By Maribel Hastings and David Torres
Only in the twisted era of the Donald Trump presidency would they charge the architect of the most racist and anti-immigrant policies of this administration, advisor Stephen Miller, with writing a speech on race relations, right in the middle of this painful moment our nation is experiencing.
The very idea that Miller is devising a text about the knee that has been on the neck of racial minorities since practically the birth of this country should both alert and alter those who have suffered each and every one of his policies against people of color, including immigrants, document or undocumented. For a guy like the presidential aide they are the same, especially if they come from Latin American countries.
And only in such a twisted political era do political aspirations take precedence over family, as evidenced by George P. Bush, Texas Land Commissioner.
It happens that the grandson of former president George Bush, nephew of former president George W. Bush, son of former Florida Governor and former aspirant to the presidential nomination, Jeb Bush, and the son of Columba Bush, a Mexican woman from León, Guanajuato, affirmed that he will vote for Trump this year.
This, despite the fact that the current president made his father, Jeb, the butt of his jokes and his family the object of constant attacks; and despite the fact that Trump, when he started his campaign in 2016, labeled Mexicans as rapists and criminals.
And, as in Miller’s case, the very idea that, with this declaration, a Bush should betray himself and by extension his family, as well as an entire community that has been vilified to no end by a leader who speaks favorably of white supremacy, should also alert and alter. Firstly, because this political decision is clearly an attempt to attract the most conservative or still undecided Latino voters; and secondly, because it endorses and supports the executioner’s guidelines regarding minorities, among which stand out Latinos, especially Mexicans, whose blood also runs through the veins of George P. Bush.
What’s more, in 2016 Trump even tweeted that Jeb Bush was defending “the Mexican illegals because of his wife.” The tweet was later deleted, but it came to form part of the accumulation of offenses that can never be forgotten, as it seems has happened with George P., whose blood may have turned to atole now.
But he, looking toward future official positions in Texas such as governor or lieutenant governor —and perhaps even the Presidency one day— knows that, among Republicans in Texas, Trump is king, such that his political ambition is stronger than the offenses to his own blood. He only has to remember, since he is still young and inexperienced in the political arena, that everything that Trump touches he destroys, completely. If George P. has not yet seen himself in the mirror of the president’s old allies, who have become part of the trash bin of history, he’d better go ahead and take a peek. It’s more than disgusting.
It’s just as disgusting as the fact that Miller, a reputed sympathizer of white supremacists, would be in charge of writing a speech for Trump on race relations and racial unity, as many news outlets have reported.
Miller’s resumé of racism, at least the one we know, speaks of his middle school days when he even broke off a friendship with a buddy because he was Latino. In college, he worked with white nationalist Richard Spencer. Then in the Senate, where he worked for another anti-immigrant man, the former Attorney General and former Republican senator from Alabama, Jeff Sessions, Miller used white nationalist ideas to direct public policy proposals, according to emails from Miller published by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
And this same sympathy for white supremacists, which he shares with the president, is what has guided the policies of this administration, from the cancellation of DACA, the Muslim ban, and the separation of families at the border, to the obsession with reducing or even eliminating legal migration to the United States. And it is here where we see a sinister generational comparison: Trump sees in Miller the man with political power that he wanted to be in his youth, while Miller sees in Trump the man with absolute power that he wants to obtain in his later years. Together they have formed an indissoluble circle, compact and hermetic, where nothing fits beyond their racist vision of history.
A speech about unity and race relations in Miller’s hands makes a mockery of the seriousness of this sad and urgent state of emergency in the racial interaction of this nation. It’s a slap in the face and an act of provocation, and it should be said that no matter what happens or who protests, white supremacy prevails.
To read the Spanish version of this article click here.
