Why Trump Is So Obsessed With White South Africans
Source: HuffPost
Why Trump Is So Obsessed With White South Africans
It's the latest extension of grievances he's been touting for years.
By Li Zhou
May 24, 2025, 07:00 AM EDT
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Trump’s admission of Afrikaners marks a sharp contrast with how refugees from other parts of the world have been treated: In January, the White House suspended refugee admissions indefinitely, arguing that the U.S. didn’t have the capacity to absorb more people. More recently, Trump’s secretary of state, Marco Rubio, has defended singling out Afrikaners by saying that the “US has the right to prioritize … who [it wants],” and that the administration is focused on admitting people who can be “assimilated easily.”
The blatant double standard underscores how this policy ties into Trump’s broader messaging, which has long focused on stoking white grievances and resentment. Specifically, Trump has framed the incoming Afrikaner refugees as white victims who have been mistreated by a majority-Black South African government – and population – that’s out to take what’s theirs. That echoes longstanding fears conservatives have propagated about the racist and conspiratorial “Great Replacement Theory” — the idea that there’s a calculated plan to displace white people with people of color.
To put it bluntly: Trump’s plans and priorities regarding refugees and immigration are steeped in white supremacy.
The president is “positioning himself as a sort of savior of white America and of white Christianity globally,” said Loren Landau, a migration expert at the University of Oxford and South Africa’s University of Witwatersrand.
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Read more: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/trump-white-south-africans-refugees-immigration-racism-double-standard_n_6830ebe2e4b0b6e012c81112
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