Trump could have turned his 'lynching' comment around. He chose not to

Imagine Trump as a normal politician, visiting Montgomery, Alabama to educate himself and being moved to tears by the 800 steel monuments at the National Memorial for Peace and Justice. It could have happened, with somebody else

Once again, the Commander-in-Chief turned to his favorite method of communication to spew vitriol and blasphemy today, this time comparing himself to the victims of racial violence and racial terrorism in this country by calling the impeachment inquiry a “lynching”.

President Trump clearly doesn’t understand what a lynching is, or he wouldn’t have used the term. Senator Lindsey Graham doesn’t understand what one is, either, or he wouldn’t have agreed with him.

Of course, Twitter exploded. The hashtag “lynching” has been trending all day and people from across the political spectrum have professed their horror at the president’s latest show of racial provocation.

Responding to the president’s incendiary comments, Democratic presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris said, “Lynching is a reprehensible stain on this nation's history, as is this President. We'll never erase the pain and trauma of lynching, and to invoke that torture to whitewash your own corruption is disgraceful.”

She’s right. Between 1877 and 1950, more than 4,400 black people were lynched in America, including women and children. The lynchings mostly happened in the Jim Crow south, where segregation and disenfranchisement laws provided the framework for codified laws of racial apartheid that dominated this country for nearly a century beginning in the 1890’s.

Trump’s cleanup team quickly took to the media to try and undo his comments, arguing that he has done a lot for black people and that the problem wasn’t what he said, rather than the media not liking how he says it. Needless to say, it was unconvincing.

I spoke with Dr Koritha Mitchell, an associate professor in the Department of English at Ohio State University, who studies lynching in this America, when I heard of the president’s remarks. She told me: “When I read the tweet what I found astonishing was the pattern of appropriating civil rights language for sinister means. This idea that the media doesn’t like the language and that’s all is ludicrous. Racial violence in this country is never based on ignorance. They’re not ignorant about what will be painful – that’s why they use that specific language. So, suggesting that it’s not on purpose is ridiculous. That’s how racial aggression works: ‘I can always remind you of your proper place’. It’s about terror and intimidation, or even just ‘know your place’. This casual way of how he offends everybody is a reminder that, as a straight white man, he has a license to do that. Lynching is the foundation of the political system we have right now and all you can do is feel outraged because there won’t be any real ramifications for his words.”

Racial terrorism is a major issue in this country today. In July, three University of Mississippi students posed with guns in front of a bullet-riddled sign honoring civil rights icon Emmett Till, who was abducted, tortured and murdered in 1955 at the age of 14. In May 2017, Lieutenant Richard Collins III was stabbed and murdered in a racially motivated hate crime while waiting for an Uber on the University of Maryland Campus.

That same year, white supremacists boldly marched with torches in the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia, in a demonstration of racial terrorism which ended in the death of Heather Heyer, who was murdered when a white supremacist drove his car through a group of peaceful counter-protesters.

With a different president this could be, as they say in schools, a “teachable moment”. A moment when one commits an error, but the error gives rise to the opportunity to learn from the mistake, to reassess. In an ideal world, Trump and his acolytes would pay a visit to Alabama to learn about what lynching in America truly was and how the thousands of lynchings of black people continue to affect the lives of Americans and the political system of this country in 2019. They could visit the National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, Alabama, where over 800 steel monuments represent each county in the United States where a racial terror lynching happened. The names of the victims are engraved on the columns. Trump would be moved to tears and repent from his legacy of hatred and divisiveness – he would change course on domestic and foreign policy, quit taunting his political opponents with anti-Semitic insults like “shifty Shiff” and embrace religious, ethnic and political diversity.

But that is not the man we have in the White House. He doesn’t apologize. He doesn’t learn or change – but he is not ignorant. His comments today had a purpose: to threaten and intimidate his political opponents and to victimize himself. Yet another reason to make his impeachment the number one political priority for the next two years.