Commentary
Blacks in Donald Trump’s America
Egbert Gaye
So America chose Trump.
What the world has seen over the last 18 months or so, is that Donald J. Trump can get away with anything.
Shucks, after doing and saying just about anything, insulting and alienating individuals and groups left and right, on the morning of Wednesday, November 9, the man in whom arrogance and ignorance collide in the most frightening of ways, is president of the most powerful nation on earth.
As white folks say: Go figure.
And they’ll have it all figured out when all the numbers are computed and analyzed soon enough, but it’s pretty clear that the USA wants to rid itself of everything Barack Obama.
You see, they never really wanted Obama, but things were really falling apart in the country with an economy that was on the verge of tanking as it bled 8.5 million jobs and saw millions of families put in the streets as they lost their homes in a real estate bubble that popped like a cheap balloon from the dollar store.
It was also a time when George Bush and his “New World Order” team were adrift and mired in international conflicts and unwinnable wars in the Middle East, so in 2008 when Obama came to them offering hope and change, one old guy interviewed on television responded for all of America: “I might be a racist, but I’m not stupid.”
So of course they voted for Obama, but they did so swimming in the tide of young and Black and Latino and women voters, all of whom were energized by the guy’s dynamism and eloquence.
This election, America is done with all that.
Their economy is back on an even keel with more than having added 15 million jobs, and people are buying houses and cars like they used to pre-2007.
So it’s time to make America great again and the person to get them there is the usual rich white guy with a shtick. Except in this case goes a little beyond the usual having a man who campaigned on promises to build a wall to keep Mexicans out, deport millions of immigrants and ban Muslims from entering the country, and said the ugliest things about women, including openly bragging about groping and sexually assaulting them.
The prospect of a Trump presidency is troubling for minorities, mostly because of his hubris towards some of the policies that Obama has in place to deal with outstanding issues surrounding health care, justice and employment.
After all, Obama invested a lot of political capital to help poor Blacks and Latinos come into the fold and secure much-needed health insurance under his Obamacare.
He also saw the plight of Blacks, especially young Black men, as they buckled under the oppressive forces of police departments across the country, and instituted policies to make officers more accountable when they abuse their power, at least at the federal level.
No telling what Trump would do.
After all he campaigned as the “law and order candidate” and on the promise of repealing Obamacare immediately and indulged in the most deafening and ugliest form of dog whistle politics that have incited people to extreme levels of hate.
Hillary Clinton was supposed to make every thing right as the one to continue to build on the Obama legacy of peace and love and respect for all. And Black lives were supposed to matter, finally.
Her defeat was unexpected and painful. Poor thing, becoming president was obviously her life’s dream, only to see it dashed by a candidate categorized by many as a buffoon.
Now staring in the face of an uncertain future, the 40 million or so Blacks in the USA have to figure out the way forward in Donald J. Trump’s country, where the promise of being great again does not apply to them.
