Every January as I move to the teaching of another senior English elective, I am filled with appreciative anticipation of sharing my classroom with a new group of students. This semester, as in many before, I turn my attention to Race, Identity, and America, a co-taught exploration of Race in America and how each of us comes to an awareness of who we are, and, hopefully, to an acceptance of how others identify themselves in the broad tapestry and defining crucible of this nation.

During the semester, current events often insert themselves into the readings and into our discourse… but not always as quickly or traumatically as President Trump’s comments last week when he decided to extend his racism and xenophobia to Haiti and the entire continent of Africa. In considering Trump’s intolerant remarks as well as the topic of our course, I wrote the following to the class:

“It provides me no pleasure, as a former Republican, as a white man, and, most importantly, as an American, to call President Trump’s remarks racist and to assess his comments for what they are: an impulsive outburst of racism borne from the White Privilege and prejudice that he learned long ago and which he still carries in his head and in his heart.”

The Italians have an idiomatic saying: “After a fat pope, a thin pope.” Unfortunately the American adaptation of this saying seems to be: “After a Black president, a racist president.” Whereas the Italian version acknowledges diverse skills of different men as they become stewards of the papacy, the presidency of Donald Trump appears to mark that, far from Post-racial, America is slouching back into some Faulknerian sin of inevitable racism as a political norm. Worst of all, unlike previous Presidents of both parties who employed racial division of infamous “dog whistles” like States Rights, welfare queens, and Willie Horton etc. to become elected but then attempted to unite and to subsequently lead the nation, Trump seems eager to wade into divisive moments brandishing his White Nationalism as a bastardized form of true patriotism. The examples are many, but no list of his racist rhetorical touch is complete without mentioning Birtherism, Charlottesville, Black Lives Matter and Colin Kapernick, and, of course The Wall.

And now this… “shithole countries”… or as Republican apologists seem eager to suggest in their accusations of “misrepresentation”… maybe it was “shithouse countries.” What a shame. The remark, in whatever utterance you choose, simultaneously calls into question some of our most essential national myths and pulls the veil to reveal some of our most destructive realities. How do we uphold the messages of the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island when the President of the United States wants to redefine immigration as ruthlessly stringent to those from Haiti and far more welcoming to those from Norway? How do we defend the dream of full equality or counter the conclusion that White supremacy has reasserted itself when the President himself engages in racist language and enacts discriminatory policy? How can America be an international leader when its elected leader is seen as a scourge whose bigotry encompasses all those who are racially “other” to him?

So I return to the classroom tomorrow, one day after we honor Martin Luther King Jr., a day President Trump may have marked with ugly and antagonistic tweets or a round of golf. However, I will find hope and challenge and possibility in co-teaching my Race class with my former student, my colleague, and my friend Edgar DeLeon. My note to my students finished with this: “Let’s hope that our time together will provide us all with better understanding, tolerance, and acceptance than that which President Trump has demonstrated.”