I See Brown People
In 1999 M. Night Shamalyan directed his breakthrough classic, the Sixth Sense. The story was of a young man who could see “dead people” and the psychologist who tried to help him, played by Bruce Willis. From the movie came an iconic line, in a high child’s voice: “… I see dead people.”
Listening to President Trump’s press conference with British Prime Minister Theresa May this weekend, I reached a realization. With almost every action, it seems clear that President Trump “sees brown people.” In the press conference, Mr. Trump praised the United Kingdom exit from the European Union, stressing that they would regain “cultural control” (sounding perilously close to ethnic purity) by ending the EU immigration policies. Those policies allow an immigrant admitted to one EU nation to move to another. The President spoke of Brexit, the UK’s plan to leave the EU, as Britain regaining independence.
This plays to some in Britain who claim that the immigration policies have made Britain “browner” mixing and damaging their culture. This is not very different from the President’s own base here in the United States; who believe that US immigration policy is making it the same. From the “Mexican Rapist” line of Mr. Trump’s candidacy announcement, to the current government legal argument that they cannot return some of the children they have in custody because their parents’ may not “…be fit;” all demonstrates a view of “brown people” as being different.
President Trump is presenting a remarkable world-view, one that sees the existential threat of a “north-south” world conflict. The North is the ( (white) European and North American nations, including Russia. The South is the overwhelming (brown) Muslim, Hindu, and Oriental world, growing in population, and migrating to provide labor to the north. The view sees this migration, particularly of Islam, as a direct challenge to “Western” culture and power.
In the US this view has also turned against immigration from Central and South America, for many of the same reasons. It has resonated among some Americans; uncomfortable with a land where Spanish is the native language for some, and with the increasingly different appearances and cultures.
And, of course, many are being told that the Hispanic immigrants, legal or not, are criminals, or freeloaders, or here to take jobs. This somewhat contradictory message is complicated even more by an exceptionally low unemployment rate, combined with an exceptionally high divide between the wealthy and the poor. People have jobs but still feel “poor,” and a racial/cultural reason may be easier to understand than the economics of a society that has shown little real income growth for the many, while the few grow richer.
President Trump is not exporting this message; he’s simply tapping into an existing pattern. What he is doing is normalizing a view that has always been seen as racist or extremist. And he’s gotten help from the Russian government, who for their own reasons intervened in the US, Brexit and other European elections on the side of this extremism. They were not always successful, but they did end up on the winning side of many of these contests.
All of this is happening at the same time that those same Russian actions are being brought to the fore in American courts. The Mueller investigation indicted twelve Russian intelligence officers for hacking into political party emails and state election systems on Friday. The impact of the email hacks were clearly to divide the Democratic Party, to the advantage of the Republican candidate, Mr. Trump. What happened in the state election systems hacks is still unclear, and while no one is stating that actual voting was effected or changed, it would seem a realistic goal for Russian Intelligence. Why hack in if not to do something?
So President Trump goes to see Mr. Putin tomorrow, for a one-on-one meeting in Helsinki. And while we should worry about our next elections, the Western Alliance, Russian imperialism and autocracy, and other issues: Trump and Putin do have one thing in common, one thing we know for sure. They see brown people, and they don’t like it.
I am writing this from a friend’s home alongside the Muskingum River. There are several folks here, and while we all assuredly don’t agree on politics, we can still be friends and enjoy each other’s company. Hopefully it’s an attitude we can return to in America, as we struggle with the politics of division today.
