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Donald Trump’s tweets forced the media to call out racism, but should it have happened long ago?

The US president’s words and actions are not necessarily any worse than some of the language we’ve heard from our own MPs

Kuba Shand-Baptiste
Monday 22 July 2019 01:20 BST
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Covering racism in the media has been a notoriously complex task for some time. Needlessly so, some would say, given how clear the parameters are, especially for those of us who stare it in the face regularly.

Now most of us agree: when the US president singles out four congresswomen of colour and suggests that they, American citizens, should “go home” to the countries of their heritage, calling those comments “racially tinged” just doesn’t cut it.

I’d argue that it never really did, in any circumstance. There is no lesser, “not-quite-but-almost” racism, although Donald Trump, who in the face of recent accusations denies that he is racist, would likely disagree. There are shades of severity, verbal and non-verbal signifiers, and differing types of harm. But it all falls under the same umbrella. We shouldn’t pander to the desire to rid people of the burden of being thought of as something that most understand is seen as deplorable, but which the accused still believes they should be free to express.

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