When is a refugee not a refugee? Well, apparently, according to the Left’s woke ideology, it has everything to do with race.
Recently, President Donald Trump announced his administration’s designation of white South African farmers, who are known as Afrikaners, as refugees. “It is a genocide that is taking place that you people don’t want to write about,” Trump told reporters. “It’s a terrible thing that’s taking place, and farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they are white or black makes no difference to me.”
For the Left, the whole episode is yet another example demonstrating that woke “anti-racism” is, in fact, racist. After the Trump administration named South African white farmers as a refugee group, the Episcopal Church announced the end of its nearly four-decade partnership with the federal government to help resettle refugees.
As Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe explained, “In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step.”
According to leftist woke ideology, only those who are white can truly be racist. Whites are of the oppressor group and therefore cannot truly claim racial victimization status.
As Rowe continued his explanation, it only further exposed this racism. “It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years,” he complained. “I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country.”
Tellingly, the Episcopal Church has framed its position as an objection to the Trump administration’s refugee label for white South African farmers who have faced a constant string of violence over the last decade, with an estimated 50 to 70 farmers murdered annually. The church made its dramatic and racist decision after the Trump administration requested the church’s help in resettling these white South Africans.
Making the Episcopal Church’s move even more hypocritical was that mere months ago, National Cathedral Episcopal Bishop Mariann Edgar Budde publicly lectured Trump on showing mercy to the stranger.
Joe Biden’s administration granted questionable refugee status to huge swaths of people, encouraging a veritable invasion of millions of people for four years. There was never a peep from the Episcopal Church about the humanitarian crisis he created. Yet when a group of 59 whites (from Africa, no less) is given refugee status, suddenly the church throws up its hands in protest and ends all its refugee relief efforts.
Meanwhile, Trump’s genocide claim has the Leftmedia running “fact-checks” to predictably dismiss it as false. Yet the fact of the matter is that these Afrikaners have been targeted not just by racist blacks but by their own government. As the White House notes, the South African government has passed legislation to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.”
Meanwhile, when repeated false claims are made against Israel in its war against Hamas terrorists, that it is engaged in a genocide against Palestinians, where are the fact-checks and pushback from the Leftmedia?
The truth is, as noted above, the ideology behind woke “justice” is inherently racist; thus, because these South African white farmers are the descendants of whites who may have benefited from the racist apartheid system that was finally ended in 1994, they somehow bear the guilt. This is why the woke Left objects to seeing these white Africans as victims, even when they absolutely are.
