Moderator: Mr. Trump, how would you protect the suburbs?
Trump: BOO!
I am not sure at what time or where the first presidential debate will take place but I feel certain the answer to every question put to Mr. Trump will be; BOO! The President is ignoring the latest warning from the Department of Homeland Security that the biggest threat to domestic safety and peace in the U.S. is the white supremacist movement. Look at the reaction to the murder of two men who pursued a gun-toting teen who shot at protesters, one who’s deadly weapon was a skateboard.
Moderator: Mr. Trump do you condemn the vigilantism on the streets of Wisconsin?
Trump: BOO!
Moderator: Finally, what is your message to the people for the future of America?
Trump: The Blacks are coming, BOO!!!
Sure, the above questions and answers are a figment of my imagination but the President has demonstrated, since the murder of Heather Heyer in Charlottesville, Virginia that my imagination could never match his cruelty. While the mother of Ms. Heyer grieved the loss of her daughter, mowed down by a hate-filled white supremacist driving a 2,600-pound car; the President told her and the world the killer may not have been such a bad guy, after all. Mr. Trump said there were some “very fine people” among the rebel flag carrying, gun bearing chanters of the epithet “Jews will not replace us.” Who knows Mr. President, maybe the killer was one of those “very fine people.”
With a great display of indignance, the President said in his own defense of an Atlantic article published over the weekend that only an “animal” would call dead and wounded soldiers ‘losers and suckers.’ I compliment you, Mr. President, self-identification is a good thing. I was a teenager in 1968 when Alabama Governor George Wallace ran for president as a representative of the American Independence Party. Subsequently, Wallace ran as a Democrat in 1972, in his effort to single-handedly bring back the Dixiecrats.
Similarities have been drawn between Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. Nixon’s veiled racism was also presented to America in the form of law and order. I see more of a connection between Trump/Wallace than Trump/Nixon. In 1963 then Gov. George Wallace symbolically blocked the entrance to the University of Alabama, by standing in the doorway of Foster Auditorium, emblematically denying the matriculation of two black students, Vivian Malone, and James Hood. Less than ten years later Donald Trump and his father [Fred] were in federal court fighting charges that they routinely practiced racial discrimination based on color, still standing in the doorway of progress.
The investigation revealed that an employee told the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, “[Trump] also wanted me to get rid of the blacks that were in the building by telling them cheap housing was available for them at only $500 down payment, which Trump would offer to pay himself. Trump didn’t tell me where this housing was located,” said the employee. Donald Trump was working alongside his father as a member of Trump Management Company who reportedly had a policy, ‘…to rent only to Jews and Executives’ and ‘discouraged rental to blacks.’ Some of you may be saying to yourself, well discouragement is not discrimination.
In 1989 I tried moving into an area in Northern Virginia. I had all the qualifications necessary, the most important of those being money to afford the apartment. It was suggested by the leasing agent that “maybe I would be more comfortable in D.C.—you know around your folks,” she said. I will never forget her piercing green eyes and toothy dismissive grin, brushing me away like lint on her collar. Black people recognize discrimination, we have lots of practice. Those imagined fears worked and still work. America, its time we summon up a little courage and not take BOO for an answer.
Vote in 2020 for Change.