If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
— Lyndon Johnson, 36th President of the United States of America
Martin Luther King Jr had a dream. And he died for it, along with the many others, of all colours, who fought to bring the civil rights movement to America.
It took many years, and many lives, but the leaders of the civil rights movement persevered with the goal of securing legal rights for African Americans, rights that other Americans had already held. The movement resulted in large legislative impacts, including the installment of the first black U.S. Supreme Court justice. Mountains were moved to accomplish their goals of ending legal racial segregation and discrimination. Using non-violent campaigns, they achieved new recognitions in the legal, federal protection of ALL Americans.
“Thurgood Marshall (1908-1993) was a U.S. Supreme Court justice and civil rights advocate. Marshall earned an important place in American history on the basis of two accomplishments. First, as legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), he guided the litigation that destroyed the legal underpinnings of Jim Crow segregation. Second, as an associate justice of the Supreme Court–the nation’s first black justice–he crafted a distinctive jurisprudence marked by uncompromising liberalism, unusual attentiveness to practical considerations beyond the formalities of law, and an indefatigable willingness to dissent.”
Donald Trump is the nightmare that people of colour have wrestled with all of their lives, the creature that haunts their dreams and makes them hold their babies closer. And his minions, Steve Bannon, Stephen Miller, and most especially that evil gnome Jefferson Beauregard Sessions, have waited patiently for decades for just this moment in time to arrive, and vindicate their most malevolent, bigoted thoughts. At first, he was just the fool who egged on racists throughout Barack Obama‘s presidency with his ridiculous birtherism theory, but now Trump’s tweets and rants have galvanized fear and ignorance, like a lit match dropped into the gasoline of repressed racism. To his base’s clear delight, they are relaxing into an overt racism in which they can lawfully and openly show their hatred of people of colour, supported by their horrific master.
Trump’s tweeting is beyond a dog whistle to his racist supporters – it’s even beyond a bull horn. It’s an IV of disgusting, depraved poison, that is constant and inescapable and that excites the part of his follower’s brain that delights in cruelty and chaos.
By contrast, consider the struggle for civil rights in America. I’m old enough to remember how violently so many struggled to prevent integration. There were threats, there were beatings, there were murders. We in Canada watched from afar as the country battled it’s way to a new view on human rights and human dignity.
Everything that Trump does and says is another giant step towards obliterating that essential moment in American history.
Now, even if you are someone that believes that free speech, even hate speech, is your right, what has to be remembered is that this division of the population is not just unsettling – it’s fundamentally a national security issue. The nation is weaker when the people are fighting against each other.
This weekend is the one year anniversary of the murder of an innocent woman who had been counter-protesting racists marching on Charlottesville. A group of white supremacists, screaming racist, ethnic and misogynistic slogans and carrying tiki torches, rallied to “Unite The Right“. During that protest, one person was killed and 19 others were injured when a car sped into a group of counter-protesters.
The original reason for the 2017 march centered around, amongst other things, protesting the removal of statues of Confederate leaders. Unless you are a pigeon with no other options, the removal of a statue should not really be either cause for alarm, or a reason to hurt another person.
And here’s the most interesting thing about those statues. The Confederacy was a treasonous attack on the United States of America. It was only because of Lincoln’s decision not to ’embarrass’ the people who’d supported the Confederate Army that the leaders escaped being hung for treason.
” Northerners took a pragmatic approach to the war’s end. They realized the impracticality of trying thousands of Southerners for disloyalty in states where juries were unlikely to deliver guilty verdicts, and that continued cries of treason would interfere with the more important task of nation-building.
Ironically, the lenient approach allowed Robert E. Lee and other Confederate leaders to become heroic figures to later generations of Americans of all sections, says Blair, citing words written by Union Gen. George Thomas in 1868: “The crime of treason might be covered with a counterfeit varnish of patriotism, so that the precipitators of the rebellion might go down in history hand-in-hand with the defenders of the (US) Government.” (see: www.futurity.org.)
After the Charlottesville riots, Trump refused to call out the militant right marching under a Nazi banner. Instead, the President of the United States said :
“We condemn in the strongest possible terms this egregious display of hatred, bigotry and violence, on many sides. On many sides.”
As CNN explained in an editorial in August 2017, “ Both sides don’t scream racist and anti-Semitic things at people with whom they disagree. They don’t base a belief system on the superiority of one race over others. They don’t get into fistfights with people who don’t see things their way. They don’t create chaos and leave a trail of injured behind them.
Arguing that “both sides do it” deeply misunderstands the hate and intolerance at the core of this “Unite the Right” rally. These people are bigots. They are hate-filled. This is not just a protest where things, unfortunately, got violent. Violence sits at the heart of their warped belief system.
Trying to fit these hate-mongers into the political/ideological spectrum — which appears to be what Trump is doing — speaks to his failure to grasp what’s at play here. This is not a “conservatives say this, liberals say that” sort of situation. We all should stand against this sort of violent intolerance and work to eradicate it from our society — whether Democrat, Republican, Independent or not political in the least.”
And as actor/director Spike Lee told an interviewer just this week, “The President of the United States had a chance to denounce hate. The whole world saw what happened and he didn’t do it.”
There is no “other side” to racism if you live in a democracy. There is no “right” to be racist. There is no ‘racist amendment’ that would allow racists to be tolerated in any situation. There is NO validity to their arguments of white superiority, only anti-social activity that tears apart society.
However, the climate fomented and nurtured by Trump’s administration not only encourages overt racism, it is tacitly welcomed and rarely held accountable for the pain and discomfort of those upon whom this abuse is waged.
This new fad of calling 911 on people living their life while being black will most certainly, inevitably, eventually, get someone killed. People of colour know that siccing the cops on a person of colour can and will often devolve into a life or death situation.
Just ask actor Ving Rhames, who was a target of racial profiling earlier this year. A neighbour called the LAPD after a neighbour claimed to have seen a ‘large black man breaking into a house.”
Rhames, who had been watching television in his Santa Monica home with his two English bulldogs, answered the door.
“I get up, I open the door, there’s a red dot pointed at my face from a 9 millimeter,” Rhames. “And they say, ‘Put up your hands.'”
Last year, NBA All-Star Lebron James’ Los Angeles home was vandalized with N-word graffitti, and in March of this year, Milwaukee Bucks player Sterling Brown was seen in a video being tackled to the ground for a parking infraction.
Just being AWB – Alive While Black – has lead to a fad of white people calling 911 to report their fear of black people golfing too slowly, eating waffles, waiting for a client in a Starbucks, handing out campaign literature, napping at lunch, barbecuing at a public park, asking to use a valid coupon, eating their lunch, being a real estate agent, swimming in their public community pool, checking out of an AirBnB without acknowledging a wave, or seeing an 8 year old child selling cold bottled water on a warm day.
And in response to these frantic calls from white people, most of these innocent people had to deal with the police showing up, with flashing sirens and guns blazing. After all, the steadfast perspective of white callers seems to always be far more trustworthy than the potentially criminal actions of law-abiding, tax- paying, black citizens.
I’ve yet to hear of any accountability being demanded of the people who are wasting precious police resources by calling the police on innocent parties. Nor have I heard of any of those who’ve had their lives put into danger, successfully suing the callers or their employers. But I hope that becomes a fad, and soon.
From his first speech on the campaign trail, Trump has been overtly, aggressively, racist, condemning and dismissing people of colour. Although an elected president is supposed to be the president of all of the people, he is selective about whom he chooses to favour or flay. As if his spoken and tweeted attacks on (black) football players for their non-violent protest of taking a knee during the National Anthem, despite their repeated explanations of what the protest means, weren’t annoying enough, his continued attacks actually break two laws.
A federal law, enacted in 1943, says that no citizen can be forced to participate in rituals that are used with the flag or any other symbol of the United States.
And 18 U.S. Code 227 is a law that could be used against Trump in response to his various statements about private businesses, including the NFL. This law prohibits “the President, as well as members of Congress and other federal officials, from “wrongfully influencing a private entity’s employment decisions.” Persons convicted under this statute face up to 15 years in prison and disqualification from public office.
Trump continuously recommending, even commanding, that protesting players be fired or punished seems to fit 18 U.S. Code § 227’s basic definition.”
Racism, white supremacy, and white nationalism; when the president and his administration tell the country to turn against a huge segment of their own people, that country is ripe for exploitation by those that will use that division for their own purposes and gain. When the president demonizes certain segments of the working population as somehow being less fit, less trustworthy or less capable, the enemies of the United States have their toehold into an internal, fractured, weakness that can be used against the country.
But I’m not going to hold my breath waiting for anyone in this administration to call him on either of these crimes. They are all too busy dismantling America and democracy.
And killing that beautiful dream….
frustratedboomers 