…Scientific racism: Trump as anti-climax to Obama

Trump and Obama

By Ademola Adegbamigbe

Events during the week painted a dramatic denouement to the fumbling of the United States President, Donald Trump. He came to power riding on the crest wave of racial prejudice and anti-immigrants sentiments. The revisionists who helped to foist him on America wanted their own man to come and govern superlatively, to put a blight on the administration of his predecessor, Barack Obama. Unfortunately, as things are turning out, Trump’s government has become an anti-climax to that of Black Obama.

This week, the House of Representatives under Nancy Pelosi impeached Trump based on the allegation that he solicited the interference of a foreign government (Ukraine) in the U.S. democratic process to boost his chances of re-election in 2020. That is, as we aerlier published on this platform, he allegedly pressured Ukraine to unearth damaging information on former Vice President Joe Biden, who is one of his main Democratic challengers for the coming election.  He allegedly used a 400-million-dollar military aid approved by Congress to Ukraine, and a White House meeting for Ukraine’s president, as blackmail tools. Democrats in the House of Representatives saw these as abuse of presidential power for his personal political gain at the expense of national security. And when the cat was off the bag, Trump allegedly obstructed Congress by refusing to co-operate during probes. Although Trump, denied, he was impeached. He may, however, escape the final guillotine at the Senate where the Republicans have a majority.

The above, coupled with his hatred of the media, allegations of tax evasion, unpresidential gaffes, sentiment against immigrants (a man whose ancestors were Germans) and many others are many of his sins.

When Obama won election as the 44th President of the United States, not a few doubting Thomases thought he, being black and of lower intelligence, would drag America into oblivion. But Obama disappointed the negative bookmakers.

Here are 28 of his biggest accomplishments, according to good.is

“1 – Rescued the country from the Great Recession, cutting the unemployment rate from 10% to 4.7% over six years

2 – Signed the Affordable Care Act which provided health insurance to over 20 million uninsured Americans

3 – Ended the war in Iraq

4 – Ordered for the capture and killing of Osama Bin Laden

5 – Passed the $787 billion America Recovery and Reinvestment Act to spur economic growth during the Great Recession

6 – Supported the LGBT community’s fight for marriage equality

7 – Commuted the sentences of nearly 1200 drug offenders to reverse “unjust and outdated prison sentences”

8 – Saved the U.S. auto industry

9 – Helped put the U.S. on track for energy independence by 2020

10 – Began the draw down of troops in Afghanistan

11 – Signed the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals allowing as many as 5 million people living in the U.S. illegally to avoid deportation and receive work permits

12 –Signed the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act to re-regulate the financial sector

13 – Dropped the veteran homeless rate by 50 percent

14 – Reversed Bush-era torture policies

15 – Began the process of normalizing relations with Cuba

16 – Increased Department of Veteran Affairs funding

17 – Signed the Credit Card Accountability, Responsibility, and Disclosure Act

18 – Boosted fuel efficiency standards for cars

19 – Improved school nutrition with the Healthy Hunger-Free Kids Act

20 – Repealed the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy

21 – Signed the Hate Crimes Prevention Act, making it a federal crime to assault anyone based on sexual or gender identification

22 – Helped negotiate the landmark Iran Nuclear Deal

23 – He signed the Lilly Led better Fair Pay Act to combat pay discrimination against women

24 – Nominated Sonia Soto mayor to the Supreme Court, making her the first Hispanic ever to serve as a justice

25 – Supported veterans through a $78 billion tuition assistance GI bill

26 – Won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2009 “for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples”

27 – Launched My Brother’s Keeper, a White House initiative designed to help young minorities achieve their full potential

28 – Expanded embryonic stem cell research leading to groundbreaking work in areas including spinal injury treatment and cancer.”

Obama and Trump have actually proved wrong the racial stereotype that is deeply ingrained in the American psyche. It is called race science or scientific racism, “the claim that there is a link between race and  intelligence” or that there “are evolutionary bases for disparities in social outcomes…” Some of the proponents were Arthur Jensen, Alfred Binet and Thomas Jafferson himself, who claimed that Africans are less intelligent than Caucasians.

Even Donald Trump’s ancestors, the Germans, upheld this through their Aryan superior race theory. Adolf Hitler was so cynical that when Jesse Owens, the African American athlete, won the Berlin Olympic race in 1936, he waved him off derisively as an American auxiliary.

Adolf Hitler:

Jesse Owens

Another European who held blacks in such contempt was King Leopold 11 of Belgium who said: “Teach the niggers to forget their heroes and to adore only ours. Never present a chair to a black that comes to visit you. Don’t give him more than one cigarette. Never invite him for dinner even if he gives you a chicken every time you arrive at his house.”

Lord Lugard

Now read this from Lord Lugard, the former governor-general of Nigeria, who in 1926, wrote in The Dual Mandates: “In character and temperament, the typical African of this race-type is a happy, thriftless, excitable person, lacking in self-control, discipline, and foresight. Naturally courageous, and naturally courteous and polite, full of personal vanity, with little sense of veracity, fond of music and loving weapons as an oriental loves jewellery. His thoughts are concentrated on the events and feelings of the moment, and he suffers little from the apprehension for the future or grief for the past. His mind is far nearer to the animal world than that of the European or Asiatic, and exhibits something of the animals’ placidity and want of desire to rise beyond the state he has reached.

“Through the ages, the African appears to have evolved no organised religious creed, and though some tribes appear to believe in a deity, the religious sense seldom rises above pantheistic animalism and seems more often to take the form of a vague dread of the supernatural. He lacks the power of organisation, and is conspicuously deficient in the management and control alike of men or business. He loves the display of power, but fails to realize its responsibility – he will work hard with a less incentive than most races. He has the courage of the fighting animal, an instinct rather than a moral virtue. In brief, the virtues and defects of his race -type are those of attractive children, whose confidence when it is won is given ungrudgingly as to an older and wiser superior and without envy. Perhaps, the two traits which have impressed me as those most characteristic of the African native are his lack of apprehension and his lack of ability to visualize the future.”

In all the above, Obama and Trump have proved these theories wrong. The only trouble is that Obama’s kinsmen at the helm of affairs in African countries still behave as if they are of inferior intelligence. Good governance will, we all hope, prove otherwise.