Trump picks another fight with a Black sports figure. Thats no coincidence
In attacking LaVar Ball, the U.S. president is either using racism for strategic purposes, or being instinctively racist himself — or it’s both, Daniel Dale writes.
WASHINGTON—The political press has a way of avoiding the obvious when stating the obvious involves calling out racism.
So when Donald Trump attacked a sports figure on Wednesday, again, the obvious was left out of the news stories in the Associated Press, New York Times, Washington Post and CNN.com, among others.
Here’s what’s obvious. The sports figure, LaVar Ball, is Black. All of Trump’s recent targets in sports have been Black. And the president of the United States is either calculatingly using racism for strategic purposes, again, or being instinctively racist himself, again.
Of course, it can be both. But it’s not neither. Not after this many of these moments.
“It’s a pattern that to me, and to most observers, is an obvious pattern. They’ll try to deny it because he’s taken pictures with Black people, because he has Black people working in the White House. But to me that doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t take for him to wear a hood for him to be a white supremacist,” said Donte Stallworth, a former NFL player and now a CNN contributor. “In his actions, he is a white supremacist. And we shouldn’t be afraid to say that. It’s a damning charge, but it’s something that if you observe the facts, you will see the certainty of who he is.”
https://www.thestar.com/amp/news/world/analysis/2017/11/22/trump-picks-another-fight-with-a-black-sports-figure-thats-no-coincidence.html