He is White privilege incarnate
By Paris, level.medium.com Op-Ed
Let’s stop dancing around the obvious and say it loud for the people in the back:
Donald Trump is a bitch.
A weak and simple racist and an ignorant narcissist, he’s a xenophobic and misogynistic con man who knows nothing about history and does nothing but golf. He’s absolutely unable and unprepared to lead effectively in any regard.
He’s treasonous, a cheat, and a liar, and is no more than a gilded bully who knows nothing of how real bullies get down and who takes pleasure in tormenting those he perceives weaker than him. A collector of bankruptcies, lawsuits, and infidelities who falsely uses the bible for a photo op and courts evangelicals with a faux encouragement of family values, he is utterly devoid of morality or any redeeming qualities. He is White privilege incarnate.
At first, I was dismissive of his win because I thought America deserved Donald Trump. Its fascination with all that glitters finally bit it in the ass. I have no love for Hillary Clinton either, and the reality that America’s choices boiled down to those two was disheartening in 2016. The fact that Trump won, though, and that his policies have since eviscerated the quality of life for his supporters who aren’t wealthy elites, is unfortunate — but deserved. Any of his followers who were willing to overlook his blatantly racist antics and dog-whistle language for the promises of dismantling Obamacare and bringing back coal — coal! — and promising manufacturing jobs that never materialized, among other things, got what they had coming to them. No doubt, a little socialized health care and government relief checks would sound great to them right about now — though chances are they won’t admit it if asked.
But that’s not the real outrage. The actual injustice is the effect Trump’s had on those who never warranted the fallout from his ineptitude in the first place, and who have vocally opposed him and his ilk from day one: the Black community. Trump got only 8% of the Black vote in 2016 according to exit polls, but we’re the ones who continue to be disproportionately affected by his policies and lack of concrete direction.
Of course, some will reflexively state that Black people are doing better under Trump than under his predecessor, but that’s a falsehood often espoused as a partisan argument in favor of the GOP. According to the Census Bureau, Black people had higher incomes before the Trump administration. The average Black household earned a median income of $40,258 in 2017 — below a 2000 peak of $42,348 — and the recession-high rate of Black unemployment of 16.8% in March 2010 dropped to 7.8% in January 2017 under Obama. I’m no fan of the Democrats’ inactivity on Black issues or their habitual ritual of taking Black votes for granted, but the numbers in this instance don’t lie.
And these are pre-pandemic stats.
The disproportionately high death rate and economic fallout from Covid-19 for Black people have underscored the pre-pandemic realities of structural discrimination and the limited access to health and wealth for people of color. A recent John Hopkins University report details that the Covid-19 death rate for Black Americans is twice that of White people and that Black and Latinx people who contract the disease “are more likely to suffer from preexisting conditions which increase the risk of severe illness.”
It states that Black and Latinx folks are more apt to live in crowded housing and less likely to hold jobs that allow them to work from home. Further, they are also less likely than White people to have health insurance — a fact exacerbated by mass layoffs and the related cessation of health coverage that nearly half of Americans get from their employers.
This reality will expand the racial wealth gap, with the effects of Covid-19 having a “greater impact on Black and Latino employees, who make up a disproportionate percentage of occupational sectors experiencing the income disruption amid the pandemic.” To add insult to injury, Covid-19 relief fund allocation is shortchanging Black communities by designating that hospitals in counties with a larger Black population (and thus a higher Covid-19 burden) receive the same amount of funding as counties with less health and financial needs.
And Trump’s bitchassness continues.
He is not only racist as fuck, but he also emboldens racists; many of them say and do vile shit with increasing frequency due to the climate he created. Instances of racist violence have increased under Trump. Hate speech has increased under Trump. Trump has actively attempted to suppress the vote by fighting all efforts to make voting in the middle of pandemic easier and safer, including a proposed restructuring of the U.S. Postal Service. His operatives have even enlisted the help of boot-licker Kanye West by trying to shoehorn him onto the ballot, complete with phony signatures, to dilute the Black vote. During his administration, he’s initiated a Muslim ban, separated thousands of members of refugee families, embraced policies that would cut legal immigration in half, and targeted birthright citizenship for the U.S.-born children of undocumented immigrants. The list goes on. Under Trump, the scab barely covering America’s racial intolerance has ripped off.
Again, I’m no fan of Democrats — and have leveled hearty critiques of past Democratic administrations for the related bullshit associated with them — but this time is different and more urgent. The pandemic’s effects alone dictate the need for a concerted effort to take the power this pig-in-chief currently wields.
Alarmingly, there is a pervasive feeling that this shit stain will be reflexively rejected in a massive, undeniable landslide in November. But will he?
Don’t count him out, and never underestimate the power of those who would like to see us subjugated. Black Lives Matter, but more importantly, Black POWER Matters. If “all lives” truly matter as some are hell-bent on continuing to offer as a retort to the genuine reckoning against systemic racial injustice, act like it.
Living without power and self-sufficiency is not living, and true freedom is being free of the need to be free. We’ve had administrations in the past that have been indifferent to our needs. We don’t need one that actively flaunts its agenda to do us harm.