Wait, Trump Supporting Refugees?

Ohh, it's because they're white

As brutal crackdowns on immigration tear families apart, it was strange to see that the Trump administration recently chartered a plane to bring refugees into the United States. After all, Trump suspended State Department refugee programs through an executive order on the first day of his second term.

But it makes more sense when you realize those refugees are white people from South Africa. Just a few weeks after that first executive order, Trump signed a second order granting an exception to “Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” Apparently, the only valid kind of racial discrimination is discrimination against white people.

Colonialism and apartheid in South Africa are too long a story to tell in one Substack, but the simplest comparison might be America’s Jim Crow laws. Black South Africans had limited access to jobs, housing, and political office; apartheid was finally overturned in the 1990s thanks to efforts by activists like Nelson Mandela.

So with that history in mind, the idea that the only refugees currently supported by the Trump administration are white South Africans is… ludicrous. Infuriating. One can imagine that Elon Musk, a white South African himself, is the driving force behind this policy.

Compare this image of South Africans supporting Trump in February…

… to this image of immigrants in an ICE detention center.

The differences are striking.

On this week’s episode of Okay, But Why, we’re going to dive deeper into the conditions at ICE detention centers and examine why they’re detaining children. It’s a story that’s all the more upsetting given this charter plane of South Africans scheduled to arrive in the US today. Stay tuned for that episode on Wednesday.