Trump, racism, and politics of normalised cruelty: Trump did not invent American racism, but he stripped away the shame that once constrained it. He gave permission. He made it loud, proud, and profitable. In doing so, he revealed how fragile the guardrails of democracy truly are when leadership abandons moral responsibility. The question, then, is not whether Trump was racist. The evidence is overwhelming. The question is whether societies that claim to value justice are willing to confront how easily they were seduced by spectacle over substance, grievance over governance, and hate over hope.
By Uche J. Udenka
Racism, once whispered, now has a microphone. Donald Trump is not merely a politician with controversial opinions. He is the most visible symptom of a deeper, more dangerous disease: the normalisation of racial hostility as governance, spectacle, and strategy. To reduce Trump’s legacy to one racist video, one offensive remark, or one outrageous speech is to miss the point entirely. Trumpism is not an accident. It is a system. A pattern. A deliberate project that weaponises grievance, rewrites national memory, and recasts cruelty as patriotism. From policy to rhetoric, from symbolism to state power, Trump’s political brand has relied on a simple but corrosive formula: elevate himself by diminishing “the other.”
The dangerous power of dehumanising rhetoric
Dehumanisation is the first step to authoritarianism. Authoritarianism doesn’t arrive loudly — it settles in. Words shape reality long before laws do. Trump understood this better than many of his critics. During his campaigns, he trafficked in grotesque caricatures of non-white communities — claims about immigrants as criminals, invaders, and even insinuations about people “eating cats and dogs.” These statements were absurd on the surface, but devastating in effect. They stripped human beings of dignity and replaced them with fear-mongering myths designed to inflame rather than inform. History warns us what happens when leaders speak this way. Dehumanisation is never accidental. It prepares the ground for exclusion, violence, and indifference to suffering. When people are portrayed as animals or threats, empathy collapses. In that vacuum, injustice thrives.
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Racism as policy, not slip-up
This is the playbook of power without conscience. Collective heritage has become a political weapon. Policy is the mask. Prejudice is the face. Trump’s defenders often argue that he is merely “politically incorrect,” a truth-teller misunderstood by liberal sensibilities. But racism under Trump did not operate as a series of verbal missteps. It operated as policy. Policies that disproportionately targeted Black Americans and other minorities were not side effects; they were features. From the gutting of civil rights protections in federal agencies to the rollback of diversity initiatives across institutions, the message was unmistakable: equality was optional, history was negotiable, and power belonged to those who already had it. Even symbolic acts mattered. Renaming public institutions and cultural centres to reflect his personal brand was not harmless ego. It was an assertion of dominance — an attempt to overwrite collective heritage with personal mythology. In authoritarian playbooks, this is familiar terrain: erase shared memory, replace it with loyalty to one man.
Institutions under siege
No tanks. No coup. Just a slow institutional bleed.When institutions fall, freedom follows.Perhaps most alarming was how Trumpism seeped into institutions meant to protect democracy itself. Federal agencies tasked with civil rights enforcement were hollowed out. Judges hostile to voting protections were elevated. Educational frameworks addressing racial history were attacked as “unpatriotic.” This was not governance — it was demolition. A democracy does not collapse only through coups. It erodes when truth is relativised, when prejudice is mainstreamed, and when institutions are turned into ideological weapons. Trump’s genius — if one can use that word — was to make these erosions feel normal, even entertaining.
Why this is bigger than Trump
Trump was the permission slip. He didn’t create the fire — he removed the fire alarm. The real danger is not Trump alone. It is what came after — and what remains. Trump did not invent American racism, but he stripped away the shame that once constrained it. He gave permission. He made it loud, proud, and profitable. In doing so, he revealed how fragile the guardrails of democracy truly are when leadership abandons moral responsibility. The question, then, is not whether Trump was racist. The evidence is overwhelming. The question is whether societies that claim to value justice are willing to confront how easily they were seduced by spectacle over substance, grievance over governance, and hate over hope.
The call of this moment
Silence in the face of racism is a political choice. The cost of looking away is always higher. This is not a call for partisan outrage. It is a call for moral clarity. A free society cannot survive when lies are amplified, minorities are scapegoated, and power is worshipped above principle. Journalism, citizenship, and leadership demand more than neutrality in the face of cruelty. Silence, in such moments, is not balance — it is complicity. Trump’s legacy should not be debated in whispers or reduced to footnotes. It should be examined as a warning: when racism is repackaged as policy, when ego replaces empathy, and when democracy becomes a stage for personal glorification, everyone eventually pays the price.
The task now is not merely to move “beyond Trump,” but to dismantle the politics that made him possible — and to refuse, collectively and loudly, to ever normalise them again.
- Arc. Uche J. Udenka, social and political analyst, #AfricaVisionAdvancementTrust, C.E.O. Igbo Renaissance Awakening, writes from Ghana
