The shocking election of business tycoon, right winger, Donald Trump as the next President of United States of America a few days ago, is likely to herald an era in which the ethnic and religious minorities in America will face hardships as the law enforcement and other agencies of the government and their various programs may be scaled down. Instead of following the laws and regulations, authoritarian tendencies and police high -handedness may become the norm. The super wealthy and the white supremacists may receive favourable treatment from the governmwent at the cost of the masses of the working classes.
The major minority communities like Blacks, Hispanics. Muslims and immigrants from the third world will probably be targeted by the Trump administration at the beck and call of the right winger Whites, who formed the core of the one-third Americans who supported the election campaign of Donald Trump.
In fact since the day Trump's election was announced massive street protests are occurring in some of the largest US cities like New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Dallas, San Francisco, Washington DC. In TV shows and discussions a large number of senior leaders of the minorities and immigrants have vowed to stand up and fight the injustice from the Trump administration. I am addressing the situation from a few likely angles below.
Will Trump be a good administrator without much experience in government?
The civilian workforce of the US government is about 2.8 million. This is other than the US military personnel. And there are a large number of departments and agencies. The President has to manage them in an indirect and politically sensitive manner by considerable delegation of authority. He has no experience in making policies and by temperament he is authoritarian. He wants all of his orders implemented fully without any criticism. Having such a personality may result in much turmoil in the upper levels of White House and US
How will it affect immigrants?
Trump is a White supremacist with racist thinking. Most of his supporters, like Rudy Guliani, Newt Gingrich, David Duke etc are also racists and they want the US President to take the American nation and society to what it was before World War II, a White supremacist society where all colored people and third world immigrants will be treated like second class citizens. As President, Trump may impose harsh conditions on the entry of third world colored people into US. He may also stop giving immigrant visas to the brothers and sisters of colred immigrants who are US citizens.
Will racism increase in the country?
Yes, racism is likely to increase much in US since most of Trump's supporters are racists and he himself has practiced racism most of his life in his social and business practices. Most likely he will appoint racists like himself as his cabinet secretaries and other senior government officials. He is also likely to make the police far more brutal towards colored citizens of US. This may lead to frequent racial riots and much turmoil in US.
If Trump gives a green signal for a campaign against Muslims, it may affect all religious minorities
Trump has already announced that as President he will put severe restrictions on the 4 million Muslim citizens of US, their places of worship, schools, housing subdivisions etc. He is likely to put similar restrictions on Sinkhs, Hindus, Buddhists etc as most of those people are not from the Abrahamanic faith. And the many White racists in US who are Trump's supporters think of the non-Abrahamanic people as deviant and evil.
Will Indians be treated with fairness in the Trump administration?
Trump's life history shows that he is an extreme opportunist who made friends with people in order to gain something. Once that was done he dumped them. This is how he has behaved with his his former business associates and partners. Since the Hindu extremist group RSS-USA is supporting him in the election he has made some Hindu-friendly remarks. But we can not forget that in the past Trump has ridiculed many customs and traditions of the Hindu religion and the pantheon of gods and goddesses that is the core belief of Hindus. As President Trump will most likely cut off most outsourcing of contacts and jobs to India and drastically slash the grant of H1-B visas to engineers from India, that is presently helping a lot of them find jobs in US.
[The writer is a community activist in Washington DC]
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