This is the real human tragic story of the 2016 American presidential election, the real human tragic story of Donald Trump’s “Miss House Keeping”, for when he was criticised for asking people to go and watch pornography at 5am, he (Donald Trump) said “for those few people knocking me for tweeting at 3am at least you know I will be there…” My question is: be there for what and for who? Be there to ask people – adults and children – to go and watch pornography at 3am?
Recently, Donald Trump, the nominee of the Republican Party in the 2016 election – when given the chance for atonement – did not regret his racist and sexist behaviour to a former Miss Universe, Ms. Alicia Machado, a Latina, when he called her “Miss House Keeping”, “Miss Piggy”, “eating machine”. Trump’s racism is typical of the racism of members of the rightwing, his campaign, the alt-right movement in America, the Klu Klux Klan, the Republican base, their news media – Fox News and Breitbart News, to all non-Caucasian people.
The United States of America was and still is an instructive place to live in for a large section of her non-Caucasian population. The enslavement of people of African descent in America started in 1619, based on the first formal documentation of the enslavement of Africans. That was when the first set of African slaves were brought into the North American colony of Jamestown in present day Virginia to work on tobacco farms. Also, in a formal sense, the enslavement of Africans officially ended in December 18, 1865, even though it continued in practice for a period of time.
The difference in years between 1619 and 1865 is 246 years. In other words, the enslavement of people of African descent went on for 246 years in America. We are obliged to be this specific arithmetically, at the risk of being pedantic because of the illiteracy, ignorance, insanity and evil that Donald Trump, his campaign, and Republican base are unleashing on America and the world in making and enabling the unintelligent claim that President Barack Obama started racism in the United States of America. Though insane, this is the kind of outrageous claim the Trump campaign and Republican base make and enable publicly and privately.
Ignoring over 250 years of plantation slavery in America when black families had their lives almost ruined economically, culturally and spiritually (when black families were humiliatingly pounded and no black private family wealth could ever be created and transferred to subsequent black generations, leaving other members of other races in America to accumulate private family wealth and advance culturally, economically and politically), through enslavement and racist white supremacist policies. It is a place where in 2016, many members of the rightwing and Trump voters actually believe and have variously claimed that President Obama started racism! To them it is either 250 years of slavery and Jim Crow did not exist – just as the genocide of Jews in Germany is often denied in the same rightwing quarters – or they were not “really racism”!
America is also instructive for other reasons. It is a country where the members of the rightwing and Republican Party have hatefully called the first black president a “food stamp” president (Newt Gingrich, a former House Speaker made this public) as a loathsome reference to the welfare support programme for a small population of Americans of all races who may be unfortunate to be un-employed due to the nature and logic of capitalism. This is the same capitalism which created “billionaires” like Donald Trump who game the system and hardly pay income taxes, as recently revealed by New York Times; a capitalist system that must keep a large pool of unemployed as a blackmail weapon against the employed.
To have called President Obama a “food stamp” president is to hatefully judge him on the basis of his skin, while suggesting that the only beneficiaries of the welfare programme for the un-employed are African Americans, when in actual fact the beneficiaries cut across all races in America.
Based on their pathological and congenital hatred for black people and people of African descent – which dispose them to tie intelligence to the colour of one’s skin, to these members of the base of the Republican Party, the Trump campaign, the alt-right movement and their news media, Toni Morrison, Wole Soyinka, Derek Walcott – all Nobel Prize winners in Literature – must have won the Nobel Prize only because they are black, and not because they truly deserve the honour on the basis of their intellectual, moral and creative strength, and on merit. The racist mantra? If you do not look like me, you are stupid, you are not beautiful, and you are not handsome!
In America as a black male, you must keep your cool even under hateful and racist provocation (which often times is subtle and structural and therefore can be invisible to the untrained eyes, especially if you are not a local and not deep in American public life, culture and lingo), otherwise you are marked and mocked as an “angry black male” (just as Donald Trump in racist behaviour called a woman – the former Miss Universe, Ms. Machado who is a Latino – “Miss House Keeping” because of her race). And the black female? A “Nagging black female”, even if you are a professor! And the black female is “welfare queen” (meaning that she depends on government welfare) even when she works double shifts and pays her taxes!
And black life in the black communities? “Hellish” and “worst than Afghanistan”, as Donald Trump tells his suburban all white audience. This is the America of 2016 that Trump and his campaign of hate in the American presidential election are bringing back. This is the historical context of Donald Trump’s referencing of Alicia Machado, who won the Miss Universe contest in 1996.
Now talking about “Miss House Keeping” as used by Donald Trump to refer to women who are Latinos, please recall your stay in an American hotel. Recall the honourable people (members of the working class, which “billionaire” Donald Trump claims to be champion of!) who earn their pay to educate their children and feed their family by making sure your room is clean and you had a decent and comfortable stay. These are women and men of honour, whose labour and honour are invisible to the class of people like Donald Trump. Tohime, they are just “house keepers” because they are Latinos (and not human beings like himself). Period.
Now, work is honourable. You work to feed your family and educate your children. But in specific terms, Ms. Machado, the former Miss Universe, does not work as a “house keeper” but she is Latina. And because all Latinas are “house Keepers” (just as President Obama is a “food stamp” president according to the same right wing in America) in the hate imagination of Donald Trump and his campaign, Ms. Machado must be a “House keeper” – a hate aggression on her gender and race.
When Secretary Clinton brought the Machado case up in her first debate with Donald Trump it was in a response to Trump’s mockery of Clinton’s gender as he claimed that (i) she does not have a “presidential look” and does not have the “stamina” to be president, obviously because she is a woman. Trump’s patriarchy and that of his Club of Patriarchs who defend him (Newt Gingrich, Rudi Giuliani, Chris Christie, Stephen Bannon), along with that of Kellyanne Conway – who surprisingly is a woman!, is sickening. One wonders if Trump and his Club of Patriarchs still live in the Stone Age. Secretary Clinton referenced the Machado case to show a pattern in Donald Trumps’ racism, sexism, misogyny, and bigotry.
But few days after the debate, from 5am Trump went on Twitter, and as an American online publication, Politico, rightly captured it, Trump literally “jumped into the gutters.” Donald Trump, who wants to be president of the United States, abused Ms. Machado and lied about how she became an American citizen. In his early morning tweets, he attempted to humiliate Ms. Machado again by lying about a non-existent Machado sex tape. Trump asked his supporters who are certainly information-challenged to go watch the Machado sex tape.
There are two big issues in the reference of Donald Trump to pornography at 5am. First, Trump confirmed his sexism and racism towards Ms. Machado. He did not deny it. Second, it may mean that Donald, a would be American president knows how a sex tape, pornography looks like. My point here is strictly speaking a logical one: How does Donald Trump, the candidate of the so-called conservatives on moral, ethical, and religious issues know what a sex tape looks like if he has not at least watched or seen one?
So the question is: Does Donald Trump (who on tape is consistently contemptuous of the female body), the candidate of the American Republican Party, the candidate of some American “Christian” evangelical groups, the candidate of conservative America, some WASP (White Anglo Saxon Protestant) groups, the candidate of the so-called conservatives on moral, ethical and religious matters, who directed his voters to watch pornographic film at 5am also watch sex tapes, and pornographic films? That is the pain a 70 year old sexist, xenophobe and bigot seeks to unleash on American children and those of the world.
This is the real human tragic story of the 2016 American presidential election, the real human tragic story of Donald Trump’s “Miss House Keeping”, for when he was criticised for asking people to go and watch pornography at 5am, he (Donald Trump) said “for those few people knocking me for tweeting at 3am at least you know I will be there…” My question is: be there for what and for who? Be there to ask people – adults and children – to go and watch pornography at 3am? Is that what being ”presidential” means in the mind of a 70 year old Donald Trump?
I am a proud father with sons and daughters. I take my duty as a father as a service to God, my immediate community and to humanity. So I take this duty seriously. I will never entrust my sons and daughters to the care of a 70 year old man with the kind of mind Donald Trump has: A sexist and misogynist with a perverted mindset who sees females only as mere body parts. He who tweets between 3am and 5am asking his followers to go and watch pornography through sex tapes. This is what Donald Trump has reduced the race for the American presidential race in 2016 to. This is part of the real reason Donald Trump is unfit to be the president of any country.
Adeolu Ademoyo, aaa54@cornell.edu, Africana Studies And Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.
