Contrary to the fevered dreams of the woke, everything isn’t racism. That doesn’t mean, however, that a particular thing that the government does isn’t racist. Distinguishing between the two matters, the Supreme Court’s decision in Mullin v. Doe fails miserably to accomplish this critical task.

This case involves a challenge to the Trump Administration’s decision to terminate Temporary Protected Status (TPS) for hundreds of thousands of Haitian and Syrian migrants in the US. TPS status protects from deportation migrants who entered the US from countries where conditions such as war, violence, or natural disaster make it dangerous for them to return home.

The case challenged the termination of temporary protected status on two bases. The first was procedural, but the second was that the determination was motivated by racism in violation of the Constitution. I leave the procedural issues to others more knowledgeable on the legal issue, and address Justice Sam Alito’s bizarre “whitewashing” of the underlying basis for the termination.

As some note, the first word of TPS is “temporary,” which obviously means that those enjoying protection from deportation were not guaranteed that they would be able to remain in the United States permanently. This is a given, but fails to provide much help. These immigrants were permitted to lawfully enter and remain under TPS, and authorized to live and work here, establishing lives, businesses and families.

To shout “temporary” and pull the plug essentially overnight after immigrants have relied on the government’s representations that they should put their efforts and future into establishing a life in the United States wreaks unfair havoc on the lives of immigrants as well as the welfare of their communities. What is an employer to do when some significant portion of his workforce, and his customer base, unceremoniously disappears overnight? What is a community to do when a significant portion of their housing stock comes on the market overnight? What do schools do when a significant portion of the schoolhouses built to hold students are emptied overnight? The consequences are enormous and devastating because the United States encouraged and enabled people who fled dangerous countries to make lives for themselves here with the expectation that whatever the future brought, it would not magically disappear overnight.

But why did this “magic” happen?

In support of their claim that the termination of Haiti’s TPS designation was based on race, respondents cite statements made by the President and former Secretary Noem.

The President’s comments fall into four main categories. First, many express strong objections to the immigration that this country has experienced in recent decades and to many of the immigrants who have come here, particularly those who have come to or stayed in the United States illegally. These statements associate these immigrants with crime and other social ills. Second, some statements express great displeasure with TPS. They note, among other things, that TPS designations have often been far from temporary and that aliens who are allowed to stay in the United States under the program are not vetted like other aliens who seek admission. Third, some statements broadly denigrate the countries for which TPS designations have been granted—including Haiti—portraying them as hellish places in which to live. And fourth, some statements malign Haitians who have come to the United States.

Notice anything missing from Justice Alito’s recitation of the putatively offending statements?

None of the cited statements by either the President or the Secretary was overtly racial, and in substance all expressed policy views that could rest on race-neutral justifications.

In dissent, Justice Kagan disagrees, providing what Justice Alito chooses to ignore.

The evidence they have offered includes statements by the President so repellent and racially inflected that the majority declines to put them in print. (Indeed, one measure of the President’s way of speaking about Haitians is to compare it with the majority’s, which is unfailingly respectful.) So here are some of those statements.

Haitians are “eating the dogs . . . . They’re eating the cats. They’re eating—they’re eating the pets of the people that live [in Springfield, Ohio].”

And: Haitians are also eating “other things too that they’re not supposed to be.”

And: Haitians in the United States “probably have AIDS.”

And: Haiti is a “shithole country,” which is “filthy, dirty, [and] disgusting.”

And: Haitian immigration is “like a death wish for our country.” And: Haitians, along with some others, are “poisoning the blood” of our country.

And: “Why is it we only take people from shithole countries” like “Haiti [and] Somalia”? “Why cannot we have some people from Norway [and] Sweden?”

If the contention is that these statements aren’t overtly racist, then it was incumbent on Justice Alito to address that directly rather than sweep it under the rug by the conclusory assertion that they were not while studiously avoiding the outrageously offensive and flagrantly racist statements propounded by the president.

As Kagan notes, there is an obvious difference between Haitians and Norwegians and Swedes, not to mention South African white people who are the only refugees curently invited into the United States by this administration,

Haitians are Black. (Norwegians and Swedes not so much.)

Everything isn’t racist, but if this isn’t, then Alito failed miserably to make the case. Whitewashing Trump’s statements doesn’t make them disappear.