Columnist Carrie Baker is correct in pointing to the role misogyny has played in the crimes ICE has committed in Minneapolis — misogyny is a prominent feature of Donald Trump personally, his administration, Project 2025 and the MAGA right generally. However, racism plays an even larger part in the viciousness with which ICE agents have been operating in Minneapolis and elsewhere — not just personal racism, as individuals and law enforcement officers sometimes exhibit, nor the “systemic” racism our nation is often accused of, but the white nationalism the Trump administration preaches, abets and encourages in its followers.
The ICE officers are not simply arresting undocumented immigrants, certainly not only those who have committed crimes; they are performing a kind of “ethnic cleansing” directed toward anyone with colored skin. (That they have murdered white people in the course of performing this function should remind us of the white victims of the civil rights era.) Along with those arrested by ICE, the Trump administration is systematically doing away with every program extended to documented immigrants intended to keep them safe, including those seeking asylum, those here under TPS (Temporary Protected Status) programs, Afghans who aided their American military occupiers, and so on. In addition, myriads of student visas have been revoked or denied. Citizens of 75countries, all people of color, have been denied entry to the U.S. altogether.
The impetus for this purge is simply that a certain portion of white America is panicked by the thought that we will not be a majority white nation for much longer. This explains why Trump’s support in the polls remain stubbornly high, around 40%. While some commentators crow that his poll numbers are “underwater,” many of us can’t believe that this many people are still standing with him, given the corruption, mendacity and lawlessness of his administration. But of all the groups who supported him in 2024, later to regret their vote, only white voter support remains in positive territory and indicates the least regret.
America is in its third civil war, all of them over race. Before the nation was even founded, white men in the South who had neither capital nor entrepreneurial inclinations had few life choices because there was little to no “free” [paid] labor to employ them; slaves were the laborers. Consigned to life as hardscrabble farmers, they were consoled by the idea that they were superior to people of color. That assurance fueled the Confederate army, most of whose soldiers did not own slaves, explains Southern fury during the fight for civil rights during the 1950s and 60s, and is a substantial part of the reason a loudmouthed laughingstock from New York City was elected president of the United States — twice. Those seeking a better economy got grift and corruption instead; those seeking white supremacy are getting what they voted for. Today we watch as all trace of policies meant to enhance civil rights as well as Black and Native American history are erased and thousands of people of color are fired from our federal government; meanwhile our country is purged of people who are not already citizens, no matter their immigration status.
Kathe Geist lives in Charlemont.