Trump’s racist mob rule must end
22nd July 2019 · 0 Comments
By C.C. Campbell-Rock
Contributing Columnist
Congresswoman Ilhan Omar’s response to Donald Trump’s racist attitude and attack on her, prompted the legislator to quote a portion of Maya Angelou’s famous poem, And Still I Rise:
You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I’ll rise.
– Maya Angelou
Angelou’s “And Still I Rise” personifies the struggle of all Black people, but it most certainly applies specifically to Ilhan Omar and her fellow Congresswomen of color, Ayanna Pressley, Rashida Tlaib, and Alexandra Ocasio Cortez, all of whom Trump vilifies and is using to whip up his rabidly racist base of white supporters. The demonization of these beautiful, articulate, and intelligent women of color are at the core of Trump’s campaign strategy.
Angelou’s poem is about the resiliency, strength, and beauty that Black communities continue to show through hundreds of years of oppression and discrimination. It is an eloquent dressing down of racists and it seems as if she wrote the self-affirming poem for racists like Trump.
In the wake of Trump’s racist attack against the four women of color, Congress last week passed a resolution condemning his hateful rhetoric. Congressman Al Green (D-TX) went further. His Articles of Impeachment, a privileged resolution based on Trump’s acts of bigotry and racism, garnered 95 co-signers but it was tabled before it was put to a vote.
Green has filed the resolution twice before, but more Democrats signed on this time. Previously, 58 Democrats sided with Green on Dec. 6, 2017, and 66 on Jan. 18, 2018.
While Omar didn’t quote all “And Still I Rise,” there is another stanza of Angelou’s brilliance that specifically applies to Trump at this moment in America’s political history:
You may write me down in history
With your bitter, twisted lies,
You may tread me in the very dirt
But still, like dust, I’ll rise.
According to The Washington Post, Trump has told 10, 796 “bitter, twisted lies.” The never-ending lies falling from his hatemongering lips continued when he called Omar an anti-Semitic who hates Israel. Of course, Trump lied about Omar’s position on Israel. Omar earned Trump’s ire for calling out Israel for its oppression of the Palestinian people. Trump knows, as we who pay attention know, that any criticism of Israel sets off American Jews. Evidently, Trump constructed that lie in the hopes of getting Jewish people to vote for him.
Trump’s comment that Omar and the other Congresswomen should “go back where they came from,” is the same old tired message that white racists have been hurling at Blacks for centuries. Either Trump’s supporters are too ignorant or just don’t care to know that Ocasio-Cortez, Pressley, and Talib are American-born citizens. Omar is a naturalized citizen whose family fled Somalia’s civil war.
When Trump launched his racist tirade against the congresswomen, he again showed us that racial animosity, prejudice, hate, oppression and discrimination is inherent in his character and that his racist ideation is at the core of his campaign rhetoric. Here again, the wisdom of Maya Angelou rises to the occasion. The poet and philosopher once said, “If a person shows you who he is, believe him.”
Trump has shown us who he is. He showed us when he and his father were sued for housing discrimination against Black Americans. When he called for the death penalty for the exonerate Central Park Five. When he made up the “birther lie” about President Barack Obama. When he called Mexicans rapists and murderers. When he called for a Muslims ban. When he called nations with majority Black and brown citizens, shithole countries. When he called African-American athletes sons of bitches. When he advised police not to be so gentle when arresting people (of course he meant people of color). When he called Congresswomen Maxine Waters and Frederica Wilson derogatory names, etc., etc., etc.
Trump has shown us that he is racist, full stop.
At the Trump rally in North Carolina last Wednesday, his racist mob yelled to Trump to “Send her back,” regarding Omar. They looked like the smiling mobs we see in photos enjoying the lynching of Black men. What we are seeing at Trump’s rallies is a neo-Confederacy striving to solidify the white privilege it once enjoyed.
Clearly, at 73-years-old, Trump is trying to recreate the legally segregated country in which he was born. Trump is an old-school racist. He learned racism at the knee of his father, Fred Trump, who in 1927, was arrested, along with other KKK members, for disturbing the peace at a KKK demonstration.
Trump’s political strategy is based on the reality of what Black Americans have always known: The majority of whites living in America; especially white Republicans, are racist to the core. How do we know this? Look at how they legislate racism, how they ignore racial injustice, how they fill our laws with loopholes that help them stay in power, how whites evade the administration of justice, how those in power look the other way when whites commit crimes and make excuses for them, don’t jail them, and rationalize and lie about the basic truth in such cases. Case in point, the recent decision by Bill Barr not to prosecute the cop that killed Eric Garner, who died for selling single cigarettes on the streets of New York or Jeffrey Epstein’s case, in which the now-deposed labor secretary, Alex Acosta, gave him a slap on the wrist for sex trafficking and allowed him to leave the jail six days a week for Epstein to go to his office.
We know that for Trump supporters, the uncivil war, never ended and that the lost cause is not lost; that segregation never ended, and they will continue to resist the diversity of this nation.
What we are witnessing is the last dying gasp of white power and white rule in America. According to the U.S. Census, whites are in the majority. But Trump has shown us that just saying or tossing out stats doesn’t make them true. For example: Trump claims that Black unemployment is lower than it’s ever been. Really? Tell that to the thousands of Black people walking around in this country without jobs.
We have good reason to suspect that whites are really the minority in America: How many Black and brown Americans answer the Census? How is it that the count of African Americans in the U.S. has remained at 12.8 percent since forever? How many brown and Black people really live in America? We may never know the truth about the real Census count, but predictions about the browning of America and that minorities will become the majority by 2050 were made decades ago.
Trump’s agenda is to retain white rule, much like what occurred in South Africa. Whites never wanted to share America’s riches with non-white Americans, as white legislators in state houses and on Capitol Hill are showing us. But tick-tock, the clock is moving toward a majority population of color and there is nothing Trump can do to stem the tide.
If there is any good in what Trump is doing, it is that he has pulled the sheets and hoods off racist Americans. Trump has also shattered the myth of white superiority that white media and white leaders have pushed since the founding of this country. Many whites are nowhere near superior. Indeed, looking at Trump’s mob, we must really question their level of intelligence and commitment to American ideals.
It is sweetly ironic, then, that the words written in the U.S. Declaration of Independence by slave-holding President Thomas Jefferson ring ever more true today: “We hold these truths to be self-evident: that all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.”
Today, let us, people of color, reaffirm our inalienable rights and say to Donald Trump: Your racist attacks are as old and tired as you are, and have no place in the U.S. Furthermore, your mob rule must end.
And, Donald, if you don’t like living in a diverse America, you’re free to leave the country.
This article originally published in the July 22, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
