The day after Georgia elected a Black descendant of sharecroppers and a young Jewish filmmaker to be U.S. senators, the forces of white supremacy politics struck back.
At the “People’s House” in Washington, a predominantly white mob in support of President Trump’s attempts to overturn the election, overtook the Capitol building by brute force. Confederate flags flew at the seat of American democracy. A noose was found. It was as stark a contrast as any, one day that illustrated the nation’s original paradox: a commitment to democracy in a country with a legacy of racism.
This has always been America. If this were not America, this coup attempt would not have happened. It’s time we face this ugly truth, let it sink into the marrow of our bones, let it move us to action.
At Mr. Trump’s rallies, where his supporters set up open-air markets of hate and conspiracy, selling Confederate flags and T-shirts that mock his opponents and the media. In conservative news outlets, where the language of revolution and civil war is everywhere. Also on Mr. Trump’s Twitter feed, which has amplified white supremacists, anti-Semites and anti-Muslim extremists.
The forces that helped Democrats send Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Kamala Harris to the White House are real. So is a widening gap between liberal and conservative movements, and the fact that as the United States has increasingly incorporated Black Americans, people of color, immigrants and Native Americans into the democratic fabric, it has come at a cost.
The most ardent portions of Mr. Trump’s white base are a toxic mix of conspiracy theories and racism.
If it had been a group of Black Lives Matter protesters yesterday that they wouldn’t have been treated very differently than the mob that stormed the Capitol.
So, we need to restore the honor, the integrity and the independence of the Department of Justice in this nation.
The intentions of the president’s supporters struck at an idea at the core of the American experiment — that, in time, the country’s commitment to democracy will overtake its history of intolerance.
There are many challenges facing the country, and we cannot dismiss them as fringe.
Maxine Waters of California, a senior member of the Congressional Black Caucus, said the images should be a jarring reminder of the country’s bloody struggle against injustice.
She saidL “That Confederate flag conjured up, for me, the many Black people who have died as a result of racism.
Mr. Trump before he announced his presidential run led the spread of “birtherism,” a potent mix of conspiracy theory and racism that sought to delegitimize President Barack Obama.
In 2016 Trump was full of similar misinformation and prejudice. He refused to denounce the endorsement of the Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke; insinuated that a Mexican-American judge could not fairly adjudicate; and allowed a questioner in New Hampshire to say, unchallenged, that Mr. Obama was a Muslim who was “not even an American.”
Republicans had events and showed “Death of a Nation,” a documentary made by the conservative provocateur Dinesh D’Souza,
A star-studded red carpet reception in Washington with appearances from Donald Trump Jr., the president’s son, and Housing Secretary Ben Carson. Republican House members held watch parties as campaign fund-raisers, as did some local Republican Party groups.
In Arizona, a battleground state where Republicans rely on turnout among white rural conservatives to overpower Democratic votes in urban centers, the state party officials appeared at events like a “Patriotism Over Socialism” rally and a gathering called “Trumpstock,” which paired public figures associated with the president and speakers that included open white nationalists who threatened violence if Mr. Trump lost re-election.
At Trumpstock, supporters of the president spoke casually and openly about violence and insisted that they were not white supremacists, despite their racist language. They were patriots.
When Trump spoke to the marchers this week in Washington,
many of whom had traveled to the capital after attending similar local events, the president framed their actions in the same apocalyptic terms used in Mr. D’Souza’s movie — the country was at a crossroads and in need of saving.
“You’ll never take back our country with weakness,” Mr. Trump said to the crowd. “You have to show strength, and you have to be strong.”
With Mr. Trump on his way out, however, the Republican Party has a choice. Its congressional ranks include some more moderate figures who have denounced the president and his message, but also firebrands who have become the favorites of the party’s base.
Senator Mitt Romney, the Republican presidential nominee in 2012 and a vocal critic of Mr. Trump, was harassed on a plane this week by people who were flying to attend Wednesday’s rally. Figures like Representative Mo Brooks of Alabama have doubled down — claiming without evidence that left-wing groups like antifa infiltrated the crowds in Washington to sow discord.
We are excited that The Rev. Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff defeated two Republicans on Tuesday to flip control of the Senate to Democrats. (Side bar: thanks Stacey Abrams)
The incoming Democratic administration should make racial justice a governing priority, not just an idea to pay lip service to on the trail.
We have to do the work to make sure that what is a majority issue actually becomes a governing majority. Because that is how you make a democracy function — when the will of the people are actually delivered on. We get a true democracy out of racial justice.
Full American democracy is not centuries old and static, but fragile and relatively new. The road to the Civil Rights Act was paved with Black deaths. For every Raphael Warnock, who will become the first Black Georgian to serve in the Senate, there are descendants of Black sharecroppers who are still mired in poverty, stuck in the generational cycle of inequality that stretches from the political to social and economic.
Representative Maxine Waters said, seeing the symbols of hate on display on Wednesday made her fear for her life. And if some are surprised that so few of the people who forced their way into the Capitol were arrested or shot, they shouldn’t be. The mob was white.
She went on to say: “When I looked out on that crowd, I didn’t see any Black people — all I saw was determined and angry white faces. The white people of this country are going to have to take responsibility, and they’re the ones that are going to have to help change the thinking.”
So where do we go from hear? The fight still goes on. We need to focus on local, state and national activism.
As a member of the NABWMT Media committee I urge you to consider some or all of these actions.
Learn your state’s voting laws
Make a Voting Plan
Use Peer Pressure
Vote Strategically
Lobby Lawmakers
Call Your Legislators
Make It Personal and Public
Pick Up a Pen
Show Up
Get Organized
Focus Your Message
Target Town Halls
Talk in Person
Find Common Ground
Listen
Think Issues, Not Parties
Thanks
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Source: New York Times
