Seven years ago, Trump suggested creating a racist national Muslim registry in pursuit of national security. As the nation reels from the carnage of another mass shooting, his idea and reasoning have never seemed more poignant- in regards to white people.
The simple fact is that white people commit the overwhelming amount of terror attacks and mass shootings. Controlling guns isn’t enough since the country is flooded with untraceable guns and materials to make explosives, not to mention the practical impossibility of restricting white people from driving vehicles. Therefore the answer is simple, we must institute a comprehensive program for tracking the activities of whites such as myself. This maximizes the chances of catching the red flags for a minority or a good white to stop bad whites before another tragedy adds to our depressing violence-related statistics.
Aside from the security considerations, this could be an essential tool in the struggle for equity and righting of the systemic injustices our society currently faces. Academics and journalists would have much easier access to data about racial disparities, allowing programs to target disadvantage minorities with pinpoint precision- without a single dollar being wasted on an underserving person of colonial descent!
On a similar note, this would block white people from rampantly abusing initiatives meant to foster diversity. No longer would an privileged Irishman be able pretend to be a member of a white-passing disadvantaged group such as a Hispanic, Jewish or Métis individual for the purpose of admissions, scholarships, diversity considerations in employment or disadvantaged-targeted funding.
With the correct implementation, this could have a chilling effect on online hate speech, an especially rampant problem since famous business oligarch Elon Musk’s takeover of Twitter. With their name in a database, some may think twice before using a demeaning slur if the system allowed for actionable consequences. Further, this would allow law enforcement to uncover hate groups and nip them in the bud before a tragedy occurs or secret documents are leaked, such as has happened recently. Of course such measures can be done without a national registry, but a database of whites would allow the authorities to avoid false positives against PoCs, preventing unnecessary excess interactions with bodies of colour already traumatized by past encounters with police.
For all these reasons, it is obvious that policymakers must at least begin to consider such a database. I suspect fellow white people might protest with arguments about “rights”, “surveillance” or “freedom” but please ask yourself: is this worth the lives, safety and equity of the disadvantaged? If your answer is no, I think the victims of the next tragedy will disagree. Because in a sense conservatives are right. Guns don’t kill people, people kill people. To be specific, white people do.
