What began as a cordial exchange of comments between Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House rapidly disintegrated into an acrimonious affair.
Trump baselessly claimed there was a genocide against white people in South Africa, which Ramaphosa and other South Africans have vigorously denied. It’s just the latest surreal and theatrically tense Oval Office meeting Trump has had with a foreign leader, and comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and South Africa over the false claims. The misinformation, pushed by Trump’s South African-born adviser, Elon Musk, prompted the U.S. to recently admit white South African refugees, while barring refugees from other countries.
Ramaphosa came prepared with receipts, effectively counterpunching each of the allegations, even providing testimony from South African whites and members of opposing parties, who debunked charges hurled by Trump.
Dating back to his first term, Trump has been fixated on unfounded reports of white South African farmers being slaughtered so the government there can confiscate their land. These falsehoods have been promoted by AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights group, and the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and extremist groups.
Just a week earlier, a state Department official gleefully welcomed a group of newly minted South Africans at an airport. In contrast, administration officials removed protections for nearly 10,000 Afghan refugees, making it easier to deport them and all but guaranteeing an end to their lives. Many of those seeking asylum placed their lives in jeopardy to assist American service members during the two-decade-long war in Afghanistan. So much for loyalty.
Race relations in our nation have never been serene. But for most of the last several decades, at least since the late 1960s, the U.S. appeared to be progressing. However, we currently have President Trump eagerly, deviously, and sinisterly dismantling DEI. His administration flew in the 49 white Afrikaners — descendants of the European colonizers whose discriminatory policies resulted in the oppressive establishment of apartheid in South Africa — and bestowed refugee status upon them while working overtime to do everything possible to deport Black and brown migrants.
The Afrikaners were warmly greeted by Christopher Landau, the U.S. deputy secretary of state, and given little American flags. Not content with engaging in a perverse form of tribalism, Landau equated the Afrikaners to “quality seeds” that, when put in “foreign soil,” can “blossom” and “bloom” for the good of this country.
Notably absent from this event were sordid and salacious discussions about Black and Latino people from supposedly “sh*t–” nations that Trump derided in 2018. There were no reductive discussions about criminal invasions or scurrilous allegations these new immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation. It was even more revealing when a reporter asked Landau why an “exception” has been allowed for Afrikaners when so many others who “fit the criteria of fleeing persecution” have been denied refugee status. “Some of the criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country,” Landau said.
Such an arrogant comment speaks volumes.
These so-called refugees are also highly critical of and do not accept the majority Black-led government in South Africa. A sizable percentage (not all) of these individuals believe that there is a racial hierarchy that results in whites being superior to non-whites. For these men and women, whites are at the top, colored people are in the middle, and Blacks are at the bottom. They would regard me, a Black person, as barely human.
The previously whispered, racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic rhetoric that has flourished within sacred circles of the conservative right for decades has now been brutally unleashed, promoted by the president himself. Fortunately, there are those of goodwill who reject such blatant appeals to racism.
Sean Rowe, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, wrote in an open letter the church has decided to end refugee work with the federal government by the end of the fiscal year, “in light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.”
Rowe further stated, “It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country.”
It is incumbent upon all those committed to racial equality and justice to mobilize and relentlessly combat such menacing and arrogant efforts tied to an immigrant’s skin color. Such discriminatory antics are unfair, unjust, unlawful, and intolerable.
Elwood Watson is a professor of history, Black studies, and gender and sexuality studies at East Tennessee State University. He is also an author and public speaker.
