Last week, President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa met at the White House. What began as a cordial exchange of comments between the two leaders rapidly disintegrated into an acrimonious affair after a reporter asked Trump about the U.S. decision to admit white South Africans as refugees. Trump baselessly claimed that there was a genocide against white people in South Africa, which Ramaphosa and other South Africans have vigorously denied.

The intense and occasionally heated meeting is the latest in a litany of surreal and theatrically tense Oval Office meetings with foreign leaders. It comes amid heightened tensions between the U.S. and South Africa over claims by Trump and Elon Musk, Trump’s South African-born adviser, repeatedly claiming there is a genocide against white people in the country which prompted the U.S. to recently admit white South African refugees - while barring refugees from other countries.

Obviously astute to the ambush-like manner in which Trump tends to target his guests and rivals and determined not to be “Zelinskyed” (referring to the guerrilla warfare interview Trump and J.D. Vance conducted with the Ukrainian President, Ramaphosa came prepared with receipts, effectively counterpunching each of allegations, even providing testimony from South African Whites, members of opposing parties, who debunked charges hurled by Trump, ribbed President Donald Trump during a meeting, saying he didn’t have a plane to gift him, after the U.S. accepted a luxury jet from Qatar.

At a time when relations between the two nations are fractured, this is not necessarily a bad thing. It might not be the most auspicious of moments for the two leaders to meet, largely because of accusations levied by Trump’s Chief of Staff, Stephen Miller, and Secretary of State and National Security Advisor, Marco Rubio, that White minority Afrikaners are being persecuted. Trump himself declared in February this year that White Afrikaners were being murdered, yet the media refuses to report the crisis. President Ramaphosa vehemently denies such charges. Dating back to his first term, Trump has been fixated on unfounded reports of White South African farmers being slaughtered so that the government can confiscate their land. These falsehoods have been promoted by AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights group that the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks racist and extremist groups, calls “white supremacists in suits and ties.”

Just a week earlier, a US State Department official gleefully welcomed a group of newly minted South Africans immigrants at an airport. In contrast, Administration officials removed protections for nearly 10,000 Afghan refugees, making it easier to deport them. Anyone right-minded with a conscience is astute to the fact that returning to such a hostile, unhinged, and unstable homeland will likely all but guarantee the end of their lives. To add insult to injury, many of those seeking asylum placed their lives in jeopardy to assist American service members during the two-decade long war in Afghanistan. So much for loyalty!

To tell it like it is, the current dynamics of American race relations are nothing short of unsettling and disturbing. To be sure, race relations in our nation have never been serene. That being said, for most of the last several decades - at least since the late 1960s - the US appeared to be progressing despite a few potholes and U-turns. However, we currently have President Trump eagerly, deviously, and sinisterly dismantling if not outright destroying DEI. His administration flew in the 49 White Afrikaners - descendants of the European colonizers whose discriminatory policies resulted in the oppressive establishment of apartheid in South Africa - and bestowed refugee status upon them while working overtime to do everything possible to deport Black and brown migrants.

The Afrikaners were warmly greeted by Christopher Landau, deputy Secretary of State, and given little American flags. Not content with engaging in a perverse form of tribalism, Landau equated the Afrikaners to “quality seeds” that when put in “foreign soil” can “blossom” and “bloom” for the good of this country. Notably absent from this event were sordid and salacious discussions about Black and Latino people from supposedly “shithole” nations that Trump derided in 2018.

There were no reductive discussions about criminal invasions or scurrilous allegations that these new immigrants are “poisoning the blood” of the nation. It was even more revealing when a reporter asked Landau why an “exception” has been allowed for Afrikaners when so many others who “fit the criteria of fleeing persecution” have been denied refugee status. “Some of the criteria are making sure that refugees did not pose any challenge to our national security and that they could be assimilated easily into our country,” Landau said. Such an arrogant comment speaks volumes.

Interestingly, these so-called refugees are Afrikaners, a White ethnic minority descended from Dutch, German, and French settlers. They ruled South Africa during the horrific apartheid era of racial segregation and cruel, rapacious, and violent suppression of Black South Africans. Many Afrikaners reside in racially segregated Whites-only communities because they never accepted the dismantling of apartheid.

They are also highly critical of and do not accept the majority Black-led government in South Africa. A sizable percentage (not all) of these individuals believe that there is a racial hierarchy that results in Whites being superior to non-Whites. For these men and women, Whites are at the top, colored people are in the middle, and Blacks are at the bottom. They would regard me, a Black person, as barely human.

Let’s face it! The previously whispered, bigoted, infested, racist, misogynistic, and xenophobic rhetoric that has flourished within sacred circles of the conservative right for decades has been brutally unleashed. The Trump administration is essentially saying it publicly, out loud, proud, unvarnished, and unrestrained with mega bullhorns. The bias, racism, White supremacy, and hate are just that blatant and intentional. Fortunately, there are those of goodwill who reject such blatant appeals to racism.

Sean Rowe, presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church, wrote in an open letter that the church has decided to end refugee work with the federal government by the end of the fiscal year, “in light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa.” Rowe further stated, “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. 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.” Amen to that!

The truth is that it is incumbent upon all those committed to racial equality and justice to mobilize and relentlessly combat such menacing and arrogant efforts to support and embrace certain immigrants while disregarding, dehumanizing, and depriving other similar immigrants simply because of their skin color. Such discriminatory antics are unfair, unjust, unlawful, and intolerable. Period!