President Donald Trump is a racist. Some of you will say, what else is new? Others will ask, how do I know when I cannot tell what is in Trump’s heart?
We know because whatever is in his heart is almost irrelevant, as the issue is what is in his hands—in other words, his deeds.
Every time Trump commits an outrageous racist act, there is the debate about whether he is genuinely racist, even though his action might rightfully be considered so. For example, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan argued that he did not think Trump was a racist in his heart when referring to Trump’s racist remarks about a Mexican-American federal judge in 2017 and Trump’s remarks about Charlottesville.
Even critics of Trump go through these senseless language contortions. New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu hesitated to call Trump racist while describing his racist positions and policies, referring to “what’s in his heart.”
We know that Trump and many others like him are racist because the Christian Bible tells us so. Matthew 7:16 said it long ago, “ You will know them by their fruits.”
We know Trump is a racist by ordinary common sense. If you see a person running, you can conclude that person is a runner. If you see a person drinking beer, you can safely say that person is a beer drinker. You will know them by their fruits/acts.
We know Trump is a racist because social science tells us so. Social science tells us that a person’s thinking and feeling are irrelevant here because racism is an act; a person who commits a racist act commits racism, a social thing. Sociology tells us that a racist act is racism regardless of intent. So what’s in one’s heart (their mind) does not matter. What matters are actions—social things.
When a person commits a racist act that person commits racism, regardless of what is in his or her heart. It is the act that counts. Intent or psychological attitude are irrelevant.
Here are some of Trump’s racist acts:
• Trump continued the racist practices of his father who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan and discriminated against blacks in renting apartments in New York City. In the 1970’s Donald Trump was sued twice by the federal government for refusing to rent apartments to African Americans.
• In 1989, he took out ads in New York newspapers pushing for the death penalty for five black and Hispanic teenagers accused of raping a white woman in Central Park; he continued to say there were guilty in October of 2016, more than 10 years after DNA evidence had exonerated them.
• He pushed the “birther movement,” which claimed that Barack Obama was not born in the United States but in Africa, a lie that Trump has still not acknowledged.
• With the birther movement as a base, he began his presidential campaign by disparaging Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists.
• He called some of the white supremacist terrorists in Charlottesville last August “very fine people.”
• He called for more immigration from Norway and less from Haiti and Africa, which he called s—hole countries.
• Trump’s Muslim ban in 2017 was racist—and illegal.
Donald Trump is a racist. It is a black mark on the country that he is president.