White normalcy in Trump's America

Data journalist and sharp observer Philip Bump took a buy-out from the shrinking, Bezos-trashed Washington Post -- and did the smart thing: he took his family on a road trip in Canada. He wondered if the experience of coming home might be a hassle. Donald Trump's border cops are enjoying a new freedom to lord it over us all; would they come after him?

I was curious what would happen when we tried to reenter the country. I am not an important person, but I am someone who has been at odds with the administration and the Department of Homeland Security particularly. Depending on the extent of the government’s pettiness, some difficulty or delays didn’t seem impossible.

Here, too, I imagined a much worse scenario than would manifest. We pulled up to a checkpoint on a rural road south of Montreal and had a pleasant conversation with the agent in the booth. ... The agent welcomed us back to the U.S. and sent us on our way.

I can identify with that anxiety as I am sure quite a few Americans can. It's not new to many people of color; most of us who are white have never felt it. (Though I did sometimes, when on George W. Bush's no fly list.)

But Bump's reflections really encapsulate the anomalous position that comfortable white Americans can find ourselves in these days -- at least those of us not living in cities where Trump has brought in "his" troops.

Is normalcy the norm or the exception? Are exceptional events exceptions or the emerging norm? Are my dreams and fears a reflection of my own derangements or of rational consideration of what’s happening?

Or are they just a function of me? We can draw a clear line between what’s happening to me and people like me — primarily meaning White people — and what’s happening to others. ...

My sons have a Mexican great-grandparent and a Native American great-grandparent; if they and I looked more like my wife’s grandmother would our return to the U.S. have been different? It seems clear that our day to day lives would be.

It seems almost certain that this era will substantially shift America’s measurement of its population. 

When the government that’s hyperactively rounding up Hispanic people in particular knocks on your door and asks someone their race, there will be a natural tendency for more people to self-identify as White. 

America had gotten better about recognizing the malleability of these designators. The second Trump era will probably reverse that trend dramatically.

For other Americans, normalcy will remain the norm, helping them maintain sense of distance from what’s happening everywhere else. .... Other people will be separated from their kids by people not wearing any badges at all. 

America is both of those things now, a place where the vacation is ongoing and a place where it has suddenly ended. 

If Trump succeeds in crashing the economy through erratic and crackpot gyrations, more of us will notice that. 

Bump concludes that more regular citizens who can pass as White will see advantage in doing so. (Black people don't get to play, as usual; I bet Trump still thinks DC is Chocolate City, though that is no longer demographically true.) 

But there's another vision of what it means to be an American -- the one about the aspiration for liberty and justice for all -- and that is what we must strive for, if we're to come out of this terrible time.