Will we stand up to White Supremacy?

Below is my latest missive to our local paper (LNP, Lancaster, PA) in response to the rising tide of white supremacist rhetoric and hateful actions .

Eugene Robinson’s catalog (“Our President wants to put up a “No Vacancies” sign for non-white immigrants,” April 16, 2019) of President Trump’s race-based mistreatment of Americans, immigrants, Africans, Haitians, basically anyone not white, reminded me how far we are from “liberty and justice for all.” The President’s belief in white supremacy is apparently shared by his white fans, including Congressman Lloyd Smucker, dozens of other Republicans, and millions of Americans, many professing Christians among them. If they didn’t agree, wouldn’t they have stood up by now against the immoral, likely illegal, harm Mr. Trump and his band of bigots have inflicted on so many people simply because their skin is not white. It has all shaken my faith in the character of America and Americans. I’d like to think this brief hateful moment will be abolished by a changing of the guard. Unable to know the future, I looked back in history for inspiration. Not so encouraging. In 1866, after a bloody civil war over slavery, Pennsylvania’s Democratic Convention passed this resolution: “The white race alone is entitled to the control of the Government of the Republic.” Lancaster’s Thaddeus Stevens thundered in response: “If we have not yet been sufficiently scourged for our national sin to teach us to do justice to all God’s creatures, without distinction of race or color, we must expect the still more heavy vengeance of an offended Father.” Faced with the racially poisonous presidency of Mr. Trump, we know white supremacy triumphed over Stevens. Can we stem the tide of white supremacy now? Are we even willing to try?