Trump Admin Abuses Civil Rights Laws To Save White Supremacy
Trump Administration Abuses Civil Rights Laws To Save White Supremacy
The Trump administration’s distortion of laws like the KKK Act and FACE Act in targeting Black organizers in Minneapolis is a part of its broader effort to realign the American status quo back toward white supremacy and elite control. Combined with efforts to roll back other civil rights protections and enforcement mechanisms, the Trump administration wants to reset the standards by which we judge our very reality.
As veteran civil rights attorney Judith Browne Dianis recently highlighted in an op-ed for the Root, the Trump administration’s misuse of laws like the KKK Act and the FACE Act represents “an ongoing pattern of co-opting and misusing laws that were passed to protect Black people from white supremacy.” Signed into law by President Bill Clinton, the FACE Act emerged at a time of increasing anti-abortion violence and targeting of abortion doctors.
A year ago, the Trump administration announced it would stop enforcing the core purpose of the FACE Act in line with its contrived effort to restore white supremacist Christianity as the dominating worldview in America. Similarly, invoking the KKK Act against diverse communities defending each other speaks to the attempted realignment where the existence of diversity is the real threat.
Generations of prioritizing and appeasing white guilt, white feelings, and white desire have brought us to this moment of the federal government in open rebellion against Civil and Human rights. It has brought us to a moment in which the federal government intentionally wages war against large cross-sections of the American populace.
And it’s built on decades of framing and dehumanizing Black, brown, and other impacted communities as less than and unworthy.
The history of laws like the FACE Act, the KKK Act, and the plain language of when it applies are being turned on their heads by a system with roots running deep in the need for color-blind, vague language that absolved white supremacy. Countless decisions within the federal judicial system, all the way to the Supreme Court, have been blasted for perpetuating injustice against Black and other impacted people and eroding our civil liberties.
Decisions impacting policing and police violence, civil liberties and surveillance, and redress for past discrimination have reinforced a tiered system of citizenship and personal worth in this country. Allowing our rights and ability for community redress to be left to the interpretation and analysis of people who benefited from our oppression has paved the way for the harm being caused today.
The current administration has made disdain for fairness and justice a federal mandate, aiming to reinstate the kind of tyrannical state control experienced post-Reconstruction. More than remaking the country in the image of the short-lived Confederacy, the Trump administration’s denial and deprivation of our basic rights and freedoms is rooted in the foundation of America itself.
The distortion and clear narrative battle waged by the Trump administration in an effort to distort laws meant to protect oppressed communities is a part of the scam of white supremacy. Attacks on entire communities follow a generational project of segregation and othering aimed at keeping elite, wealthy landowners and their friends in charge.
Whether it’s newly freed Black people rising after enslavement or migrants escaping a variety of challenges in their home countries, the white supremacist worldview retains control when there is a scapegoat for white misfortune and suffering.
Speaking to a crowd of over 3,500 people who made the march from Selma to Montgomery—a mere three weeks after Bloody Sunday— Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. outlined the false promise of segregation and white supremacist populism in place of a real multiracial democracy and economy. He spoke of a “travesty of justice” that was “perpetuated upon the American mind.”
Through their control of mass media, they revised the doctrine of white supremacy. They saturated the thinking of the poor white masses with it, thus clouding their minds to the real issue involved in the Populist Movement. They then directed the placement on the books of the South of laws that made it a crime for Negroes and whites to come together as equals at any level.
King’s analysis still holds. But what has clearly emerged since March 1965 is the understanding that Southern leaders would never have accomplished all that they did without their accomplices in the North and elsewhere. Continuing to relegate the project of oppression to a certain region or a “bygone era” undermines our analysis of the present time.
Addressing the undoing of civil society requires embracing all the tools from protest and community organizing to litigation. It also matters how we talk about this moment and the people who are being targeted for putting their bodies on the line.
The language used in characterizing the church action led by pro-community advocates in the Twin Cities reinforces the administration’s effort to paint civil society groups and neighborhood groups as the “real terrorism.” But it’s not.
By framing everyday acts of fellowship and community as terrorism or attacks, the administration and its beneficiaries are trying to reset the status quo. Part of the antidote requires a shift in how we engage and discuss what’s happening around us. It requires us to directly challenge an information culture that shrugs off accuracy and framing.
Our individual posts and conversations do matter. When we repeat and elevate the opposition, it becomes more true in people’s minds, not less. The collective responsibility in this moment means finding our way not simply to resist but to contribute to building forward better.
As much as we are fighting for our present, this moment is about who will emerge from this moment to tell the story of us and now. It’s about who gets to define the shape and direction of our collective future.
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