Three women of colour, so far, among four women in cabinet and cabinet-level appointments by Donald Trump. See, he’s not sexist or xenophobic.

One Jewish man. See, Trump’s not anti-Semitic.

An on-again, off-again possibility of a black man. See, he’s not racist.

Taipei-born Elaine Chao, George W. Bush’s labour secretary, is the new secretary of transportation.

Nikki Haley, the daughter of Sikh immigrants from India, is the U.S. president-elect’s choice for U.S. ambassador to the UN.

Seema Verma, the daughter of Indian immigrants, gets his vote to oversee Medicare, Medicaid and children’s health insurance programs.

Steven Mnuchin, an ex-Goldman Sachs banker, is treasury secretary. With that appointment, Trump got his wish to have “little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day” counting his money, as he was quoted saying in the book Trumped! by John R. O’Donnell.

Former Republican presidential candidate and neurosurgeon Ben Carson may or may not be secretary of housing development, depending on how qualified he feels. His close friend told The Hill Carson would not serve as secretary of health because he “feels he has no government experience, he’s never run a federal agency.”

If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s diverse “because it’s 2015” cabinet received such fulsome praise the world over, why aren’t Trump’s choices at least offering hope?

First, Trudeau’s campaign was fueled by positive politics positioned against the politics of fear championed by ex-prime minister Stephen Harper.

The run-up to Trump’s election was vitriolic, inflaming an artificial crisis of white disenfranchisement.

I don’t believe for one moment the argument by his supporters that Trump talked a divisive game, but kept his heart in the right place. That he may have made those terrible utterances to placate the haters among his voters, but once in government, he would shake off that malevolence and reveal himself to be a benign leader of the free world.

All of us wear masks as a form of self-protection. Some of us sport a veneer of colour blindness and equality.

None puts on the face of a racist to hide a lack of prejudice.

Trump remains Trump, the man who tweets with the petulance of a teen castigating the New York Times for covering him ‘with a nasty tone” or discussing cabinet appointments with the frivolous tone of a reality television show. “General James ‘Mad Dog’ Mattis, who is being considered for Secretary of Defense, was very impressive yesterday. A true General’s General!”

Second, the white ministers in Trudeau’s cabinet do not have a history of making racist, anti-immigrant, Islamophobic remarks.

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Key positions in Trump’s team have included white men with a morally indefensible stance on those issues.

Breitbart’s white supremacist CEO Steve Bannon is the most obvious of them. Then there is education secretary Betsy DeVos who has led campaigns against same-sex marriage laws and attorney-general Jeff Sessions who is staunchly anti-immigration, legal or otherwise. The late senator Ted Kennedy once called him “a throwback to a shameful era.”

National Security Adviser Lt.-Gen. Michael Flynn is Trump 2.0 — just check his Twitter feed. In a speech this year, the man who will be Trump’s key adviser in times of crisis — terrorist attacks and such — called Islam “a malignant cancer” that “has metastasized.”

In this context, the appointment of the few people of colour is a token attempt to cover up the bile left over from the campaign and an ongoing effort to sanction and normalize bigotry.

Normalization is being talked about in the context of the euphemistic “alt-right” — the catch-all term for white nationalism, racism and populism.

As bloggers and news sites scramble around the usage of the term, the adherents of political correctness who are usually at pains to euphemize terms so as to not hurt, are in the strange position of having to strip this one to its raw form so as to not pretend or permit.

Last week, a small anonymous group of New Yorkers created StopNormalizing.com, offering an extension on Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox that autocorrects ‘alt-right’ on web pages and social feeds to “white supremacy.”

The creators go by the name George Zola, in a nod to authors George Orwell and Emile Zola. “In the short-term with the alt-right, our mission and strategy is to unify against white supremacy,” “Zola” told me by email. “Not just for liberal Americans, but for anyone who does not share the ideology of the ‘alt-right.’ We want to encourage everyone, including Trump supporters, and far-right conservatives to speak out against white nationalist groups.”

These efforts to block the normalization of bigotry are up against powerful institutional forces barreling down in the opposite direction, after men intent on setting up a fortress of white privilege have been given powerful positions to lead a powerful country.

As long as Trump actively supports and promotes people like them, he renders his appointments of these women of colour meaningless.

Shree Paradkar tackles issues of race and gender. You can follow her @shreeparadkar

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