In the first draft of my Wednesday column, I had a riff toward the end comparing the Trump campaign’s anti-Haitian rhetoric — and the extent to which it may have inspired bomb threats targeting the Haitian community of Springfield, Ohio — to the agitation and demagoguery of segregationist politicians in the Jim Crow South. As I refined the piece, I realized that the comparison, while apt, didn’t quite belong in the column. It detracted from the main thrust of the argument and may have done more to confuse than illuminate.
Even so, I think it’s a good observation! So rather than trash it, I thought I would share it as a special feature of sorts — the kind of thing you would find in the extras section of a DVD release. (This also gives you a glimpse into how I conceptualize this newsletter.)
Preceding this paragraph, in the original draft, I had argued that Trump and Vance were at risk of inciting people to take matters into their own hands with those they claimed were “illegal aliens.” This is more or less what followed:
It is not as if the United States lacks experience with this exact dynamic. Under Jim Crow, it was commonplace for elected officials — from lowly sheriffs to members of the United States Senate — to use their platforms in exactly the manner we see from Donald Trump and especially JD Vance. “When once the flat-nosed Ethiopian, like the camel, gets his proboscis under the tent,” Theodore Bilbo, the Mississippi senator and virulent segregationist, said, “he will overthrow the established order of our Saxon civilization.” Eugene Talmadge, who served as governor of Georgia throughout the 1930s and into the 1940s, ran a 1946 re-election campaign so virulently racist that it sparked deadly violence against Black residents. When, in 1962, federal marshals were preparing to escort James Meredith to the University of Mississippi, thus integrating the all-white school, Gov. Ross Barnett told a nearby crowd that Ole Miss was “ready to be invaded.” His call to arms produced a mob that flooded the campus, leaving two people dead.
There are other examples I left out. Late-era Jim Crow figures like Lester Maddox and Orval Faubus were as quick to reach for incendiary rhetoric as Trump is. And George Wallace, obviously, is the model for much of the agitation and demagoguery that marks the approach of both Trump and Vance.
It is tempting to treat this rhetoric as a genuine expression of prejudice or atavistic rage. But I think it is more useful — not to mention closer to the truth — to see it as something more strategic. Jim Crow was an economic order as well as a political one. The purpose of segregation was as much to fracture and weaken Southern labor as it was to institutionalize race hierarchy and reify imagined differences between peoples. The same Jim Crow political elites that screamed about the “the flat-nosed Ethiopian” until voters stomped the floor used the power they won to sell their states to the highest bidder. They shaped their economies around the needs of industry, providing a low-wage, very low-regulation alternative to the unionized economies north of the Mason-Dixon line. Jim Crow was not free. The South paid for its negrophobia with endemic poverty so deep and shocking that we can still feel its effects in the present day.
So it goes with the Trump-Vance campaign against immigrants. To their crowds, they scream “illegals” and promise a cruel scheme of mass deportation. To their billionaire donors, they say “tax cuts” and promise a federal government devoted to the upward distribution of wealth and the destruction of the social insurance state. They call it “conservative populism,” but it is drawing from the same playbook that kept the South mired in poverty: You sell the people hate so that you can give capital — the actual ruling class — as much of the pie as it can shovel into its face.
What I Wrote
My Wednesday column was on the similarities between what happened in Charlottesville, Va., and what the Trump campaign is doing to Springfield, Ohio.
Trump did not have a successful presidency. He failed to manage the pandemic. His permissive attitude toward authoritarian regimes emboldened figures like Vladimir Putin and Viktor Orban. His appointments to the federal judiciary left the basic rights of millions of people in shambles. His contempt for ordinary decency coarsened and corroded American civic life. He left both the nation and the world in worse shape. But for all of his failures as chief executive, Trump was an able rabble-rouser. He has a genuine talent for exploiting the worst passions of ordinary people. And Vance, his junior partner in that regard, appears to be a quick study.
My Friday column was on Trump’s chutzpah in denouncing extreme rhetoric.
The classic example of chutzpah is that of the child who murders his parents and then pleads for mercy as an orphan. With the 2024 presidential election, we have a new way to illustrate the point: the candidate who condones violence, dehumanizes his opponents and whips his supporters into a frenzy, then turns around to condemn the harsh rhetoric of his opponents and call for peaceful discourse.
Now Reading
Linda Greenhouse on the office of the sheriff for The New York Review of Books.
Elizabeth Catte on “white poverty” for Boston Review.
Sasha Weiss on the Prince documentary we’ll probably never see for The New York Times Magazine.
Linda Kinstler on the Jan. 6 trials for The London Review of Books.
Rafaela Bassili on “Jennifer’s Body” for The Atlantic.
Photo of the Week
A photo from the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History, taken during a trip to Washington D.C. with my oldest earlier in the year.
Now Eating: Shakshuka With Feta
A perfect way to use up late-season tomatoes, if they’re still available at your local farmer’s market. Otherwise, you’ll want to use a can of the highest quality tomatoes you can find! Shakshuka is a perfect breakfast food, of course, but it is underrated as a dinner item, especially with a crisp green salad and fresh pita bread. Serves between 4 and 6. Recipe comes from NYT Cooking.
Ingredients
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, halved and thinly sliced
1 large red bell pepper, seeded and thinly sliced
3 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
1 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon sweet paprika
⅛ teaspoon ground cayenne, or to taste
1 (28-ounce) can whole plum tomatoes with their juices, coarsely chopped
¾ teaspoon kosher salt, plus more as needed
¼ teaspoon black pepper, plus more as needed
5 ounces feta, crumbled (about 1¼ cups)
6 large eggs
Chopped cilantro, for serving
Hot sauce, for serving
Directions
Heat oven to 375 degrees. Heat oil in a large skillet over medium-low. Add onion and bell pepper. Cook gently until very soft, about 20 minutes. Add garlic and cook until tender, 1 to 2 minutes; stir in cumin, paprika and cayenne, and cook 1 minute. Pour in tomatoes and season with ¾ teaspoon salt and ¼ teaspoon pepper; simmer until tomatoes have thickened, about 10 minutes. Taste and add more salt and pepper if needed. Stir in crumbled feta.
Gently crack eggs into skillet over tomatoes. Season eggs with salt and pepper. Transfer skillet to oven and bake until eggs are just set, 7 to 10 minutes. Sprinkle with cilantro and serve with hot sauce.
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The post Another Way of Looking at Jim Crow appeared first on New York Times.