Ignoring racism continues U.S. cruelty
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Ignoring racism continues U.S. cruelty
Trump's divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump's continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means - whatever their intent - that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.
I had fully intended to ignore President Trump's latest round of racially charged taunts against an African American elected official, and an African American activist, and an African American journalist and a whole city with a lot of African Americans in it. I had every intention of walking past Trump's latest outrages and writing about the self-destructive squabbling of the Democratic presidential field, which has chosen to shame former vice president Joe Biden for the sin of being an electable, moderate liberal.
But I made the mistake of pulling James Cone's "The Cross and the Lynching Tree" off my shelf - a book designed to shatter convenient complacency. Cone recounts the case of a white mob in Valdosta, Ga., in 1918 that lynched an innocent man named Haynes Turner. Turner's enraged wife, Mary, promised justice for the killers. The sheriff responded by arresting her and then turning her over to the mob, which included women and children. According to one source, Mary was "stripped, hung upside down by the ankles, soaked with gasoline, and roasted to death. In the midst of this torment, a white man opened her swollen belly with a hunting knife and her infant fell to the ground and was stomped to death."
God help us. It is hard to write the words. This evil - the evil of white supremacy, resulting in dehumanization, inhumanity and murder - is the worst stain, the greatest crime, of U.S. history. It is the thing that nearly broke the nation. It is the thing that proved generations of Christians to be vicious hypocrites. It is the thing that turned normal people into moral monsters, capable of burning a grieving widow to death and killing her child.
During more than 300 years of routine horrors - the slave ships, the brandings, the separation of families, the beatings, the lynchings, the constant flood of humiliation, the racist ads for soap and toothpaste, the anti-black riots, the segregation of buses and pools and schools and suburbs, the sundown towns, the kangaroo courts, the police dogs and water cannons, the church bombings, the cruel and petty tyranny of whites, reinforced by the most prominent politicians in the country - during all of this, none of the descendants of Europe were able to stamp this evil out. As James Baldwin said in 1963, "The only people in the country at the moment who believe either in Christianity or in the country are the most despised minority in it."
Racism is the fire that left our country horribly disfigured. It is the beast we try to keep locked in the basement. When the president of the United States plays with that fire or takes that beast out for a walk, it is not just another political event, not just a normal day in campaign 2020. It is a cause for shame. It is the violation of martyrs' graves. It is obscene graffiti on the Lincoln Memorial. It is, in the eyes of history, the betrayal - the re-betrayal - of Haynes and Mary Turner and their child. And all of this is being done by an ignorant and arrogant narcissist reviving racist tropes for political gain, indifferent to the wreckage he is leaving, the wounds he is ripping open.
Like, I suspect, many others, I am finding it hard to look at resurgent racism as just one in a series of presidential offenses or another in a series of Republican errors. Racism is not just another wrong. The Antietam battlefield is not just another plot of ground. The Edmund Pettus Bridge is not just another bridge. The balcony outside Room 306 at the Lorraine Motel is not just another balcony. As U.S. history hallows some causes, it magnifies some crimes.
What does all this mean politically? It means that Trump's divisiveness is getting worse, not better. He makes racist comments, appeals to racist sentiments and inflames racist passions. The rationalization that he is not, deep down in his heart, really a racist is meaningless. Trump's continued offenses mean that a large portion of his political base is energized by racist tropes and the language of white grievance. And it means - whatever their intent - that those who play down, or excuse, or try to walk past these offenses are enablers.
Some political choices are not just stupid or crude. They represent the return of our country's cruelest, most dangerous passion. Such racism indicts Trump. Treating racism as a typical or minor matter indicts us.
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When it's all said and done, Trump will be more known to history for his racism than for his "great" economy.
That is going to sting.
I heard he made the RNCC fire people because of their race which is epitome of racism.
Oh wait, that was the democrats, who are the actual racists.
Right, the only ones who actually have representative numbers of minorities working for them and with them and are their Senators and Congressmen and why over 90% of black Americans vote Democrat, because Democrats are the "real racists" by attempting to be inclusive. You tell yourself whatever you need to fall asleep at night, but your logic is beyond flawed. Affirmative action is not racist, its a tool used to help historically discriminated against minorities to have an actual opportunity for advancement and integration when facing 200 plus years of a white male Christian-centric society kept in place for centuries by bigotry, segregation, disenfranchisement and open racism.
Wow! It's kinda strange to see a local newspaper as a seed on NT.
Why is it that Trump's racism can only be demonstrated by the racial identity of people in selected tweets? Trump has directed similar criticism against others, including Republicans. Why are only criticism of people with particular racial identities racist?
Apparently it isn't the language of the criticism that is racist. It's necessary to parse the criticism in the racial context of those being criticized.
Democrats are attempting to create a facade of racial identity so that any criticism of Democrats can be called racist. But the Democratic Party represents a white majority and panders to that white majority to win elections. By claiming to represent people of color, white Democrats can also become victims of racism. By alleging that Trump's criticism of Elijah Cummings as racist. that allows Nancy Pelosi to assume the mantle of being a victim of racism, too.
Alleging racism against one Democrat allows all Democrats to become victims of racism.
Democrats have turned racism into a political joke. When a long serving, old, white Democrat becomes the arbiter of racial outrage then that outrage is simply not believable. Why isn't old, white Democrats using racial politics for political advantage blatantly racist?