The Former President's Vision for a Predominantly White Nation That Never Was

As the political power of Donald Trump diminishes and his public demeanor becomes more erratic, there has been an escalation in hostile rhetoric aimed at female journalists and racial minorities, including Somali immigrants being the latest target. These disparaging remarks gain traction stems from the animosity behind them and his position, not their factual accuracy. In a parallel manner, his administration's offensive against immigrants are haphazard and founded on falsehoods. It is abundantly clear that the goal extends beyond targeting individuals with criminal histories. The true target is anyone with brown skin.

This includes Indigenous peoples carrying tribal IDs to naturalized US citizens, from essential workers in building sites and hospitals to military veterans, college students, residents asleep in their beds, and very young children: a broad cross-section of the country's inhabitants are being threatened.

"ICE operations are brutal, inhumane and do nothing for public safety," states a prominent New York City official. Scenes featuring officers concealing their faces shattering windows and dragging parents away from infants, instilling fear and disrupting schools and businesses, achieves the opposite effect.

These waves of orchestrated bigotry—directed at Haitians during the election, Venezuelans this year, and most recently Somali Americans—rely extensively on defamatory falsehoods and slurs. The reason is simple: the actual facts about these groups of people do not justify the animosity.

The Imaginary Nation of White People Versus Actual History

This campaign of terror and demonization claims to seek at rebuilding a homogeneously white America which is a fiction. Although America had a larger white population in the youth of today's white supremacists, it never constituted a purely white nation. At the nation's founding, the original thirteen colonies included a significant percentage of African and Native American individuals—certain states in the South were over one-third Black.

When the United States expanded, taking Texas in the 1840s and acquiring northern Mexico in 1848, it incorporated a large Spanish-speaking population already living across the modern Southwest and California. It is documented that the initial Muslim of African descent in territory that became the U.S. arrived with a Spanish exploration party almost one hundred years before the Mayflower English Puritans reached the shores of New England in 1620.

Demographic Realities Against Forced Dreams

The systematic targeting of vast numbers of brown-skinned individuals and even mass deportations will not manufacture the all-white nation of extremist imagination. Los Angeles, for instance, is close to 50% Hispanic, and despite enforcement outrages, detentions and removals, it remains so. Its name itself is Spanish, an enduring reminder of who was there first.

All this hatred and oppression resembles the panic of racists attempting to believe they can stop the coming changes of a country that is ceasing to be predominantly white by using pure cruelty.

It is coupled with an assault on reproductive rights that is, sometimes, explicitly designed to encourage white women to have more children. The rationale cites a below-replacement birthrate in the US, a trend less severe than in other countries due to a young, industrious immigrant workforce that sustains the economy. However, instead of offering the societal assistance that might make raising children easier, the strategy has been punitive and coercive.

A prominent journalist observes that the reproductive politics of certain political figures—along with insults aimed at women without children—constitute a form of pronatalism. This philosophy "typically merges concerns over falling fertility with anti-immigration and anti-women's rights ideas."

In a similar vein, analyses show that "attempts to raise the fertility rate do not compensate for broader policies aimed at slashing government assistance initiatives like healthcare for the poor and children's health insurance. The so-called 'pro-family' focus is not just for encouraging procreation. Rather, it is being weaponized to advance a conservative agenda that endangers women's health, reproductive rights, and economic participation."

Incoherent Policies and Public Rejection

The combination of anti-immigration and pronatalist policies constitute an effort to forcibly alter the country's population future. In the end, both amount to senseless intimidation by individuals filled with hatred who inadvertently reveal that their claims to superiority must be based on skin color and sex; absent these categories, their positions devolve into incoherent nonsense.

A lot of the reasoning put forward by the administration does not match up with tangible facts and real-world results. As an instance, maritime attacks in the Caribbean Sea often target tiny boats not confirmed to be transporting drugs and not able of reaching US shores. Likewise, Venezuela's role in the fentanyl trade is negligible, and its role in cocaine trafficking is far less than that of other South American nations.

The administration's stance extends to environmental policy, with a rejection of "the science of climate change" and "carbon neutrality targets." There is a sentimental attachment to coal and oil, particularly coal, resulting in measures that force communities to spend money on obsolete and toxic power sources while sabotaging affordable, clean alternatives. At the same time, health officials have promoted unscientific nutritional plans while eroding broader health protections.

The core premise of the anti-immigrant offensive is that non-white individuals born abroad are threatening outsiders. However, across the nation—from Los Angeles to Charlotte, Chicago to Portland—it is the administration's own agents, immigration enforcement personnel, whom local communities perceive as the unwelcome, violent invaders.

No symbol is more powerful of the broad repudiation of these tactics than the thousands of people mobilizing, demonstrating, risking safety and arrest to protect their communities. Municipality after municipality has stood up in protection of its people. All the insults or intimidation can alter this fundamental truth.

Jennifer Leonard PhD
Jennifer Leonard PhD

A passionate travel writer and photographer with a deep love for Italian landscapes and hidden destinations.