Don Roach: Donald Trump is Not a Racist. He’s Worse

Sunday, February 04, 2018

Don Roach, GoLocalPDX Contributor

I think we’ve been using the wrong label for our current president. Donald Trump is not a racist.

It’s easy to call him a lot of different names and racist is one of the names we use. I think it’s intellectual laziness to consider Donald Trump a racist. Many of my friends are rolling their eyes or already formulating their comebacks as to why Donald Trump is a racist. Guest MINDSETTER, Geoff Schoos recently wrote the following, “Donald John Trump is an unabashed and unapologetic racist”.

But I’m going to try and demonstrate why Trump is not only not a racist, he’s actually worse than a racist.

First, let’s consider what the definition of a racist is - a person who shows or feels discrimination or prejudice against people of other races, or who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

For Trump to be a racist, he’d need to think his race/ethnicity are above others. I checked what Trump’s ethnicity is and it’s German/Scottish. Now let’s see if we can find some disparaging comments he’s made of other race/ethnicities (please withhold laughter). He’s made comments about black people, Chinese people, Mexicans, Saudis, and on and on.

In my opinion, Trump’s comments taken out of context can certainly be viewed as racist. But here’s the thing, Trump has had very choice words and disparaging remarks towards many, many, many people of his same race. He’s had a very long (and bitter) war with Rosie O’Donnell calling her dumb, obnoxious, crude, and ugly if I recall. He said Mark Cuban wasn’t smart enough to run for President.

I could go on and on and on. Donald Trump probably has made more people upset than perhaps any other human being in history. Ok, maybe that’s a little much but he could be in the top 10 of such a list of upsetting human beings, no?

That doesn’t make him a racist. To me, to be a racist he really needs to believe that due to his race he is superior to others. You see White Supremacists out there. Those guys think that people who look like me are inferior to them because they have less melanin in their skin than I do.

Trump, in my opinion, is worse. You see he doesn’t think you, me, or anyone else is less inferior to him because of their skin color. No, he thinks we’re all less than him because well, we’re not him.

Here’s the definition of narcissism and tell me if this doesn’t more fit with Trump – “extreme selfishness, with a grandiose view of one's own talents and a craving for admiration, as characterizing a personality type.” If we’ve learned anything about Trump this past year, it’s that he craves admiration and the slightest insult drives him crazy. He also believes so highly of himself that, in my opinion, it shows a detachment with reality.

Donald Trump is a narcissist, he is not a racist. That’s pretty scary for the country but at the same time could be useful. Narcissists want to be admired and they want to do things that would cause people to admire them.

Last week, Trump offered a DACA deal which would grant a pathway for citizenship for many “Dreamers”. Many Democrats knee-jerkishly rejected the deal. Surprised? You shouldn’t be, that’s our world today, partisan and sometimes lacking common sense. But that’s for another day.

What also shouldn’t be a surprise is Trump making a concession. Trump isn’t a Republican and he isn’t a Democrat in the partisan sense. He wants glory and he believes he can achieve that glory with a wall between Mexico and the US. He is willing to compromise to achieve that goal, something many Democrats and Republicans have been unwilling to do for years.

He isn’t compromising like you or I would. It’s not like it’s your girlfriend’s birthday and she wants to go out but you’d rather attend a function you were invited to attend. Most (sane) men would compromise here for the greater good. For Trump, the only greater good is himself.

Ultimately, he wants to be admired by all of us peons who are beneath him. To think he’s a racist is to miss the true sinister nature of Donald Trump. For Trump, it’s me, myself, and I. The rest of us don’t really matter.

Don Roach can be reached at [email protected]. You can also follow Don on Twitter at @donroach34.