This is an opinion column.

No shade. Really.

What I am about to say is by no means intended to disparage or diminish our new neighbors, the 59 white South Africans who’ve found “refuge” (okay, that was slight shade) on our soil, especially those who’ve already joined us in Alabama. Welcome, y’all.

I presume they’re good people who have their reasons for accepting Donald Trump’s open-arms, chartered-jet invitation to leave their homeland behind for a new start here.

For leaving the nation colonized by their mostly Dutch ancestors, who implemented a racist apartheid regime against the majority-Black citizens until it crumbled 31 years ago. A regime that nurtured, by the way, the young First (or former First) Buddy, South African native Elon Musk.

Persecution, however, is not among them. At least not persecution in the true sense of persecution.

As in fearing for their lives. As is seeing relatives and ethnic kindred murdered. As in cleansing with the aim of elimination.

That wasn’t happening to these farming Afrikaners, as Trump erroneously crowed on Twitter in 2018, claiming “the large scale killing of farmers.”

Over the last four years 225 people were killed on South African farms, The New York Times reported. Black current or former workers living on farms accounted for 101 of them; 53 were mostly-white farmers, with no evidence either group was systematically targeted.

Nor was their land being seized under the Expropriation Act of 2024, which allows for land seizure without compensation under very narrow, specific circumstances that still must be vetted by due process (remember that?) in the courts. So far, according to the South African government, no such action has been taken.

Indeed, consider this: In the nation they left behind, whites, who make up 7% of the population, still own about 76% of the land, according to the government.

And yet here they are, with the gift of “essentially extended citizenship,” Trump said, because they were victims of a genocide.

Man, please. I wish I could look him in the eye and ask him to define the word. Whatever elementary-level words might slip ‘n slide off his tongue, they won’t likely mean genocide. Not true genocide.

Pertaining to the Afrikaners, those words would be a lie. Yet another one.

Again, no shade to our newbie Afrikaner Alabamians and their kindred in other states: Y’all shouldn’t be here.

Y’all shouldn’t have been able to skip the line. Y’all should not be here before the tens of thousands of people throughout the world who, just like you, were vetted and prepared to leave their homeland — who must leave out of true fear for their lives.

But were denied, not expedited.

People from Afghanistan who once backed our soldiers during war there and Congolese, whose nation has seen 6 million people killed since 1996. A true genocide.

All were ready to leave, waiting for their own chartered jet when in February Trump gutted the long-standing program created to shepherd their journey to the U.S., as had thousands before them. As were refugees awaiting settlement in Alabama. Just like y’all.

Until it was slammed shut.

Slammed by the president who three months later laid out the red, white and blue carpet for Afrikaners.

But they’re white.

A few weeks ago, I wrote that Trump wants to make us Jim Crow again. With myriad attacks on a “DEI” that only exists in the minds of those who fear Black ghosts, the administration continuously and blatantly splatters white out across America.

Even as they hurt their own by defunding programs that aid women (including white women), veterans and the children they disingenuously claim to be at the core of their “values” (shade very much so intended). Even as they crush life-saving research into health inequities and cures.

As they unleash threats that cause institutions of higher education to cave and cowardly return funds contributed to support students of various races and genders.

They don’t care. They don’t care that courting white Afrikaners while shunning Black and brown refugees is blatantly racist.

Forget the stand at the schoolhouse door. Trump is standing on our shores with a “whites only” sign.

He doesn’t care.

He doesn’t care that while erroneously claiming Afrikaners are losing their land, our nation has stolen land. An estimated 1.5 billion acres since our 1776 beginnings from the Indigenous peoples who were here long before y’all ancestors arrived — illegally had there yet been such laws.

He doesn’t care that giving white Afrikaners a “golden ticket” to citizenship while denying the same to brown folks who’ve been here for years, some perhaps undocumented while working and striving for success, is racist.

He doesn’t care while ripping young minds from our streets, revoking their student visas and detaining them, igniting a brain that could adversely affect our grandchildren, their grandchildren.

He doesn’t care that somewhere Woodrow Wilson is laughing as his title as the most racist president ever is being eclipsed. Trump is even trumping the 12 slave-holder presidents.

He just doesn’t care. Full shade intended.

Let’s be better tomorrow than we are today. My column appears on AL.com, and digital editions of The Birmingham News, Huntsville Times, and Mobile Press-Register. Tell me what you think at [email protected], and follow me at twitter.com/roysj, Instagram @roysj and BlueSky.