They’re still taking the slaves for granted as they peddle opportunistic political goods…
[It’s true!] Oftentimes we hear the term Black people are not a monolith. Which is perhaps why in the black grouping some are fractious, ethnocentric, flag-waving nationalists, hence invariably malleable and easily manipulated.
Generational evidence attest to, and continue to prove that. Hence our perennial disunity; divided we continue to fall, are falling… Our lack of cohesion continues to prove that we’re pliable, easily manipulated and pawned…
Here’s evidence.
I’m not a loyal CNN viewer by any stretch, but in my home CNN consumes a vast amount of television time. I’m easy with the ongoing discussions, debates and different opinions guests bring to the discussion table; that’s more than I can say about that animal-named television counterpart, which, in looking for some ideological balance, I periodically peep in on.
Problem is I that their ideological offerings always always go against my [mental] grain.
So last Thursday, February 27, while walking by the TV, a particular CNN story grabbed my attention.
It was a group of Black people being hosted by Donald Trump and his wife at an event dubbed an “African American History Month Reception.” All I could think was how patronizing… all that specious good intentions…
There we have a president who so far in his mandate has had nothing but vitriol to spew at Black people. Remember how he lambasted those Black football players with terms like “get those sons of bitches outta here…”, questioning Barack Obama’s citizenship (Americanness?) and so on…
These and other examples of that man’s embedded feelings are why many African-Americans, as well as other Black people outside the U.S. describe him as [a] racist.
Nevertheless, the venue for that American History Month schmoozing was the renowned East Room of the White House. I imagine the pleasure of the moment was all the Black peoples’ who were there… in the presence of a man who perceives himself as being larger than the Almighty. And why not, he habitually uses superlatives when describing just about any and everything he’s involved with.
So for those Black Trumpists one must assume it was an ‘out-of-this-world-moment’ being in the same room as the president who was sitting in his chair… a throne. A group picture of them, centuries-old sons and daughters of the slaves surrounding the great leader, all seemingly positioning themselves to touch his hair, skin, vestments… implies that.
He was truly glazing them with his political cultism, self-described ‘greatness’, his Orangeness as it were, tells part of the story. (See the picture online.)
According to one article, Trump told the cheering group of “Black supporters?” that he deserves “100 percent support for his record on issues impacting African Americans…”
Someone told me he also handed out large denomination Uncle $ams to his guests. Perhaps it was a small down payment on the long-awaited proverbial reparations…
Yes, the White House guests were truly fawning over their president who has a spongy mind and loose tongue. Remember in one of his ‘loose-tongued’ moments he referred to the places where some of those guests descended, as “shithole countries” which, by extension makes them descendants of shithole people.
And we know that we come cheap, are easily bought. Slavery remains a prime historical example of promises unkept. But was anything ever promised? Oh yes, the slaves were promised “Forty acres and a mule…”
And I’m no historian by any stretch.
We’re not a monolith, but how could Black people allow themselves to be in the presence of anyone with such blatant disrespect of our et alone people, allow themselves to be pawns… props… backdrops… in that man’s ongoing reality show is way beyond my thinking comprehension.
I’m not an American, and that man has never done anything to ingratiate me… I never watched his reality show on that network television platform, and I’m glad I didn’t. And based on his political performance so far on the global reality platform he continues to alienate me.
He has a 0 likability quotient, no redeemable qualities in my view.
And all of his dubious workings and machinations in his ongoing [political] reality show so far continue to rub me the wrong way. And truth be told I’m by nature a person who looks for reasons to like (all) people.
But Black people are not a monolith, so many of them love him, fawn over him.
During the reception I could hear someone telling his ‘Orangeness’: “Mr. President, I don’t mean to interrupt, but I’ve got to say this because it’s Black History Month: man, you are the first African president of the U.S.”
Hmm…
He also stated that he has been inspired by Donald Trump “You’ve changed me. You touched me. And you made my work go to another level. You inspire me. And every time I go into those prisons and I ask my guys how many of them had their sentences reduced and they raise their hands, I know I’m doing God’s work and I thank you for that.”
Apparently that gentleman is an ordained minister and University professor.
Good for the professor. Wonder if he prayed with his president and summoned him to cleanse his mind and mouth.
Another one apparently tweeted, “President Donald J. Trump is making Black history with all the great things he’s doing for us.”
Maybe that tweeter was referring to the gathering.
And in oozing more election rhetoric the president stated, “I will not stop. I will not give up until we have delivered equal and abundant opportunity to every neighbourhood across our land…”
And given the Orange spell that had overcome them, another article quoted someone as saying, “People can’t say this man is a racist! President Trump thank you for letting me sit next to you. Now I can show other people who grew up poor and in foster care that they can also sit with a President one day…”
The proverbial “‘American Dream is Real!’ Others complained that Trump wasn’t being given enough credit… had been portrayed unfairly as racist.”
And seemingly completely under the ‘Orange’ spell
“You attack him, you attack all of us,” one of them as saying, he has “done more for African Americans than any other president.”
And as the ‘great one’ goes about politicking and pandering to Black voters, he claims he has done more for Black people than any other president, meaning his predecessor, Barack Obama, whose name he readily conjures in his continuing and unfathomable desire to supersede, and whose presidential accomplishments and legacy he’s hell bent on ‘whitewashing…’ and destroying since moving into the White House. That’s his tacit presidential mission.
What the president has been doing is using the subject of criminal justice reform as a political tool… a pathway to encroach on Black and Hispanic communities with the objective of securing votes by talking “prison reform” when he feigns making overtures to Black and Hispanic communities, which are among the primary sources and inhabitants of America’s Prison Industrial Complex.
His overtures are nothing more than him trying to gain political capital by feigning interest in issues of (perpetual) concern to those two targeted communities… as we (some of us) see and understand it from this side of the border.
