“Don’t worry, pretty lady. I’ll make sure to use a good, strong lock to keep the niggers out.”

He smiled. I blinked. Fifteen years ago, I was moving into my third-floor condo in the French Quarter of New Orleans, Louisiana. I’d hired a neighborhood locksmith to re-key the locks. The place was the size of a postage stamp but it was all mine and it had an extraordinary view. Below me was a lush courtyard where weddings took place. If I stood on my tiptoes, carefully leaned over the wooden dish rack with mismatched dishes and looked out my tiny kitchen window, I could see the Mississippi River.

As the locksmith worked in the open doorway, the trilling chords of the calliope from a steamboat clung to the cold river air and crossed the threshold, drifting inside, chilling the room.

The word had been given no special weight among the rest. The man’s eyes kind. His skin white, his belly thick, his hands bruised and scarred. He was missing a finger. He reached into his worn leather bag and withdrew a heavy deadbolt. Bigger than the one I had.

https://medium.com/@katstory/when-the-racist-is-someone-you-know-and-love-2933c7049182

President Trump’s reluctance to issue a direct, full-throated condemnation of the white supremacist violence in Charlottesville continues to be scrutinized for clues to Trump’s personal sympathies (his racism and white nationalism) and to his political imperatives (his need to avoid alienating hard-core elements of his base at a time when scandals are closing in and his unpopularity has driven him into the danger zone).

But that reluctance should also be looked at against the backdrop of a broader pattern that has taken shape, one that could have serious policy consequences for the country. Trump has been dramatically inflating certain types of threats (those posed by immigrants and migrants from majority-Muslim countries) while playing down or failing to acknowledge the seriousness of other ones (those posed by domestic right-wing extremists and potential Russian sabotage of upcoming elections).

Two new pieces make this pattern starkly clear:

First, Trump continually exaggerates the threat posed by immigration. The Post’s Michelle Ye Hee Lee reports on a new Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that has been filed against Trump’s Justice Department. To summarize, the lawsuit seeks to establish whether Trump lied in a speech to Congress this year when he claimed that according to administration data, “the vast majority of individuals convicted of terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country.”

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Second, Trump appears to be reluctant to confront the far-right fringe threat — and the Russian threat to future elections. NBC News’s Benjy Sarlin talked to multiple experts who have concluded that Trump needs to more aggressively confront white supremacist groups who, they believe, have been energized by his rise. They are demanding that his administration roll out a comprehensive plan to try to contain this trend. Meanwhile, a memo from the FBI and DHS that was obtained by Foreign Policy warned this spring that white supremacist groups carried out more attacks than any other domestic extremist group in recent years and “will continue to pose a threat of lethal violence over the next year.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/plum-line/wp/2017/08/15/an-ugly-pattern-is-taking-shape-trump-exaggerates-certain-threats-he-downplays-other-ones/?utm_term=.91a7c52a5e85