Black? Indian?

It has taken no time for Donald Trump to make ethnicity an attack point in the presidential race.  There is no reason for having done it but few, at least on the Left, will accuse Trump of being reasonable anyway.  His track record of denigration of others is well-recognized but applauded by many who find his politically judgmental attitudes and actions fit their views of others who do not look, worship, or otherwise fit their guidelines for respect as fellow citizens.

A part of our political system seems unable to survive without finding others who do not deserve to be belittled or even hated, tomust be belittle and hate.

My generation remembers the pronouncements that John Kennedy would take orders from the Vatican if he became President. More recently, we were battered by those who made false claims about Barrack Obama’s birth as well as his ethnic history, including those who pointed to his middle name, Hussein, as an indication he might have had ties to Muslim terrorism.

Now, Donald Trump—-himself a mix of ancestral roots—is raising false insinuations about Kamala Harris with her emergence as a tangible threat to his dreams of absolute power. His attack made before an audience of Black journalists, no less, has underlined and bold-faced one word his critics have used many times to describe him:  Racist:

“I’ve known her a long time, indirectly, not directly very much, and she was always of Indian heritage, and she was only promoting Indian heritage. I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black, and now she wants to be known as Black. So I don’t know, is she Indian, or is she Black? I respect either one, but she obviously doesn’t. Because she was Indian all the way, and then all of a sudden, she made a turn, and she went – she became a Black person. And I think somebody should look into that, too.”

Several people DID look into it and quickly considered the comment one of Trumps most blatant lies and a clear injection of racism into the campaign.

Here’s one fact check:

Harris Has Always Identified as Indian American and Black – FactCheck.org

Trump is hardly one to question the ethnicity of others—–because he has made questionable claims about his own. In fact, he has lied about it. In print.

Natasha Frost of the New York Times has written:

Trump’s international origins make him relatively unusual among American presidents. Of the last 10 presidents, only two—Trump and Barack Obama—have had a parent born outside of the United States. Trump’s own immediate family has been similarly international: Two of his three wives were naturalized American citizens, originally from the Czech Republic and Slovenia. Only one of his five children, Tiffany, is the child of two American-born citizens, while his daughter, Ivanka, is the first Jewish member of the First Family in American history. But so far as his biographers have been able to tell, none of his international roots extends to Sweden.

A-ha.  Sweden.  Frost, who has looked at Trump’s familial roots, reports Grandpa Friedrich Trump gave up his career as a 16-year old barber in GERMANY and came here in 1885 to escape three years of required service in the German military.  But Trump denied the truth of his circumstances, maintaining for years, even in his co-written The Art of the Deal, that Friedrich came here from Scandinavia.  A family historian told the newspaper the lie was started by Trump’s father, Fred, who did not want to alienate Jewish clients and friends by acknowledging the family’s German background.

“Trump is the son, and grandson, of immigrants: German on his father’s side, and Scottish on his mother’s. None of his grandparents, and only one of his parents, was born in the United States or spoke English as their mother tongue (His mother’s parents, from the remote Scottish Outer Hebrides, lived in a majority Gaelic-speaking community.),” Frost wrote.

Donald is the grandson of Friedrich, who was not Swedish, Norwegian, or Finnish. He was one of more than about one million Germans to immigrate to the USA in 1885—seeking the same things that immigrants look for today. Their “wall” was the Atlantic Ocean.

But Trump’s family overcame that wall.  We will leave it to you to consider any irony in his story.

“Trump” as a Swede? Only if his real name was “Trumpsson.”

As for Friedrich, it is not on the list of 100 top names for Swedish boys. The top ten, by the way, are Noah, Hugo, William, Liam, Nils, Elias, Oliver, Adam. August, and Sam

The attack on Kamala Harris was uncalled for.  But what else is new when it comes from Donald Trump? And after all, wouldn’t you want to deny your German heritage if you had a running made that once wrote his college roommate, “I go back and forth between thinking Trump is a cynical a**hole like Nixon who wouldn’t be that bad (and might even prove useful) or that he’s America’s Hitler. How’s that for discouraging?”

Four years ago, reporter Ella Lee of USA TODAY reviewed 28 Trump comments deemed racist. Her conclusion: “Of the 28 listed comments, Trump said 12 of them as plainly stated. Two he said but lack context. Four comments are disputed, eight are paraphrased from similar statements and two he did not say.”

Fact check: 12 of 28 Trump comments deemed racist are direct speech (usatoday.com)

Adequate time has passed and millions of words have been spoken since then that an update is merited, including an evaluation of his claim that he is the best President that black people have had since Abraham Lincoln with no exceptions for Harry Truman’s integration of the military and Lyndon Johnson’s pushing for and signing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts in the 1960s.

We are supposed to have some debates in September, depending on how Mr. Trump feels when he takes to Truth Social on any particular day.  We will wait to see if he can do more than call people names by then or wallow in more language that is, in the least, insensitive.

The Swede vs. the Indian.  What a match that could be.

(NOTE:  We have posted a second entry today—-a re-post of a column originally dated August 1 but was unreadable thanks to a huge blunder by your editor, We hope we do not overburden you by this double post.)