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Donald Trump evokes terror and forces people to face their darkest fears. What is most terrifying is he no longer reserves his hostility for a single group; we are all a potential target. Previous presidents have protected the fears of white Americans, which allows them to feel safe and not a target, by practicing a form of White discrimination that identifies a clear target of hate. And for many years, Black Americans were that target. However, now the target of hostility is no longer discriminate. Instead, everyone is a target of indiscriminate hatred. This is the equivalent of moving from a sniper's rifle to a shotgun.
Trump’s presidency has altered one of the central features of the National psyche from white discrimination to white indiscrimination. To provide a better understanding of Trump’s impact on the country’s psyche, we need a new term to analyze whiteness. I’d like to introduce the term “white indiscrimination” as an emerging concept that outlines a contemporary analysis of white discrimination. Professionals and philosophers of the mind must seriously examine this concept and its rippling effects.
What may not seem as obvious is that Trump's presidency has actually delivered Black Americans a gift. Trump has fostered a new culture of white indiscrimination. Before exploring this term, let’s consider the term discrimination in its historical context and white discrimination in contemporary times to provide context for white indiscrimination.
This resurgence of white terror dynamics we are seeing today suggest white power was the key to success and power in America. Black people were always an aggressive target of hatred and racism. It was seen throughout the Nixon years with the war on crime, in the Regan and Bush years with the war on drugs, and the Clinton years with the expansion of the criminal justice system. Trump’s campaign slogan, “Make America Great Again,” went beyond Black Americans as inferior in this country and made clear that everyone has inferiorities. Making America great again might just be occurring, but it is hard to see as we are in the throes of the chaos.
Discrimination has been well defined. However, its use is often mentioned with a negative connotation. As a function of the mind, discrimination allows one the ability to make distinctions, to separate out, and to orient oneself to the world around them. It might be more apropos to state that discrimination itself is healthy, and the use of it can be unhealthy.
In a racial context, the term discrimination carries the effect that one has applied a preset of stereotypes and narratives about a person from a generalized thought or experience. In this context, discrimination is problematic because it is restrictive. It doesn’t allow for one to experience the flexibility of thought and test the reality of their immediate experience juxtaposed to their metanarrative. Further to the problem is the difficulty of integrating a new narrative or adjusting to one’s previous narrative based on experience.
Racial trauma, like any trauma, is reified by inflexibility of thought, failure to appropriate or incorporate new aspects of experience into one’s narrative, and house significant dynamics around trust, betrayal, and doubt. Inappropriate discrimination provides safety in one respect, but it also comes with a cost. One that can’t appropriately discriminate will likely suffer greatly internally, but they will also experience great difficulty with psychological growth.
In short, trauma stunts growth. And inappropriate discrimination is one of the impediments to progress. Racial discrimination implies one restricts their hostile aim of inferiority towards a person. In doing this, one simultaneously, perhaps conscious or unconscious, houses the belief that others are superior and good.
Currently, all Americans are now forced to join Black Americans in living with the ramifications of this country’s racial trauma. Trump has re-opened many wounds in how he shows no respect of persons for religion in how he approaches Muslims, nationality in how he approaches Mexicans, gender in how he grabs women by their private parts, lack of ability in how he mocks disabled persons, and wealthy male elites in how he transgresses their social norms by revealing secrets of the “locker room and the board room.”
In the above paragraph, indiscrimination implies that no one group is the sole target of hatred and racism. In a racial context, no one’s racial group is targeted. In fact, all groups are examined. More than examining them, they are afforded the position of inferiority and seen as potential threats. Under Trump’s presidency, White Americans do not only look at Black Americans as problematic but many other groups including themselves. This article highlights that Trump has fostered a culture of white on white hatred and bigotry not seen before at this level. That the reconciliation of trauma requires the retrieval of projection. The turning back onto white Americans is that process. This is a major opportunity to grapple with and resolve projected hatred as much as possible.
There are multiple possible outcomes to this psychic path and trajectory. Here, I will speak to two.
One, if this path continues, this could lead to a dystopia. In this context, dystopia is a result of imbalance, a breakdown of group solidarity. In the formation and function of groups, there has to be a singular identity and an identified other. The loss of the two causes disorientation and leads to chaos. This would capture the first portion of the subtitle of regression. However, if regulated, chaos precedes order.
Two, this could lead to a better union. On the path of traumatic growth, indiscrimination precedes orientation. One moves from inappropriate discrimination to indiscrimination to healthy discrimination. This is often captured by persons expressing the essence of feeling “crazy.” Perhaps our country is at that point of emotional expression and feeling state. I would opine that indiscrimination helps to reorder one’s narrative about others and themselves. For example, who is good and safe and who is not. There is not an automatic assumption of kinsman based on precepts. This forces one to live by immediate experience with a person versus by their metanarrative. Their immediate experience is allowed to challenge their metanarrative and rearrange it.
In closing, I want to invite readers to consider the process this country is going through overall and in reference to the long-standing history versus isolated moments. Consider that discrimination and indiscrimination are both needed for growth and how one uses them likely matters more than the use itself. We can’t take for granted our membership to a group or racial group, and we should continue the work of reflection and introspection of our immediate experience with ourselves and others; not to rehearse a narrative about others and ourselves. In order to have racial progress, white Americans must consider that they too have struggles and can’t escape narratives purported about other groups. White Americans are not immune to racial harm, which is something that the notion of white privilege supposes. The cost to White Americans, now more than ever, is that if they do nothing racism will turn back on them from others, including White Americans.
I invite you to consider that racial progress is first and foremost about becoming human each and every day. That all humans have strengths and vulnerabilities. The tenets of what it means to be human apply to all and not a few. And Trump’s indiscriminatory psychology has demonstrated that and serves as a model of maybe how not to be, but of how one can use indiscrimination to further their racial journey.
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Dr. Chris Winfrey is the Medical Director at New Image Wellness Private Practice and is a member of the American Psychiatric Association, American Medical Association, & American Psychoanalytic Association.
