NYT Op-Ed: 'Unsafe' to 'Trust' 'Violent' Whites in Trump's America

November 13th, 2017 3:53 PM

“Can my children be friends with black people?” Imagine opening Sunday’s New York Times and reading this racist headline. Well that’s exactly what the leading liberal newspaper in the country approved of enough to print in their paper yesterday, save for one word.

The obnoxious op-ed actually read, “Can my children be friends with white people?” and the black law professor author responsible for the salacious headline quickly answers his own question: Absolutely not. Can you guess the reason?

Donald Trump’s election has made it clear that I will teach my boys the lesson generations old...I will teach them to be cautious, I will teach them suspicion, and I will teach them distrust,” the author, Ekow N. Yankah, admitted, sharing a conversation he had with his 4-year-old son about last Summer’s racially-based riots in Charlottesville, Virginia.

Yankah argued that with the election of President Trump, his white “apologists” have made it clear that whites as a whole have “contempt” for blacks, and so they should have no part in his own young sons’ lives.

Much sooner than I thought I would, I will have to discuss with my boys whether they can truly be friends with white people,” he wrote.

Going forward, Yankah argued that this “single vote” has become a line in the sand for him and his family. Writing to those white people who voted for Trump, but do not view themselves as racists, Yankah “assures” them, they can never be friends, because that one vote is the ultimate character flaw:

But the deepest rift is with the apologists, the “good” Trump voters, the white people who understand that Mr. Trump says “unfortunate” things but support him because they like what he says on jobs and taxes. They bristle at the accusation that they supported racism, insisting they had to ignore Mr. Trump’s ugliness...they say, politics — a single vote — does not mean we can’t be friends.

I do not write this with liberal condescension or glee. My heart is unbearably heavy when I assure you we cannot be friends….Don’t misunderstand: White Trump supporters and people of color can like one another. But real friendship?

One wondered where this lands all the black men and Hispanics that voted for Trump, in higher numbers than they did Mitt Romney. Do they also deserved to be shunned, in the author’s mind? Or is it just about skin color?

If that weren’t partisan and petty enough, Yankah got more dire, warning that not only should his sons stay far away from white people, they should also fear white people, who are sinister figures only out to harm them.

For African-Americans, race has become a proxy not just for politics but also for decency. White faces are swept together, ominous anxiety behind every chance encounter at the airport or smiling white cashier. If they are not clearly allies, they will seem unsafe to me.

Just think for a minute if this had been a white author writing this about Muslim men or women wearing hijabs, and how offensive these stanzas would be to The New York Times.

But Yankah continued painting with the broadest brush he can find, stating more strongly now that he would teach his boys the apparent virtue of racism, as long as it’s against white people, who’s hearts are only filled with anti-black violence:

As against our gauzy national hopes, I will teach my boys to have profound doubts that friendship with white people is possible. When they ask, I will teach my sons that their beautiful hue is a fault line. Spare me platitudes of how we are all the same on the inside. I first have to keep my boys safe, and so I will teach them before the world shows them this particular brand of rending, violent, often fatal betrayal.

Yankah ended his offensive piece by undermining his whole argument, noting that his wife is bi-racial, and seen as white to strangers. Yet somehow Yankah asked his sons and minority readers to pre-judge every white person they see, simply based off of the color of their skin. Clearly Yankah didn't even hold himself to the same standard.

But hypocrisy is nothing new to leftist writers at The New York Times, who bemoan Trump’s “divisive” and “hateful” rhetoric on a daily basis while using their op-ed section to share hateful, racist drivel like this.