By Laura Onyeneho
President Donald Trump has made it clear that when he talks about “America First,” he doesn’t mean everyone in America.
Throughout his presidency, Trump’s immigration stance has been unapologetically anti-Black, anti-brown, anti-Muslim and anti-poor. But now, suddenly, the same man who blocked war-torn families from Syria and Afghanistan is rolling out the red carpet for white South Africans?
According to recent reports, a group of 49 white South Africans, mostly Afrikaners, arrived in the U.S. on a private charter after being granted refugee status by the Trump administration. Trump claims these individuals are victims of racial persecution at the hands of South Africa’s Black-led government.
He has even fast-tracked their applications through a program he launched in February. The South African government, however, has flat-out denied these claims, calling them “completely false” and pointing out that Afrikaners remain among the most privileged and economically secure citizens in the country.
Afrikaners are not a historically oppressed group. They are the descendants of Dutch and French colonizers who orchestrated and benefited from apartheid, a system of legal, institutionalized racism that tormented Black South Africans for nearly 50 years.
Apartheid laws restricted Black South Africans’ movement, stripped them of voting rights, and denied them access to education, land, and jobs. White Afrikaners not only enforced these rules but also built generational wealth off the backs of Black labor and land.
Now, decades later, the Trump administration wants to frame this same group as victims?
Yes, South Africa today has laws that aim to address the historic inequalities apartheid left behind laws that provide affirmative action in employment and land reform. These are not anti-white policies. They are pro-justice policies meant to close gaps created by centuries of racial oppression. Claiming that these efforts amount to “reverse racism” is an insult to the very real suffering of Black South Africans, past and present.
The narrative being pushed by Trump, and even echoed by his fellow South African-born conservative ally Elon Musk, is not about justice. It’s about whiteness and the preservation of white privilege. By elevating Afrikaners as “refugees” while denying asylum to Haitians, Sudanese, Afghans, and Central Americans fleeing violence, Trump is sending a clear message: white suffering, real or imagined, matters more than Black suffering backed by centuries of receipts.
Violent crime in South Africa is a national crisis. But it affects everyone, regardless of race. There is no evidence of a targeted, systemic campaign to persecute white farmers or Afrikaners. The government has repeatedly condemned farm attacks and violence. So why is Trump focusing on these isolated incidents while ignoring the poverty, marginalization, and rising violence faced by millions of Black South Africans?
This refugee program is not about safety. It’s about symbolism. It’s a political stunt designed to paint Trump as the protector of a “beleaguered” white race under global threat. It’s also another attempt to discredit Black leadership globally, feeding into right-wing fantasies of “white genocide” and victimhood.
Let’s not forget that this is the same administration that ended protections for Liberians, turned away Black migrants from Cameroon, and implemented a Muslim travel ban. The same administration that demonized Mexican immigrants as “rapists and criminals” and cut refugee admissions to historic lows. But when it comes to white South Africans, Trump rolls out the welcome mat?
We cannot allow this hypocrisy to go unchecked.
The Afrikaner “refugee” program reeks of racial bias and colonial nostalgia. It reinforces the idea that white people deserve special consideration, even when they come from countries where they still dominate economically. Meanwhile, Black and brown refugees, many of whom are escaping regimes propped up by Western imperialism, are criminalized, dehumanized, and left to die.
To Black Americans and Africans in the diaspora, this moment is a reminder of the global nature of white supremacy and how it morphs itself to protect its own. We must ask: why are the descendants of apartheid architects seen as deserving of refuge, while the descendants of the oppressed are seen as threats?