I recently bought Ta-Nehisi Coates' book We Were Eight Years in Power, which discusses both the brief period of Black political gains during reconstruction, and the election of Trump as a racist response against the Obama Presidency (this is, of course, a very brief and partial summary). And I came across a passage near the end of the book which, I think, helps to articulate some of why Trump is distinct from just another racist or corrupt President. The following (from pages 343-344) is part of a longer section, which I'll quote here (Note: the n-word is not censored in the original text- I chose to do so because I am uncomfortable with using that word in speech or in print, and mean no misrepresentation of the author's original work):
To Trump whiteness is neither notional nor symbolic but is the very core of his power. In this, Trump is not singular. But whereas his forebears carried whiteness like an ancestral talisman, Trump cracked the glowing amulet open, releasing its eldritch energies. The repercussions are striking: Trump is the first president to have served in no public capacity before ascending to his perch. Perhaps more important, Trump is the first president to have publicly affirmed that his daughter is a "piece of ass." The mind seizes trying to imagine a black man extolling the virtues of sexual assault on tape ("And when you're a star, they let you do it"), fending off multiple accusations of said assaults, becoming immersed in multiple lawsuits for allegedly fraudulent business dealings, exhorting his followers to violence, and then strolling into the White House. But that is the point of white supremacy-to ensure that that which all others achieve with maximal effort, white people (and particularly white men) achieve with minimal qualification. Barack Obama delivered to black people the hoary message that in working twice as hard as white people, anything is possible. But Trump's counter is persuasive-work half as hard as black people and even more is possible.
A relationship between these two notions is as necessary as the relationship between these two men. It is almost as if the fact of Obama, the fact of a black president, insulted Trump personally. The insult redoubled when Obama and Seth Meyers publicly humiliated Trump at the White House Correspondents' Dinner in 2011. But the bloody heirloom ensures the last laugh. Replacing Obama is not enough-Trump has made the negation of Obama's legacy the foundation of his own. And this too is whiteness. "Race is an idea, not a fact," writes the historian Nell Irvin Painter, and essential to the construct of a "white race" is the idea of not being a n****r. Before Barack Obama, n*****s could be manufactured out of Sister Souljahs, Willie Hortons, Dusky Sallys, and Miscengenation Balls. But Donald Trump arrived in the wake of something more potent-an entire n****r presidency with n****r health care, n****r climate accords, n****r justice reform that could be targeted for destruction, that could be targeted for redemption, thus reifying the idea of being white. Trump truly is something new-the first president whose entire political existence hinges on the fact of a black president. And so it will not suffice to say Trump is a white man like all the others who rose to become president. He must be called by his correct name and rightful honorific-America's first white president.
