Last week the President of the United States did something that would have been unthinkable in years past but has now become commonplace. He said something racist.
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Discussing the people that have been arrested in the weeks since he sent troops into the Nation’s Capital, he did not say that they were otherwise good people who got caught up into a life of crime. Nor did he go the compassionate conservative route like his predecessors and say that some of these individuals made choices that put them on a collision course with the police and that he would do all he could to help them salvage their lives.
Instead, President Donald Trump said something that is as alarming as it is expected. He called the people who had been arrested, many who were Black, were ‘born to be criminals.’
(Note: Maryland’s Governor Wes Moore fumbled the bag by posting a heavily edited clip of Trump’s comments on social media that imply that he is talking about people from the City of Baltimore. The president was NOT talking about Baltimoreans, here. He was discussing the people who had been arrested in D.C.)
This is a problem on so many levels that I have neither the time nor the inclination to break it all the way down. But what I will do is point out three major reasons why we should all be alarmed by his words.
He is saying that he embraces racial essentialism
OK. Those are big words. Let me explain what they mean.
Racial essentialism is the belief that people of different races have inherent, unchanging biological characteristics. So, the reason why Black men are put in prison at alarming rates is not because of the harsh penalties instituted by Clinton’s Crime Bill that ended up targeting Black men. It is not because we are born into a world that under educates and over surveilles Black people. Instead, it is because, well, we are Black. And we were born with a genetic predisposition for criminality.
How does one who believes this to be truth address the inherent criminality that will be the result of these people walking the streets? Well, that leads us to the second reason why what he said is a problem.
This is genocidal talk
O.K. I need to be careful, here. I do not think that Trump is calling for a genocide against Black people. However, that does not take away from the fact that what he said adheres to a long history of people using words like this to justify engaging in genocide.
Just read what Hitler said about Jews in Mein Kampf. Or listen to what the Hutus had to say about the Tutsi’s during the Rwandan genocide. When talking about the people that would become targets of genocide, they would claim that they were born to be criminals or outright call them vermin.
And therefore, these individuals could not be rehabilitated. They had to be eliminated. This is the kind of language President Trump is engaging in.
What the criminal justice system is supposed to do
Finally, it has always been the position of the architects of the criminal justice system that people must pay for their crimes, but everyone can do better. The idea of criminal rehabilitation? It’s a thing.
So, for the president to say that there are bad people who are irredeemable is not just alarming or racist. It is evil.
Am I saying that Donald Trump is an evil man? No. But did he say something that was evil? Eh…..
Straight From 
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