By Chris Powell
For the sake of argument stipulate that Donald Trump is the most repulsive creature to walk the Earth since the dinosaurs. But that doesn’t mean he is always wrong or that his adversaries are always right. Contrary to what his adversaries are trying to construe from what they consider Trump’s repulsiveness, it doesn’t mean that it was right for the Biden administration to stop enforcing immigration law, instigate the war in Ukraine, or order states to let males impersonating females use female restrooms.
Nor does it mean that Trump is racist for making a point involving the race and ethnicity of his rival for president, Vice President Kamala Harris, or that he was racist for his remark 30 years ago in protest of the government’s awarding casino licenses according to race and ethnicity, a remark made in reference to Connecticut: that is, “They don’t look like Indians to me.”
Racism is the subordination of people because of their race or ethnicity and denying them rights enjoyed by everyone else.
So Trump didn’t commit racism last week when he noted that in her earlier political campaigns, in California, Harris emphasized her south Asian Indian ancestry while she now is emphasizing her Black ancestry. Why she is doing this is obviously political and involves Trump.
When President Biden was expected to be the Democratic nominee for another term as president, his party was losing its lock on the Black vote because of the weakness of the national economy and a surprising number of Blacks were expressing support for Trump. So it is more politic now for Harris to stress her Black ancestry instead of her south Asian Indian ancestry. Harris will be making many similar adjustments to escape her extreme-left record.
Trump was explicit last week that he wasn’t disparaging Harris’ ancestry; he said both aspects of it were fine with him. Instead he was highlighting her political opportunism.
If journalism wasn’t so biased in favor of the political left it might acknowledge that Harris doesn’t deserve the political credit she is seeking for her ethnicities. For they caused her no trouble in her rise in politics in California, an extremely liberal state, nor in her rise in national politics. Indeed, she wouldn’t be stressing her ethnicities now if she didn’t think they conferred advantages.
Even so, Trump may have been mistaken tactically to make an issue of this, since he should have known that his adversaries would try to twist Harris’ opportunism into his racism and misrepresent his point. But Trump has yet to learn that some points, while perfectly fair, aren’t worth the trouble of making, especially when most news organizations are sworn to destroy you.
As for Indian casinos, the federal law that authorized them was meant to redress the general poverty of Indian tribes and the prejudice their members still suffered in many places. The law was a grant of racial and ethnic privilege — a politically correct form of racism — and in Connecticut it was exploited by two Indian tribes whose members long had fully assimilated into the state’s life, had not suffered prejudice for decades, and were not impoverished. Most were middle class.
But political correctness and cynical politics gained a lucrative casino duopoly for them and they quickly got rich, though they deserved far less compensation for injustices to their ancestors than Blacks and Puerto Ricans in Connecticut’s cities did.
That’s what Trump meant when, seeking a casino license in Bridgeport but lacking the necessary ancestry, he said, “They don’t look like Indians to me.” That is, Connecticut’s casino Indians didn’t look like the sort of Indians everyone imagined when the government decided to award casino licenses as racial and ethnic patronage dressed up as social justice.
They still don’t look like they were ever oppressed, but now that they are rich, politically influential, big employers, and major advertisers with news organizations, the racket is beyond criticism.
Chris Powell has written about Connecticut government and politics for many years. (CPowell@cox.net)
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Chris Powell column 
I seem to remember the Connecticut Education Association was worried about the possibility of a casino ruining the lives of compulsive gamblers and their families. That concern disappeared when it was arranged for casino money to be spent on education and teacher salaries.
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