Biden-Harris and race

By Deauwand Myers

On Jan. 6, the world witnessed a shocking scene unfold at America's Capitol. The building, which stood through the Civil War and two World Wars unscathed, was ransacked by a horde of white domestic terrorists, fueled by the big lie Donald Trump had loudly and consistently pushed in speeches and online for months prior to the presidential election: his electoral defeat was a fraud; he lost the election due to a vast conspiracy to change, add, or delete votes and steal his rightful victory.

What became clear over the proceeding weeks was the danger and depravity on display during this failed and bloody coup attempt. The former Vice President Michael Pence, Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi (second in line to the presidency), the president pro tempore (the most senior member of the U.S. senate and third in line to the presidency) Patrick Leahy, and Vice President-elect Kamala Harris were all in the building at the time of the insurrection and feet away from the violent mob.

Had the white supremacist terrorists been able to capture some or all of the aforementioned elected officials, it would have been the most serious breach of American national security since Pearl Harbor, made all the more embarrassing by the lack of preparation and competence from America's national security apparatus, all told costing U.S. taxpayers nearly $2 trillion annually.

The depravity of these pro-Trump seditionists was immortalized in technicolor for everyone to see. Anti-Semitic T-shirts, Confederate flags, hand-made gallows constructed outside to hang politicians, guns, and profanity in spray paint, human feces, urine, and vandalism were all in this mix of what, for many people, was a strange and harrowing nightmare.

What fuels the Republican Party, Trump supporters included, is what it has been for generations. White supremacy, and the attendant xenophobia, religious bigotry, and disdain for human rights (except for white men) have been in the guts of the GOP at least since President Herbert Hoover. Again, no one was surprised of who showed up at that attempted coup Jan. 6, nor the reasoning behind it. Many Republicans cannot abide people of color and women outvoting them to defeat their unpopular presidential incumbent and give the entire body of America's federal, elected government to the Democrats.

The Biden-Harris administration has the Herculean task in unraveling and attempting to dismantle the ever-growing web of dangerous, well-armed far right-wing groups throughout the sprawling hinterlands and towns of Main Street U.S. We cannot fetishize or romanticize Trump and company as some aberration, an asterisk in history soon to be subsumed by America's moral character.

No. President Joe Biden, and even more so Vice President Kamala Harris, know that the biggest threat to national security is not Islamic fascism, a strengthening, and increasingly violent China, or a recalcitrant Russia. The vast majority of terrorist acts done on American soil are done by other Americans, usually white men in cells or alone.

The disturbing trend of organized white supremacist, anti-government, neo-fascist groups increasing in number and sophistication began at the end of the Clinton administration. Under Obama, these groups saw interest in their ideology swell, and with the advent of the internet and the dark web, these groups could radicalize and recruit from a large pool of individuals disaffected with society and enamored with the faux-glory of violent revolution and the preservation of a white America.

During the Obama-Biden administration, the growing numbers of these radical groups was studied and noted by the Justice Department, but for political reasons (mainly that Obama is black, to be honest) it was deemed inconvenient to seriously engage the threat, and certainly not in a public fashion.

President Biden suffers no such affliction. The Biden-Harris Justice Department has already created a task force and garnered new resources in rooting out, and where necessary, prosecuting white supremacist groups. Unlike Trump's Justice Department, which in many ways downplayed white extremism because it was and is a source of political support for the GOP, Biden, and with Vice President Harris advising him, has made it one of his foremost priorities to combat the scourge of violent white extremism in all its forms, and because of his age, race, and long political tenure, no one can seriously say Biden is pursuing racial justice with ulterior motives.

The Biden-Harris administration cannot eliminate white supremacy in one term of office or four. Internalized racism is a matter of the heart. What the administration can do is use the vast resources of the federal government to award contracts and furnish more business loans to black businesses, better fund historically black colleges, and pursue every legal means to extricate violent white extremism from American politics and civil society. And from what I have observed thus far, our government is beginning to do all of these and more.

Deauwand Myers (deauwand@hotmail.com) holds a master's degree in English literature and literary theory, and is an English professor outside Seoul. The views expressed in the above article are the author's own and do not reflect the editorial direction of The Korea Times.