I think American racism is a lot like having a tiger as a pet.

Tigers have a well-deserved reputation as killers. Nevertheless, there are some people who believe that the tiger’s predatory instincts can be managed and minimized by raising them in a non-violent environment where their next meal doesn’t rely on what they can kill. Indeed, there are tigers who are born in captivity and trained and cared for by human owners who are as gentle as housecats.

But as tame as tigers might appear, they are still tigers and therefore still dangerous. Every year, lots of people get mauled by “tame” tigers.

Most of us probably thought we had managed to tame the tiger of racism in our country, beginning with the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s. Subsequent efforts to provide opportunities for minorities through affirmative action programs, fair housing laws, judicial oversight over state election laws that diluted or discouraged minority voting strength and educational and workplace programs that promoted diversity, equity and inclusion made a pet out of a predator.

It wasn’t all that long ago that what racism still existed was practiced by hicks, morons, unrepentant Confederates and neo-Nazi clowns. Since they held no real power, they weren’t dangerous.

Or so we thought.

It should be beginning to dawn on us that the tiger of racism is still a tiger and still dangerous.

Racism is making a comeback and is as close to mainstream as it has been since the days of Jim Crow.

It’s hard to establish when that change began, but one major event was the Supreme Court’s 2013 decision in Shelby County v. Holder to revoke the part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act that required states with a history of discrimination (virtually all of the Southern states) to submit all changes to election procedures, including new congressional and district maps, to the Department of Justice for review, something called preclearance. The jurisdiction bore the burden of proving the change was free of discrimination.

Almost immediately, many states made changes that diluted minority voting strength or made it more difficult for that demographic to vote.

Most recently, a badly compromised Supreme Court ruled in favor of Texas’ redistricting maps designed to create a greater Republican majority. The court agreed the maps were, in fact, partisan, but not racist, even though diluting minority voting was the means by which those extra GOP districts were created.

Conservative state legislatures have banned teaching critical race theory and ended Diversity Equity and Inclusion initiatives in state-control agencies, including education. What was a point of pride and enlightenment – a few years ago Steel Dynamics put out a press release when it was ranked among the top 100 companies in embracing DEI – is suddenly a dirty word.

The Trump administration did at the federal level as the states had done at the state level.

Universities were forced to end DEI programs and policies. At Mississippi State, the Holmes Center for Cultural Diversity (since renamed) was eviscerated. Last week, The University of Alabama suspended publication of two long-running, student-run magazines, the female oriented “Alice” and Black student publication “Nineteen Fifty-Six,” citing concerns over compliance with federal and state anti-DEI guidelines.

President Trump has instructed The National Park Service to eliminate free admission at national parks on holidays important to Black citizens – MLK Day and Juneteenth – while offering free admission on President Trump’s birthday instead.

Trump recently called Somali refugees from a bloody civil war, “garbage” who he did not want in the country.

A couple of days later, a TikTok video captured a white female employee at a Wisconsin Cinnabon store unleashing a tirade of racial slurs toward two Black customers. She wasn’t anything subtle about her racist, either: “I am racist and I’ll say it to the whole entire world,” she says on the video.

When the company fired her for her comments, a GoFundMe campaign raised $118,000 for the self-avowed racist.

The Trump adminstration has halted all immigration except for a group of white “Afrikaners,” who it says are the subject of “white genocide,” although there is little to substantiate the claim.

U.S. policy now prioritizes a group that remains among South Africa’s most economically privileged, while simultaneously implementing some of the lowest refugee caps on record and freezing asylum programs for refugees from war-torn, non-white nations like the Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia, Latin America and Afghanistan.

Let’s be honest: We have a whites-only immigration policy.

It is 2025, but it might as well be 1925.

It used to be that when we heard someone complaining about “reverse racism” or “white persecution,” we chuckled about their backward attitude and dismissed them as white trash.

Now, it’s mainstream.

The tiger isn’t nearly as tame as we once thought.

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

Slim Smith is a columnist and feature writer for The Dispatch. His email address is [email protected].

READER FAVORITES

• 

  Roses and thorns: 6-27-26

  By Dispatch Editorial Board • 2 days ago