The Former President's Vision for a White America Is a Historical Fiction

As the political power of Donald Trump diminishes and his behavior grows increasingly volatile, he has intensified hostile rhetoric aimed at female journalists and racial minorities, with Somali Americans as a recent focal point. The impact of these insults stems from their malice and his platform, not their factual accuracy. In a parallel manner, his administration's offensive against immigrants are poorly executed and driven by misinformation. It is abundantly clear that the objective is not targeting individuals with criminal histories. The assault is directed at people of color.

This includes Indigenous peoples carrying tribal IDs to naturalized US citizens, from essential workers in construction and healthcare 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.

"Immigration enforcement raids are brutal, inhumane and achieve nothing for community security," states a prominent New York City official. Scenes featuring masked agents breaking car glass and dragging parents away from infants, terrorizing entire communities and disrupting schools and businesses, undermines safety entirely.

These waves of orchestrated bigotry—directed at Haitians during the election, Venezuelan migrants this spring, and most recently Somali Americans—rely extensively on libelous lies and slurs. The reason is simple: the truthful data about these communities cannot support such hostility.

The Imaginary Nation of White People and Historical Reality

This campaign of terror and demonization claims to seek at rebuilding a homogeneously white America which is a fiction. While the US was demographically whiter in the mid-20th century, it was never exclusively a "white country". At the nation's founding, the original thirteen colonies contained a substantial percentage of African and Native American individuals—certain states in the South had Black populations exceeding a third.

When the United States expanded, annexing Texas in 1844 and seizing Mexico's northern territories 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 this land came as part of a Spanish expedition nearly a century before the Mayflower Puritan passengers reached the shores of New England in 1620.

Population Truths Against Forced Dreams

The persecution of huge populations of brown-skinned individuals and even mass deportations will not manufacture the all-white nation of extremist imagination. A city like Los Angeles, for instance, is nearly half Latino, and despite enforcement outrages, arrests, and deportations, it remains so. The city's very name is Spanish, an enduring reminder of who was there first.

All this hatred and oppression looks like the fear of bigots who pretend they can halt the demographic future of a country that is ceasing to be majority-white by using pure cruelty.

This is paired with an assault on reproductive rights that is, sometimes, openly intended to prompt Caucasian women to have more children. The rationale cites a fertility rate below replacement level in the US, a trend less impactful than in other countries because of a young, industrious immigrant workforce which keeps the economy functioning. However, rather than providing the social support that might make raising children easier, the strategy has been punitive and coercive.

An noted writer notes 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 worries about declining birth rates with anti-immigration and anti-feminist viewpoints."

In a similar vein, reporting indicates that "attempts to raise the birth rate do not compensate for broader policies designed to cut government assistance initiatives like Medicaid and insurance for kids. The so-called 'pro-family' focus is not just for promoting having children. Instead, it is utilized as a tool to advance a conservative agenda that endangers women's health, reproductive rights, and economic participation."

Incoherent Policies and Widespread Resistance

The combination of anti-immigration and pronatalist policies represent an attempt to artificially redirect the nation's demographic trajectory. Ultimately, both amount to senseless intimidation by proponents of hate who unintentionally demonstrate that their assertions of being better must be based on skin color and sex; without these constructs, their arguments collapse into meaningless idiocy.

Much of the justification put forward by the administration fails to align with observable realities and real-world results. For example, maritime attacks in the Caribbean Sea frequently focus on tiny boats not confirmed to be transporting drugs and incapable of making it to the United States. Similarly, Venezuela's role in fentanyl trafficking is negligible, and its role in cocaine trafficking is far less than that of neighboring countries on the continent.

The government's position extends to environmental policy, with a rejection of "the science of climate change" and "carbon neutrality targets." There is a sentimental attachment to fossil fuels, particularly coal, leading to policies that force communities to invest in obsolete and toxic energy sources while sabotaging affordable, clean alternatives. At the same time, health officials have advanced anti-scientific dietary schemes while weakening broader health protections.

The foundational assumption 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—the government's own forces, the ICE and Border Patrol officers, whom local communities perceive as the dangerous and hostile interlopers.

No symbol is more powerful of the widespread rejection of these tactics than the thousands of people organizing, protesting, facing danger and detention to protect their communities. Municipality after municipality has risen up in protection of its people. No amount of derogatory language and threats can change that reality.

Brent Mason
Brent Mason

Elara is a wellness coach and writer passionate about helping others achieve balance and fulfillment in their daily lives.