Saritha Prabhu

Columnist

We have Donald Trump to thank for much of our current incivility.

The left has responded with a if-you-can’t-beat-him-join-him approach.

I am a brown, female immigrant and I have no anger coursing through my veins at white people or men.

As you’ve probably noticed, bashing straight white men, especially of the conservative kind, is very fashionable these days.

You seemingly can’t escape it — you switch on cable TV, or "The View", read The Washington Post or The New York Times, and see liberal pundits verbally attack white men for this or that.

It’s become often enough that it is seemingly now normal to just casually attack a broad group of the country’s citizens.

And sometimes race is inserted gratuitously even when it isn’t an issue, like during the Brett Kavanaugh hearings: the Republican senators on the Judiciary Committee were attacked as old white men.

Besides, there is the strangeness in the spectacle of certain white people calling out certain other white people on their whiteness.

What gives? What is happening is that everyone’s id is now not just out in the open, it has gone berserk.

The president models uncivil behavior

We have President Donald Trump to thank for much of our current incivility. Three years ago, Trump came down that escalator and attacked Mexican migrants as rapists and criminals.

And since then, his signature strength or weakness — depending on who you’re speaking to — is his frank, off-the-cuff, flagrantly non-politically-correct way of talking about issues.

The left has responded with a if-you-can’t-beat-him-join-him approach. So it too talks with this broad-brush-strategy of portraying all Trump supporters as bigots, and white men (and white women) as the villains of both history and contemporary politics.

Underlying this is the old political strategy of divide and conquer.

There is, obviously, a helping of white liberal guilt here as well. White men and women, both in this country and across the world, owe much of their current power and relative privilege, obviously, to the colonialism, genocide, slavery and other sins of past centuries.

A subset of these attacks is, of course, attacking the patriarchy, and seeing all men, white, brown, black, as part of the problem that continues to keep women in, more or less, second-class-citizen status.

I do not want to be a party to the bashing of Caucasian men

There is truth in the above views, including in the view that there are invisible institutional forces that even now keep minorities (including many working class whites) further down in the power and economic structures.

But the need of the hour is not crude attacks or divisive rhetoric; it’s skillful, statesmanlike management of huge demographic changes, and the emotions they unleash.

Whenever I hear someone on TV bash white men, my overriding feeling is “Excuse me, but I really don’t want to be a party to this.”

I am a brown, female immigrant and I can assure these leaders and pundits that there’s no anger coursing through my veins at white people or men as a group.

One can have historical and contemporary awareness of inequities and injustices, without having hateful feelings toward the ordinary white citizens around us.

Today’s Democratic Party is predicated on having and expressing open hostility toward white citizens. They are making the dangerous bet that most minorities and immigrants will jump on the white-male-bashing bandwagon.

But it could backfire and turn off many voters. If you ask most minorities and immigrants, they’ll probably tell you they just want a fair, equal shot at the American Dream, and that they’re not angling for racial payback or Civil War Take 2.

Not to mention, the guns are all on the other side, but I'm just kidding.

But seriously, redressal and not revenge should be the theme.

You also wish President Trump would be inclusive toward all Americans in his speeches. Some of his economic policies have been beneficial for Hispanic and African Americans, but inclusive rhetoric matters a great deal too.

Today’s social justice warriors would do better to work toward more social and economic justice without exacerbating dangerous racial divisions, and fomenting violence.

Maybe I’m being naïve, but I’ll paraphrase what the wise philosopher, Rodney King, said after the 1992 L.A. riots: “Can we all just get along?”

Saritha Prabhu of Clarksville is a USA TODAY NETWORK — Tennessee columnist; this column originally appeared in the Tennessean. Reach her at sprabhu43@gmail.com.