Race trumps everything
21st March 2016 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
I have to admit something: I’m a little bit shocked by all this Donald Trump stuff.
Not by all of his caveman-like shenanigans, divisive ideas or racist remarks, but by many people’s reactions to him and his platform.
This is Donald Trump, for goodness sakes. The man who called for the death penalty for the Black and Latino young men wrongfully convicted in the Central Park Five sexual assault case. The man who refers to entire groups of people with glowing terms like “the Blacks,” “the Asians” and “the Mexicans” as if when you have met one member of any of these groups, you pretty much know them all.
This is the Donald Trump who is anything but bright.
To his credit, he makes us acknowledge the racist white elephant in the room and what is means.
Race means then President Ronald Reagan could get away with calling Black women receiving food assistance “welfare queens” while other elected officials have gotten away with calling low-income white Americans the “deserving poor.”
Deserving of what? Inclusion in the federal government’s food stamp program? Deserving of respect and humane treatment? Deserving of all of the rights and protections guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution?
You tell me.
We need to talk openly and honestly about what race means not only in America but around the world. By doing so, we can gain a deeper understanding of why things are the way they are and why those who promote white supremacy currently have the upper hand.
Whether we choose to acknowledge it or not, race continues to color every aspect of our lives and impact our psyche and overall health.
Race means that many people from all over the world who come to the United States, including continental Africans and our brothers and sisters from Caribbean nations and South America, buy into the propaganda that says Blacks in the U.S. are lazy, shiftless, violent and lack ambition, discounting evidence to the contrary that shows how intricate the system of white supremacy that has enslaved Blacks in the America for more than 500 years actually is.
Race means that a white college applicant that didn’t get into the college or university of his or her choice can assume that he or she didn’t get into that school because their slot went to an unqualified Black, Brown, Red or Yellow applicant — and never an unqualified white applicant.
Race means that white elected officials who view themselves as friends to “the Blacks” can bemoan Black-on-Black violence without ever acknowledging the role the government plays in creating the conditions that spur that kind of violence or ever even acknowledging comparable levels of white-on-white violence.
Race means that white Americans can show disdain for President Barack Obama and First Lady Michele Obama for earning Ivy League degrees while celebrating less-enlightened white people like Sarah Palin, Joe the Plumber and yes, Donald Trump.
Race means that local and state government officials can get away with providing people of color and poor people with toxic tap water, allowing companies to dump toxic chemicals into the soil, air and water of communities of color and build schools for children of color atop toxic landfills.
Race means that a white district attorney can get away with framing Black defendants for murder and doing everything in his or her power to put Black people who have been freed from the court system back in jail.
Race means that school and elected officials of all colors can get away with allowing charter schools to treat children of color like prison inmates or laboratory rats.
Race means that white elected and appointed officials continue to create laws and policies that give whites unfair advantages in majority-Black cities and that local, state and federal governments and law enforcement agencies continue to operate with the understanding that “Blacks have no constitutional rights that whites are bound by law to respect.”
Race means that athletes of color who display any confidence or self-assuredness are labeled cocky or arrogant while white athletes who do the same thing get a pass.
Race means that despite everything that Black, Brown, Red and Yellow people go through because of the color of their skin, many white people who find themselves at the lower end of the socioeconomic ladder blame people of color for their current situation and not the system that gives wealthy whites an unfair advantage over everyone else in this nation or the elected officials who pit poor and working-class whites against people of color and carry out the wishes of the infamous 1 percent. It was the great Neely Fuller, an African-centered scholar and mentor of the late Dr. Frances Cress Weelsing , M.D., who said unless we understand the system of racism/white supremacy, everything else will just confuse us.
And so it does, and many of us continue to beat our heads against the proverbial wall wondering why we haven’t overcome or why we continue to get the short end of the stick in the United States and other Western nations.
What is most important is that we remember that Donald Trump is a symptom, and not the problem.
The problem is the system of racism/ white supremacy that has been crafted to address white fear of genetic annihilation by giving people of European descent an unfair advantage over people of color in every category of life.
This article originally published in the March 21, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
