Under the leadership of Donald Trump, Democrats are experiencing what it is like to be an African-American day in and day out in these United States of America. An experience that began from the moment the first African stepped foot onto American soil until the year of our Lord, this 2020. It feels quite oppressive, doesn’t it? Kind of scary? Watching from the cotton fields, the back of the bus, a church pew, the workplace, and classrooms an America who calls a wrong a right, a reality a paranoia, an imperfect a perfect, and a lie a truth, just the way the America of Donald Trump and his GOP mafia does. Surreal, isn’t it? To stand by and watch a people rule who don’t have your interests at heart in the least and are not ashamed to show they don’t. Yet you are just as American as they are. I’ve been thinking about the John Lennon’s song, “Woman is the N***er of the World” a lot lately.
I have observed the shock and despair shown by Democrats who are astounded by seeing a man like Donald Trump getting a free pass on all the classless actions and crimes he has committed and words he has spoken as president. They feel hopeless to protect themselves from or mitigate the probable adverse outcome from those in power right now. It’s a NEW feeling, never experienced during their lifetime. But they continue getting up every morning going to work or school, all the while feeling depleted and defeated. Stressed. That’s what the average African-American feels like each day of his life, Trump or no Trump. They’ve just learned to live with it.
It reminds me of affirmative-action. Very few of the majority concerned themselves with the African-American who hit a glass ceiling for any career above house maid, teacher, or mail courier. Blacks endured the unfairness for decades. Yet some White Americans couldn’t endure the supposed “favoritism” for a year without complaining or filing lawsuits about the loss of their entitlement.
The average White American’s threshold for feeling the system is stacked against them is extremely low. I can imagine the majority standing on the black side throughout history reading the U. S. Declaration of Independence and having a difficult time getting past that part where Jefferson has the audacity to write that “all men are created” equal, while they were in chains, the Jim Crow south, or just about to sign the contract on house at a higher percentage than a black counterpart. What indignity they would feel.
Fellow Democrats, as we face the next few months and an election that has the ability to save or destroy America, let us not forget the African-American struggle. Theirs has been for a lifetime and for the rest, perhaps, only an election cycle. During this Black History Month there is a lot to be learned about fortitude and faith when facing adversaries who seem to have God himself on their side. Those like Donald Trump who make a mockery out of Democracy and human decency yet who can actually affect the lives of those over whom they are MASSA with rhetoric and policy. And, right now, I mean master in every sense of the word.
There is actually more that we can do than just live with it. We can vote and continue to make our voices be heard even if we are accused of playing some kind of “card”. Remember, it is often quoted that pride always comes before a big fall. A fall this impactful will probably destroy this type of GOP for a lifetime. If there is any justice, it will be forever.