Donald Trump’s America cannot be the face of the United States of America that has been the shining and moral example to the world under the followership of the good people of America and the able and morally worthy leadership of previous American presidents.
“HOW DARK?”… I had not misheard…” ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?” Button B, Button A, * Stench
– Wole Soyinka Nobel Laureate – “Telephone Conversation” On Racism in Housing in the UK.
“Yup, the whole birther movement was racist …that’s what the 99 percent believe. When Trump couldn’t keep that up he said he also wanted to see if the certificate (President Obama’s birth certificate) noted that he was a Muslim…” – Collin Powell, retired US Army General, Former US Secretary of State.
Under Donald Trump’s Republican Party, the formal and not so formal enablers of racism, sexism, xenophobia and bigotry in the United States of America have officially taken over a major party – the Republican Party. And if by chance Donald Trump wins, it follows that these enablers will be in charge in the White House in the next four years!
While the American people have the right to choose whoever they want as their president, as indeed citizens of other countries also have rights to choose their leaders, when a racist and a bigot becomes the president of a country in the 21st century, it has serious implication for that country and the world at large.
This dire implication led to Secretary Clinton’s challenge when she said racism and bigotry are deplorable and that it is unfortunate to enable these as the Trump Campaign does. So the questions are: Is racism deplorable or not in 21st century America? Are enablers of racism deplorable or not? These are practical questions in view of the unfolding events in the 2016 American election.
Just as scholars have shown how slavery was America’s original sin, “Birther or Birtherism” – (the body of ideas which re-echo the experience of the slavery of peoples of African descent in America, and which American rightwing – in and outside the Republican Party – attempted to use to delegitimise the citizenship and Americanity of African Americans, and the presidency of President Obama) has become the original sin of the Donald Trump campaign.
Hence, it is not surprising that the Trump campaign is willing to enable racism, xenophobia and bigotry in 21st century America if these will win them the American 2016 presidential election. In doing this, the campaign keeps its conservative, Republican base low with information about other races in America. Such state makes the Republican base and Trump voters vulnerable to racist and bigoted manipulation. And without questioning it, the open coziness of Donald Trump’s campaign with race supremacists such as the alt-right group, and the chief enabler of slavery – the KKK, validates this.
David Duke is one of the main contemporary leaders and enablers of the racist KKK. When Mike Pence, Donald Trump’s vice presidential candidate was asked if KKK and David Duke are deplorable – to use Secretary Clinton’s apt articulation of racist practices – he balked and dodged. Pence said David Duke, the Klu Klux Klan leader, “is just a bad guy”!
In other words, logically to Mike Pence, who speaks on behalf of the Trump Campaign, centuries of slavery and racism and the enablers of one of the darkest moments in human history are not deplorable. They are just bad things that bad guys do, because one of the leaders in the contemporary period of that dark moment of slavery – David Duke is in Mike Pence speak, just “a bad guy”!
But to a fellow Republican, retired four-star US General, Collin Powell, who had earlier said of the American Republican Party that there is a “dark vein of intolerance in some parts of the party,” featuring GOP voices who “look down on minorities” it is not obvious that slavery can be a mere “bad thing” which, according to Mike Pence, “bad guys” do. Of Donald Trump who he called a national disgrace for his racism and bigotry, Powell wondered, why “The whole ‘birther’ movement – why do senior Republican leaders tolerate this kind of discussion within the party?”
But victims of racism know better. For example, for decades the rightwing forces in American polity, their scholars, media and rightwing literature and scholarship, have derogatorily called African American women “Welfare Queens”, meaning people who live on government dole; parasites. Yet, these are innocent hard working Americans. Continuing the narrative of African Americans and blacks as “Welfare Queens”, the same right wing and conservative forces being presently led by the chief birther – Donald Trump – have openly called President Obama “the food stamp president”!
This is why it does not bother Donald Trump that he would delegitimise African Americans when before an all white audience he referred to African Americans as “our friends” whose inner cities are deplorable! It does not bother him that a key section of the hard working American people are derogatorily and wrongly called “welfare queens” by his right wing constituency. And it does not bother him that some members of the same party he now leads called President Obama the “food stamp president”! But he and his campaign refused to accept that racism in the past and now is deplorable.
Donald Trump cannot easily forget such racist categorisation and reference of African American women as “Welfare Queens” and President Obama as “food stamp president” by the right wing, he and his father – who was an immigrant from Germany – discriminated against African Americans on the basis of race in housing in New York city years earlier. The Trump’s family racist housing policy may as well be what the Nobel laureate in Literature, Wole Soyinka captured in one of his celebrated poems on racism and racist housing practice against black people. The poem is titled “Telephone Conversation”.
In the poem by Soyinka, the owner–renter of an apartment, upon hearing that the potential tenant is of African origin, asks him:
““HOW DARK?”… I had not misheard…” ARE YOU LIGHT
OR VERY DARK?” Button B, Button A, * Stench…
“….ARE YOU DARK? OR VERY LIGHT?” Revelation came.
“You mean-like plain or milk chocolate?…”
“WHAT’S THAT?” conceding
“DON’T KNOW WHAT THAT IS.” “Like brunette.”
“THAT’S DARK, ISNT’T IT?…”
In the fuller Soyinka poem, the house owner comes across as a “polite” and “well bred” woman but she is low in information, shallowly racist and bigoted. The racist behaviour of the apartment owner in the poem is Donald Trump’s America, both figuratively and in real time for Trump and his father, the immigrant from Germany, behaved exactly like the property owner in Soyinka’s poem when they discriminated against African Americans on the basis of their colour and race in housing in New York city. Hence, one is not surprised when Donald Trump, his campaign and the Republican Party, enable racism and refuse to back off in 21st century America.
But enabling racism leads those who Donald Trump facilitates to reach false conclusions about people who do not look like them. For example, to conservatives, members of the republican party base who Americans know fall short on information, and who Trump’s racism enable the black students who got into top schools with top and highly competitive SAT scores, could not have gotten in on merit. Why? They are children of “Welfare Queens”! They are not hard working. They must have got in because of the colour of their skin. To these conservative forces, the base of the republican party who Donald Trump enable with this racist strategy, these hard working young black kids – including my own biological children whose second lives are Church, their books and library – must have got into competitive colleges via so-called affirmative action. To the rightwing and American conservative voices these black kids are not hard working. How can when to Donald Trump’s Republican base they are black and invisible to merit!
Because the effects of racism are intensely personal, private and public personal witnessing and testimony is a legitimate move. Like millions of noble and hard working Americans, my wife and I sleep less everyday, we pay our taxes, we work ourselves to the bones, and we borrow from banks and pay back with interests in order to give our children thorough education. Our children work hard in their studies. They are in the library, Saturdays and Sundays. They work hard serving their communities and the church. They win laurels for themselves, and for their school and community. Again to clear any misunderstanding, this autobiographical information about self and black people in America, African Americans is to dispel and put to rest finally the insidious and insane rampaging racism of Donald Trump’s campaign in the 21st century.
My children (they are black, they are African American) get into competitive schools on merit because they prepare – with time and money – and they are hard workers and not because of the colour of their skin. In our family we over work ourselves just to avoid being dubiously labeled by the insane and deplorable racism of Donald Trump, his campaign, the Republican party, the alt right group and their media, Fox News, Breitbart News enable among members of the Republican Party base who are generally low on information. On many occasions, neighbours on our street have asked mom and I why our house lights are always on throughout the night. They have wondered how we always get out again first thing in the morning to school, to work. In our neighborhood we (children, mom and dad) belong to the group of people that get out of the house first in the early hours of the morning.
Yet, the evil, insane deplorable and despicable basket of racists, who Secretary Clinton correctly and legitimately referenced in her campaign through a comment which the Trump campaign twisted for vote catching and campaign reasons; but the basket of racists and bigots who Donald Trump and his campaign, the leadership of Republican Party, the alt right movement, KKK, their media such as Fox News and Breitbart News truly enable take one dubious, deprecating, derogatory look at my black children, my daughters, my African American children and say, “oh you got into those competitive colleges because of affirmative action because you are African American, because you are black”!
Unknown to members of this deplorable basket of racists who still live in the dark ages, my black, African American children work as hard and more than their peers just to escape being labeled by the racism that Donald Trump, the nominee of the Republican Party is re-enabling in 21st Century United States of America. The racists the Republican Party and Trump Campaign enable do not know my children’s scores, or all the scores of black children. They do not care that my children, and other black children sleep less every day in order to succeed. They do not care that mom and I, like all Americans, borrow from banks to pay tuition, pay back, and borrow again in order to see that our children get the best education America can offer.
But these racists, these bigots, these sexists, these xenophobes the Trump Campaign enables take one look at these black children, these African American children and they conclude they got what they got because of some thing called affirmative action, they are not hard working because they are black.
This is why to Donald Trump, Fox News, Breitbart News, the leadership of Trump Campaign, President Obama and Michelle Obama got into Harvard not on merit, president Obama edited the Harvard Students Law journal not on merit. How could he have done those things on merit when he is African American, when he is black! To the Republican Party leadership, Donald Trump and his campaign, their media such as Fox News Breitbart News, African Americans are not hard working. Others are the only hard working people.
Therefore, given the history of plantation slavery in the United States of America, the American racist birther movement of which Donald Trump is a leader and advocate is a re-set of the deplorable experience of plantation slavery. Racists are consistent in history. This explains why some leaders of Republican Party have openly claimed that African Americans were better off during the period of planation slavery in the United States of America and that the presidency of President Obama (they call it food stamp president) is worse than slavery!
This is why to me this explains why Secretary Clinton is correct in her apt comment about the deplorable nature of the basket of racists Donald Trump and his campaign enables. Donald Trump’s campaign can twist Secretary Clinton’s comment any way they want and once again mislead their information needing Republican base who are vulnerable to Donald Trump’s racist manipulation.
But to victims of slavery and racism, racism is deplorable. To victims of slavery and racism, Donald Trump enablers of racism in America in the 21st century are deplorable and despicable. To victims of slavery and racism, the leadership structure of Donald Trump’s campaign belongs to the deplorable and despicable basket of racists.
To victims of American racism perpetuated by right wing forces, in America, the KKK, the alt-right movement, Donald Trump – doyens and doyennes of the deplorable basket of racists, the racism of Donald Trump’s campaign is evil. Donald Trump and the Republican Party under Donald Trump have come in the 21st Century to divide the good citizens of the United States of America. And this is evil, and this is deplorable.
Donald Trump’s America cannot be the face of the United States of America that has been the shining and moral example to the world under the followership of the good people of America and the able and morally worthy leadership of previous American presidents.
Adeolu Ademoyo, aaa54@cornell.edu, Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
