Dur­ing a bipar­ti­san meet­ing this week, Pres­i­dent Trump alleged­ly referred to immi­grants from Haiti, El Sal­vador, and the African con­ti­nent as com­ing from ​“shit­hole coun­tries.” Why, he asked, were so many of their peo­ple being let into the U.S.?

Rather than decrying Trump’s use of the word “shithole,” I wanted to see liberals held accountable for the policies they’ve enacted that treat Black and Brown communities like shitholes—both across the globe and in the U.S.

The denun­ci­a­tions came rapid­ly and from every cor­ner of the Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty. Hillary Clin­ton called the com­ments ​“igno­rant” and ​“racist.” Her hus­band tweet­ed that the coun­tries Trump described ​“do not exist” in his expe­ri­ence, prais­ing Haitians as ​“cre­ative, hard work­ing, brave, and per­sis­tent.” Chica­go May­or Rahm Emanuel took advan­tage of the moment to cel­e­brate Jean Bap­tiste Point Du Sable, the Hait­ian man known as the city’s founder.

I wished that, instead of bela­bor­ing seman­tics and extolling excep­tion­al immi­grants, the lib­er­al estab­lish­ment had acknowl­edged its role in cre­at­ing a glob­al refugee crisis:

Black and Brown peo­ple from across the plan­et fre­quent­ly relo­cate to the U.S. because cen­turies of U.S. mil­i­tary inter­ven­tion (like Obama’s ​“pre­ci­sion” drone strikes that killed hun­dreds of civil­ians in Afghanistan, Yemen, and Soma­lia), U.S.-funded coups and civ­il wars (as in the Carter administration’s spon­sor­ship of El Salvador’s mur­der­ous right-wing régime in the 1980s), and the extrac­tion of resources by U.S. cor­po­ra­tions (recall Pres­i­dent Clinton’s sub­si­diz­ing of U.S. rice in Haiti, upend­ing the local econ­o­my) have ren­dered their home­lands unliv­able, forc­ing them to seek refuge with­in the very empire respon­si­ble for the con­di­tions they are fleeing.

Rather than decry­ing Trump’s use of the word ​“shit­hole,” I want­ed to see lib­er­als held account­able for the poli­cies they’ve enact­ed that treat Black and Brown com­mu­ni­ties like shit­holes — both across the globe and in the U.S.

This week on CNN, con­ser­v­a­tive pun­dit Stephanie Hamill rebuffed attacks on the pres­i­dent, attempt­ing to demon­strate the ways the Clin­ton Foun­da­tion has long exploit­ed the Hait­ian peo­ple. Though many con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries about the foun­da­tion have been debunked, it is indeed respon­si­ble for dis­plac­ing farm­ers to build for­eign-based tex­tile fac­to­ries—doing far more to take advan­tage of cheap labor in the wake of the 2010 earth­quake than to build eco­nom­ic self-deter­mi­na­tion for Haitians.

Lib­er­als across the media scoff at such con­ser­v­a­tive argu­ments, call­ing them deflec­tions. But lib­er­al attacks on Trump’s lan­guage serve a sim­i­lar pur­pose — to por­tray them­selves as moral by con­trast, while paper­ing over the equal­ly racist impacts of their own practices.

While a quick sur­vey of for­eign pol­i­cy unearths a long his­to­ry of lib­er­al vio­lence against Black and Brown peo­ple, one need hard­ly look to the past — nor out­side of the U.S. — to locate glar­ing exam­ples of lib­er­al racism.

In Chica­go, Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty strate­gist-turned-may­or Rahm Emanuel is clos­ing all four remain­ing pub­lic high schools in Engle­wood — one of the poor­est, Black­est neigh­bor­hoods in the city — even as his admin­is­tra­tion gears up to build a $95 mil­lion police train­ing facil­i­ty in the equal­ly Black and impov­er­ished neigh­bor­hood of Garfield Park. In Bal­ti­more, Demo­c­ra­t­ic city offi­cials forced Black kids to go to class last week in build­ings at freez­ing tem­per­a­tures, after recent­ly open­ing their own new juve­nile deten­tion facil­i­ty.

In oth­er words, Demo­c­ra­t­ic and lib­er­al lead­er­ship rou­tine­ly treat Black and Brown com­mu­ni­ties as worth­less and dis­pos­able, suit­able for pun­ish­ment rather than invest­ment. No one has report­ed Emanuel or any mem­ber of Baltimore’s city gov­ern­ment using vul­gar­i­ties in ref­er­ence to the com­mu­ni­ties their actions tar­get. But do we need them to, in order to intu­it the deep dis­dain for peo­ple of col­or at work?

The inabil­i­ty of lib­er­als to hold them­selves and their elect­ed offi­cials account­able for racist prac­tices, while they explode with out­rage every time some­one from the Trump camp makes a sen­sa­tion­al­ly big­ot­ed com­ment, reveals the role Trump plays for lib­er­als: He is a con­ve­nient cov­er for their own racism, and for the ways lib­er­al and con­ser­v­a­tive poli­cies alike are desta­bi­liz­ing Black and Brown com­mu­ni­ties worldwide.

I first under­stood how Trump’s val­ues mir­rored those of lib­er­als dur­ing his response to the vio­lence in Char­lottesville. After he declined at a Trump Tow­er press con­fer­ence to renounce Nazis, claim­ing there were ​“fine peo­ple on both sides,” he com­ment­ed about the removal of Con­fed­er­ate statues:

“George Wash­ing­ton was a slave owner…So, will George Wash­ing­ton now lose his sta­tus? Are we going to take down stat­ues to George Wash­ing­ton? How about Thomas Jefferson?…Because he was a major slave own­er. Are we going to take down his statue?”

Here, Trump grap­pled with a real­iza­tion white peo­ple across the polit­i­cal spec­trum avoid: Once we com­mit our­selves to raz­ing one form of injus­tice, all oth­ers con­nect­ed to it must begin to col­lapse. If we as a soci­ety are to ful­ly denounce slav­ery, we must, in fact, denounce this nation’s founders. Equi­ty can­not exist up to a point, but demands the total trans­for­ma­tion of our soci­ety, requir­ing the undo­ing of sys­tems — from cor­po­rate dom­i­na­tion of the pub­lic sec­tor to the prison and mil­i­tary indus­tri­al com­plex­es — in which lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives are equal­ly invested.

Trump is a use­ful tar­get for lib­er­al spite because he presents him­self in exact­ly the way lib­er­als would have us believe a real racist does: He is igno­rant and unin­formed; he spouts epi­thets and bom­bas­tic vul­gar­i­ties; he seeks to incite vio­lence; he wears his big­otry as a badge of hon­or. When the Trump admin­is­tra­tion is por­trayed as the face of racism, sli­er racists are shield­ed from scruti­ny, and we reserve our rage mere­ly for those who use vul­gar lan­guage, rather than those who com­mit vul­gar acts.

When Jeff Ses­sions threat­ened in 2017 to cut fed­er­al fund­ing from sanc­tu­ary cities, May­or Emanuel promised to stand up to the bul­lies, defi­ant­ly main­tain­ing Chicago’s sanc­tu­ary sta­tus. Lib­er­als cel­e­brat­ed his speech, ignor­ing that the city has nev­er been a real haven for its undoc­u­ment­ed res­i­dents, nor for Black and Brown com­mu­ni­ties at large. It was immi­grant orga­niz­ers, not lib­er­als, who in the wake of Emanuels announce­ment demand­ed that, in order to make Chica­go a true sanc­tu­ary, the Chica­go Police Department’s gang data­base—which allows sus­pect­ed gang mem­bers to be deport­ed with­out being con­vict­ed of any crime — be dis­man­tled. It was immi­grant com­mu­ni­ties who insist­ed that only when Black peo­ple — immi­grant and non-immi­grant alike — do not fear being killed by police with impuni­ty, and can count on access to high-qual­i­ty pub­lic edu­ca­tion and afford­able hous­ing, can Chica­go call itself a sanc­tu­ary. It was immi­grants, not lib­er­als, who stood up to the bul­lies in their midst.

Trump com­mits the faux pas of express­ing his big­otry out­ward­ly, bust­ing through the deco­rum of polite racism that guides so much lib­er­al pol­i­cy. It is easy to vil­i­fy Trump. It is much hard­er, hav­ing estab­lished his beliefs as abhor­rent, to oppose them wher­ev­er they man­i­fest, includ­ing with­in sup­pos­ed­ly left-lean­ing com­mu­ni­ties and polit­i­cal parties.

So long as our actions are root­ed in a con­ve­nient hatred of Trump, rather than a com­mit­ment to dis­man­tling the larg­er struc­tures that enact racial vio­lence, the result will con­tin­ue to be exploita­tion and harm for the com­mu­ni­ties that lib­er­als and con­ser­v­a­tives alike treat as shitholes.