Why is the Trump administration offering refugee status to white Afrikaners? Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
Why is the Trump administration offering refugee status to white Afrikaners?
Marco Longari/AFP via Getty ImagesYou may have heard that the U.S. gained 59 new residents last month from South Africa – and that more came this past weekend. They’re all white Afrikaners: a white minority group descended from European colonists. Trump has given some of these white Afrikaners refugee status because he claims a “white genocide” is happening against them in South Africa. This claim is untrue. So where is it coming from?
And why might this claim be politically expedient for the Trump administration? And what parallels can we see between some of the white Afrikaners and the American right? Brittany sits down with South African journalist Kate Bartlett and Sean Jacobs, professor of international affairs at the New School to get into it.
This episode was produced by Liam McBain. It was edited by Neena Pathak. We had engineering support from Zo vanGinhoven. Our Supervising Producer is Barton Girdwood. Our Executive Producer is Veralyn Williams. Our VP of Programming is Yolanda Sangweni.