even once they come from international locations the place they nonetheless dominate economically. In the meantime, Black and brown refugees, lots of whom are escaping regimes propped up by Western imperialism, are criminalized, dehumanized, and left to die.
To Black Individuals 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?
