Wednesday, September 12, 2018

Media Fed Racism Puts Us In Danger From Racists And They're Found Everywhere

One of the things we found out about Donald Trump since he became president is that he carries the anti-Puerto Rican bigotry that wasn't uncommonly found among white New York City residents in the 1950s.  That goes along with his other forms of racism, certainly against Black Americans, the entire population of Africa, and even ethnic groups with white skin.  The man is every racist stereotype embodied in fat and troll hair.  There is a lot of evidence he inherited the tendency from his father, Fred Trump, active in the 1920s KKK, but Trump's racism has certainly been formed by the force in his life which probably rivals his father, his consumption of electronic media.  Given his obvious TV based attention deficiency I would bet that any tendency gained from his father is long ago swamped by what he sees on the screen.

Given his administration is the one which is trying to bring back WWII style detention camps, only instead of Japanese Americans it would be children, I think we are within reason to believe his racism is the reason he sees close to 3,000 Puerto Ricans dead in a hurricane, most of them during his administration's criminally negligent response to it.  His racism is the why the funding of his concentration camps led to his Department of Justice raiding FEMA funds right as hurricane season was starting this year.   Some of the dead from Hurricane Florence will be a direct result of the racism Trump learned in New York City as he was growing up, the racism of people like his Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, is also responsible.  Not to mention the racism of people like Rupert Murdoch and the staff of FOX and CNN.  Trump being in office is directly attributable to the American media, the cabloids, hate talk radio and everything up to and including the New York Times which did its best to sandbag Trumps opponent in 2016.

I am sure that A. G. Sulzberger would be among those in the media who deny that they are racists, or, at least, that their publications are racist.  Whatever personal habits he has in that regard are not the issue, it is in the media he produces.  He, like his father, grandfather, etc. are justifiably held responsible for what they produce, its biases are rightly attributed to them, as the racism of their media justifiably attributed to Rupert Murdoch and the owners of Sinclair and other, more overt distributors of racism.

I wonder how far they've come from this bizarre 1977 article about anti-Puerto Rican bias as a burden to those of the middle class that seems to contain as many negative stereotypes as it calls out.  Glancing at it again, the stereotypes promoted are far more.  As I've mentioned before, that was the time that there was something of a fashion of vicious racism among some gay men in New York City, I think it was a reflection of elite media in the city of that time.   I think that elite was trying to harness racism to move New York city politics to its liking not much different from how it has been done on the national level by Republicans and Republican media.  We know Trump was probably absorbing that fashion for racism, either first or second hand.  Probably the far more overt form of it in NYC TV and hate talk radio.  Now, in office, he and his appointees are bringing in the crop sown back then.

Americans know, or at least have the most recent updated body count that Trump declares constitutes a great job because he doesn't see the people who died as important, as someone pointed out the current number is close to the ones who died in the 9-11 attacks, being commemorated as the Boob In Chief was patting himself on his back.   Figuring out what the factor of racism is in those figures would take more calculation but we certainly know that it was a major contributing factor, as it was in the Hurricane Katrina flooding and its aftermath in 2005.   I strongly suspect the numbers dead in Puerto Rico will go higher, I wouldn't be surprised if the numbers released so long after the event are a low estimate.  I'll bet that the number of those dead from racism in just that disaster are higher than those who died in 9-11.  When you add those from New Orleans, they certainly are larger.

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