When it became clear the Trump was going to be successful in giving the white evangelicals that elected him the one thing they really wanted, control over the SCOTUS, it quickly became clear to the rest of the white people in the country, many who thought that Trump was going to be no different from Hillary, how that he might really make their lives inconvenient.
I understand why people are in such shock. Anyone under the age of 30 has not lived in world where politicians were overt racists, where women were overtly treated as birthing machines or mothers or compulsory sex partners, where people of color were servants who under the rules of civility, and the threat of brutal retaliation, were to do only what they were told, and not resist. For these people, particularly the white young people, the post war period from the 1950’s to the early 1970’s were a dreamland where everyone, or at least everyone who mattered, had everything they needed. These young people have not been told the stories of the non-white citizens who peacefully went about their lives until some white person brutally murdered them for doing nothing but asking to sit at a lunch counter They do not know the sacrifices that women made in the 1970’s to take the right to own property, have a bank account, not be raped, so their daughters could have more prosperous lives. No, young people were born into a world where, in general, these rights existed, to various extents. This is what the previous generation worked for, and it is unfortunate, though not surprising, that a white nationalist was elected who is dedicated to shutting it down.
So it is disappointing that the young people are going to have to work all over again to retain or take back these rights. On the other hand, as we are reminded by this tweet, many people never had full agency, so really the fact that we were done , or even nearly done, working for equality was an illusion.
xDo not get lost in a sea of despair. Be hopeful, be optimistic. Our struggle is not the struggle of a day, a week, a month, or a year, it is the struggle of a lifetime. Never, ever be afraid to make some noise and get in good trouble, necessary trouble. #goodtrouble
— John Lewis (@repjohnlewis) June 27, 2018Black children have never been safe on the street from being murdered, by a wacko with gun, or by cops who will get lauded and rewarded by the public for their contribution to insuring one less black kid grows up. Women still do not equal rights codified in law, and for 40 years many democratic congresses have chosen not to make a women’s right to choose a law.
To change this, we have to work to create a country that is not based on white nationalism. We have to stop electing or supporting white nationalists. People like Reagan who won partially based on the myth that black mothers who wanted to help raising their kids, like any other mother, were welfare queens simply because they were not white people entitled to the help.
We need to identify people like John McCain, who built his career trashing the image of one of the greatest Americans who ever lived, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr, as white nationalists. We cannot allow them to reform their image with attendance at a few events and a lame apology. I mean you would not let a child molester baby sit your kid just because he says he is sorry.
Or George Buh the First, who took a tragedy and turned it into a the beginning of the race war against the white people. People who are not white nationalists do not take a single event of a black man killing someone and turn it into a clarion call for the white race to to put all black people in jail. After all, if they were in jail, if those Mexicans were not allowed to cross the border, then all the white people would be safe.
Or Nixon who set up the war on drugs as a state sponsored program to murder and imprison black people.
We cannot work for equality unless we work to end The White Nationalist America. As we have seen, 1988 is last time that we elected an overtly white nationalist president. After all, Bush II was actually pretty down with everyone and did not base his work on White Nationalism to the extent of his father and previous GOP POTUS. The passage of time, and the fact that even progressives whitewash history, means that young progressives do not know the extent of the white nationalism in US politics. It was a surprise to them, but not to those of us who see and saw the oppression, that their country elected Trump. They did not know, through the whitewashing, that Trump represents the mainstream of the post war GOP as well as the fundamental fears and desires of the white evangelical population, particularly the significant fraction that worships wealth. Progressives who voted for Trump or stayed home in the belief that Hillary was worse had no concept of what a white nationalist country would do if the white nationalists actually gained full power. They thought Reagan, the last time the white nationalists were in control, was a funny little harmless man, and there was no lasting damage. They thought this because the progressives allowed history to be whitewashed.
And Trump is the result.