Like Fire To Gasoline!
You are supposed to believe that white supremacy is an aberration, and like a disease affects only a certain number of people, and to varying degrees. Some aren’t affected, while others are destroyed. But, they say, it isn’t the norm, so there’s no real danger.
In fact, racism is a rampant disease, that the Republican Party and Trump intend to use as a wedge to tear this country apart; to “bust it out” and burn it down, to end the experiment, America. And Donald Trump would love to light the match.
Have we forgotten that this country was built on white supremacy? Or did we ever really admit it? The gold-rum-slave golden triangle, of which New York City was one cornerstone, and London was another, was our foundation. Without it, for the first hundred years, America would have been just a few ragtag bands of refugees from political extremism and criminality (sounds familiar). We would not have survived, or flourished without a head start in international trade – rum and slaves. This country was established on the trade in human liberty, and on human degradation. (Abraham Lincoln was quoted as having said, “As regards the relative merits of Yankee rum versus Southern “corn,” “I have no particular preference.”)
After the 1820’s, the Yankee States had no choice but to virtually abolish commercial slavery: the English “ruled the waves,” and they said that no one could transport slaves. So, that was that. But, the South had a different economic system than the North. They had little shipping to be affected, and their economy depended on slave labor: they had left themselves no choice. A new triangle: slaves from the Caribbean to produce cotton to trade for gold, made Southern “Aristocrats” rich, without lifting a finger; and they were eager to send men to die to perpetuate the paradigm, which was born of White Supremacy.
Remember!
The “Night Riders” after the Civil War (terrorists!)
The “Race Riots” of the first part of the Twentieth Century.
The indiscriminate slaughter of Chinese-Americans in the same period.
Interment camps.
The use of the atomic bomb.
The “War on Drugs.”
President Donald “the Trump” Trump refusing to disavow the Klan.
Family separations in the “Indian Schools.”
Family separations at the Mexican Border.
The “Trail of Tears.”
Puerto Rican relief.
The “Dred Scott” decision.
The Assassinations: Evers, King, Kennedy.
The demonstrations (riots) of the early 1970’s.
The church burnings, and murders committed by the KKK since the Civil War, and before.
Disenfranchisement of minorities last year by the United States Supreme Court and several states.
Police executions of young black men (How do you choke someone to death in “self-defense?”)
Native Americans as “wards” of the nation (Ain’t we all?)
The demonisation and marginalisation of African-American activists and groups.
(It’s funny: we Christians, ordinary Christians, believe that there is an accounting where everyone has to answer for the way they have lived their lives; so naturally bigots will be punished, and those that they hate will not; we are told to love and hate not. But, the hated are suffering now, so everyone suffers in time.)
We all have the defective gene! We are all racists. I don’t mean that we are all equally a little bit racist – as a way to minimize. I mean that we ignore murder, disenfranchisement, outrageous economic disparity (and depravity), and profound human suffering. We are a racist people.
Maybe the only saving grace here is that we are ignorant, have always been gullible, and are deeply in denial (and in love with ourselves).
We need to turn our backs on everything that is Trump and forget about the reality show huckster, and move forward, onwards and upwards.
We are not what America should be. We need to get busy. But we know that we can do it, if for no other reason than that we can imagine it. We can change; because that’s what being an American is. We can be a refuge; because that’s what America is.
Welcome to America where even though the Civil War has been over for 150+ years, we still have poor whites fighting for rich plantation owners. (John Fugelsang)