OPINION: Trump’s dilemma about ethnic labeling of people never ends

Amid the blizzard of breaking news, a familiar irritation poked through: ethnic labeling.

The issue unexpectedly emerged this week while the Senate considered a stopgap federal funding bill to keep the federal government running and avoid a possible shutdown.

After Trump said Democrats would be blamed and taxes would surge if Democrats didn’t vote for the bill, he suddenly lashed out at Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-New York, in an Oval Office meeting Wednesday.

“Schumer is a Palestinian, as far as I’m concerned. He’s become a Palestinian,” Trump said. “He used to be Jewish. He’s not Jewish anymore. He’s a Palestinian.”

Say what? Where did that come from?

Sure, like anyone else who has been following this president very closely, I was shocked but sadly not surprised.

Had Trump run out of things to say about the budget and taxes when a thought about the Middle East suddenly came to mind, sending him wandering away from the issues at hand?

Unfortunately, this is hardly the first instance of Trump questioning a political critic’s ethnic or racial identity. As you may recall, his comments last week echoed his whoppers about then-Democratic vice-presidential candidate Kamala Harris in 2020 and about Barack Obama during his presidency. Trump saw fit to question whether Obama and Harris were even natural born American citizens.

In August 2024, during an interview at the National Association of Black Journalists conference, Trump falsely asserted that Harris had not identified before as both Black and Indian.

“I didn’t know she was Black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn Black and now, she wants to be known as Black. So, I don’t know, is she Indian or is she Black?” Trump said during the NABJ interview.

Suddenly Trump took a topic that is so vexing for many that they try to avoid it, and turned it into a topic he could try to hide behind.

Trump’s campaign spokesperson eventually acknowledged Harris is a Black woman and cited donations that Trump had made to her earlier campaigns as evidence that he is not racist.

But not everyone is easily convinced. For example, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a leading Muslim civil rights group, was among the first to express outrage that he called Schumer a Palestinian, calling Trump’s poisonous words beneath the dignity of his office — and, I would add, beneath the credibility of the chief executive in our “land of the free” and “home of the brave.”

CAIR called Trump’s use of “Palestinian” to describe Schumer a racial slur.

That’s what it sounds like to me. Trump’s feigned confusion over Harris’ Black and Indian heritage and his belittling of Schumer as somehow not Jewish adds up to the same ploy: Trump gets to decide whose identity is authentic and whose is fake.

I’m not the world’s biggest defender of diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and I believe they have so many well-known shortcomings. But it’s ironic that Trump’s critique comes from an administration that has waged a vigorous crusade against the programs without doing much to help our diverse population learn more about how to get along with each other.

Why, I often wonder, do the people who really need some DEI coaching seem to be the last to receive it?

Or when they receive it, there’s no guarantee their teacher or coach knows how to teach it without making their students or trainees feel so defensive they just want to run and hide.

Yet in a country as diverse as ours we could all benefit from hearing each other’s stories — on both sides of ethnic and racial conflicts.

Considering how durable the barriers to peaceful reconciliation can be, it is not surprising that racial and ethnic misunderstandings persist, despite the guidance of our better angels.

But we shouldn’t be surprised to see some politicians play our divisions and suspicions against each other. The best we can do is avoid those people or programs that aim to play us against each other, tribe against tribe, so we can find ways to work together.

That’s what made America really great.

Page is a member of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board and writes for Tribune Content Agency. He may be contacted at cpage47@gmail.com.

TNS