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Trump’s ‘Southern White House’ Recalls The Days Of Slavery

Published on: February 19, 2017 at 6:55 PM
By Christine Liwag Dixon

Donald Trump dubbed his Mar-a-Lago resort “The Southern White House” on Saturday, drawing ire from multiple fronts.

President Trump, who has also referred to his private club as “the winter White House,” according to The New Civil Rights Movement, has people worried that the Trump’s insistence on maintaining multiple homes will come at a hefty cost to taxpayers.

But that’s not the only concerning thing about the tweet Trump posted on Saturday with the new nickname. “The Southern White House” just so happens to be the term the Confederate states used during the Civil War for the home of Jefferson Davis, the president of the Confederacy.

While it is almost certain that Trump did not consider the historical implications of calling Mar-a-Lago “The Southern White House,” the new moniker is not sitting well with people who are already critical of Trump’s rocky record with racial minorities.

Considering that Trump’s presidential campaign was endorsed by the official newspaper of the white supremacist Ku Klux Klan, any ties to the slave-holding states of the Confederacy will only further damage Trump’s image in a time where racial tensions are escalating.

Twitter users were quick to pick up on the new name, and they were not happy about it.

At the beginning of Black History Month , “the president made some strange observations about Douglass and Martin Luther King, but mostly talked about himself,” reported The Atlantic .

In the speech, meant to commemorate the contributions of African-Americans to the United States, Donald Trump made some rambling remarks about historical figures before veering completely off topic.

“I am very proud now that we have a museum on the National Mall where people can learn about Reverend King, so many other things, Frederick Douglass is an example of somebody who’s done an amazing job and is getting recognized more and more, I notice. Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and millions more black Americans who made America what it is today. Big impact.

After this, Trump began “talking about some of his favorite subjects: CNN, himself, and his feud with CNN.”

Trump has also been criticized for his travel ban, which put a temporary restriction on immigration from seven Muslim-majority countries in an executive order which partially filled a campaign promise on his website “for a total and complete shutdown of Muslims entering the United States.”

President Trump’s immigration crackdown led to nationwide protests last week as businesses shut down as part of the “Day Without Immigrants” movement.

Many people consider the southern states of America to be a bastion of racism. Less than two years ago, a heated controversy centered on the flying of the Confederate flag swept the nation. While defenders of the flag viewed the emblem as the historical representation of the region, its opponents declared it a symbol of slavery and oppression.

While it is undoubtedly a complex issue with an even more complex history, the fact remains that there are millions of Americans who view the Confederacy as an empire of xenophobia. It is an alliance that Trump would do well to avoid if he does not want to alienate his constituents.

[Featured Image by Joe Raedle/Getty Images]

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