Trump's Erasure Agenda

Trump and his team want to make people who aren't like them invisible, but they're also working to make Trump's crimes invisible.

The term “erasure” has gotten a lot of play in the last couple of decades.

Basically, it means that it’s inconvenient for the dominant culture that certain groups of people exist, so it’s simpler — from their warped perspective — to get rid of those people. And if they can’t literally get rid of them, they can at least create policies and laws that render them invisible.

Erasure has run the gamut from forcing Black people to sit in the back of the bus, to raiding establishments where gay people congregated, to focusing on deporting only those immigrants who they deem have the wrong skin color. It includes subjugating women to subservient roles and criminalizing certain of their health care decisions. It includes trying to ensure that trans people don’t have the same basic human rights as non-trans people.

Real estate redlining of neighborhoods that created de facto segregated cities certainly falls under the umbrella of erasure. It’s actually a double-whammy form of erasure because i…