Over the past few months, Donald Trump has engaged in a passive-aggressive approach in his sporadic, sinister practice of stoking White and supremacist sentiment. Recently, he and his vice-presidential running mate, JD Vance, have made unsubstantiated allegations that Haitian migrants living in Springfield, Ohio, are eating trump-Haitian-immigrants their neighbors’ cats and dogs. The pet-eating rumor, originally circulated by neo-Nazi groups, has been part of a litany of stories that Trump has used to incite anger and resentment towards immigrant communities. The fact that town authorities have soundly refuted the story, and many residents have called it nothing short of ridiculous, has had minimal impact in quelling the story.

Rather, the furor cultivated by Trump during the September 10 presidential debate placed Springfield in the crosshairs of the nation’s political, social and, cultural wars. In fact, his Vice Presidential running mate, JD Vance, has admitted to fabricating false stories Jd-Vance-appears-admit-tale in an effort to garner press attention. As a result of such irresponsible rhetoric, the city has endured bomb threats the-Springfield-effect and closed City Hall, public schools, and motor vehicles offices. FBI agents descended upon the community in an effort to ensure the safety of community citizens. To their credit, a number of Haitian groups have sued both Trump and Vance for their deplorable lies.

The fact that Trump continues to engage in race-baiting tactics is unsurprising. In fact, to many segments of society, including much of the mainstream media, such behavior is par for the course. Such antics are directly evident; they relate to his commentary about Black people. Those of you who are avid viewers of the news undoubtedly remember this past July at the National Association of Black Journalists conference in Chicago when Trump demeaned Kamala Harris’s humanity as a Black woman arguing that she is a racial hijacker and deceiver who is unable to decide whether she is Black or Indian. This is an example of Trump’s perverse audacity and arrogance in believing he can decide who the “real” and “legitimate” as well as “phony,” “fraudulent,” and “bad” Blacks are.

Speaking of supposedly “good Blacks,” at a rally in Pennsylvania Trump talks about good Blacks, Trump commented on representative Byron Donalds (R-FL), stating, “That one is smart. You have smart ones, and then you have some that aren’t quite so good.” OK! Donalds is an outspoken conservative and a prominent Trump supporter who has been active in the former president’s campaign. To be frank, Trump’s comment on Donalds as one of “the smart ones” is hardly new to the minds and ears of many, if not most, Black Americans. It is a century-old version of White racist language and retrograde logic as “you are not like the other ones” or “for a Black person you . . .” (fill in whatever offensive thought you want). The disturbing assumption is that Black people as a group are supposedly stupid, violent, unintelligent, and oversexed primitive products of “regressive and problematic culture,” and, in general, are supposedly inferior to White people.

Trump’s racist, White supremacist praise of Donalds as one of the “smart ones” is hardly benign, a slip of the tongue, an awkward left-handed compliment, or a poor attempt at humor. Such behavior is part of a centuries-old political strategy in the United States. The claim that there are “good Blacks” and “bad Blacks” is an example of textbook racism, where in the minds of bigoted Whites like Trump, “good Blacks” are quiet, conciliatory, content, and grateful. These types of Black people do not challenge White society. On the contrary, these individuals satisfy and pacify assumptions and expectations that align with White desires about Black people as being content while placing the emotional and other necessities of White people before their own comfort.

The truth is that such rhetoric is easily understood by many White Americans and the majority of Black as well as other non-Black people in society. Trump’s meaning is clear. Racism has been deeply etched in the fabric of US society from the nation’s inception. It is a set of widely comprehended and acquired behaviors. Because of this reality, most Americans are highly astute to the ways in which racism and White supremacy manifest themselves, even if they do not consciously harbor or subscribe to such a morally deficient value system.

To be sure, Trump has made similar claims about “good” and “bad” members of other ethnic and racial minority groups as well. For example, Trump has repeatedly described Jewish Americans who do not support him and the Republican Party as being “bad Jews” who need to “have their heads examined.” During a July radio interview, Trump concurred with Sid Rosenberg, host of the conservative morning program, Sid & Friends In The Morning, that Vice President Harris’ husband, Douglas Emhoff, is a “crappy Jew” The fact that Rosenberg, who is a Jew himself, would publicly demean a fellow Jewish person in such derogatory terms, particularly a person as accomplished as Mr. Emhoff, is surprising, juvenile and downright unprofessional.

Additionally, over the years, Trump has said that Black people have an “inherent laziness about them that is probably genetic in nature”. He referred to COVID-19 as the “Kung Flu” and the “Chinese virus.” He calls Mexicans “criminals” and “rapists” and tried to ban Muslims from entering the United States. He also referred to African and Latin American nations as “s — hole countries. It is a given that such rhetoric is insulting. Moreover, it is paternalistic and patronizing. Indeed, in his recently published book, Trump’s nephew, Fred Trump, alleged that the ex-president used racial slurs against Black people Trump uses racial slurs in private and dismisses Trump’s public praise of Black people as disingenuous poison. Truth be told, I doubt if most people, Black or otherwise, are surprised by such a revelation.

During the past several years since Trump was elected, leaders of and subscribers to this political segment of US politics have engaged in the most destructive rhetoric publicly expressed by paranoid citizens since the early days of the McCarthy era. During the height of the Black Power era, even President Richard Nixon’s infamous “southern strategy” of the late 1960s and early 1970s, which successfully garnered the support of the region by manipulating racist Whites fearful and resentful of the civil rights movement, did not seem so overtly hostile in its aims.

White Americans who hold racist, racially resentful values toward Black and non-White Hispanic people are more inclined to support the Republican Party and Trump as opposed to Democrats. Trumpists are also much more likely to hold racist, White supremacist values than are other members of the public. Contrary to the mainstream news media’s repeatedly disproved conclusion that it was (White) “working-class” anxiety that drove Trump’s support in 2016 and 2020, political scientists and other experts have shown that White racism and racial resentment were and are the primary determinants of support for Trump(ism). A majority of Trump and Republican voters now believe in the antisemitic, White supremacist great replacement conspiracy theory that non-Whites are being “imported” into the country to “replace” White people. Other research has revealed that a large percentage, if not the majority, of White Republicans and Trumpist’s would support a dictatorship in the United States instead of sharing equal political and social power with non-Whites.

Trump’s acidic rhetoric is seen as a license by his followers to demean and disregard others just as he does. He portrays others as existential threats determined to destroy everything his MAGA base admires about the United States. It signals to his supporters that disregarding basic human restraint and destroying perceived enemies “by any means necessary” is permissible. Although there are some conservatives who have denounced the tactics of their more extreme brethren, they seem to be isolated voices in the wilderness rather than taken seriously among Republicans as rational voices of reason.

Thus far, even post-debate, Trump’s initial racist (and sexist) attacks on Harris have failed to gain serious traction. Rather, a number of polls indicate that Trump may actually lose independent and other voters outside of his base because of the perception that his racism and other crude, obnoxious behavior are further proof that he is a psychologically unhinged and divisive figure who represents a dire threat to the future and well-being of US society. His latest debate performance was a disaster.

Over the past several weeks, Vice President Harris has been afforded the opportunity to declare a significant degree of moral authority and frame the 2024 election as a litmus test on the nation’s character. Harris is a classic American success story. She is the child of immigrants and the first Black and South Asian woman to be nominated by a major party as its presidential candidate. She is able to utilize her life experience to positively weaponize diversity and inclusion to effectively combat those who have attempted to implement a 21st-century Jim Crow apartheid and desire to bring America back to the sordid part of its past that Trump and his neofascist MAGA movement represent. For the sake of our democracy, let’s hope she is effective and successful in doing so.