What would you say ya do here?
Posted on 12/05/2016 6:07:27 AM PST by pabianice
People of color, particularly Black Americans, shouldn’t be surprised in the least by Donald Trump’s presidential victory. Although part of me feels like we shouldn’t be acting like we haven’t already survived, despite vicious attempts to destroy us, I can understand the shock. It’s the same thing as saying no matter how much one can prepare for death, you’re never really ready. We’ve been preparing for different forms of death for hundreds of years. And yet, here we are in fear, though our fears have morphed into realities time and time again through Jim Crow, lynchings, police brutality (which has been elevated into its own version of lynching), and discriminatory administrations and courts.
The most frustrating part of it all is that the toughest blows against us have often been from people who were holding our hands, claiming allegiance, while snickering over their shoulders with racist America. This is exactly what Bill Clinton did when he played saxophone on a 1992 episode of “The Arsenio Hall Show,” and in another engagement, gave a speech on how we Blacks were so right to think the criminal justice system is quite unjust, citing, what I call, the one-in-three. (A 2003 “special report” done by the Bureau of Justice says one-in-three Black men will experience jail in their lifetime, and within the past decade, the numbers haven’t changed. This was all another Washington “discovery” that Black folks figured out when our men got 10-year bids in penitentiaries for dealing with that barbaric crack when the civilized did powder.) And not long after he was elected, Clinton signed his notorious crime bill, increasing policing, granting state prisons with an amount of money Washington can never find for urban public schools, and finalizing the three-strikes-and-done deal which incarcerated some three-time offenders for life.
My grandmother just said over Thanksgiving that Clinton’s administration increased jobs for Black people. Yes, partially because many of us young Black women then weren’t competing with our imprisoned husbands and brothers. And I imagine, as a single Black woman and daughter of a single mother whose partner was incarcerated for several years, many lives of single Black women (especially those with children) in the 1990s were made that much more complicated due to many of our men’s absences. (Michelle Alexander’s book “The New Jim Crow” explains all this in more sophisticated detail.) And guess who called himself the “drug czar” back in 2014, crediting himself for uplifting Crime Bill’s policies? It was none other than our dear old Vice President, Joe Biden. Phew, Barack Obama just barely grazed it. And no, Joe isn’t getting my vote if he runs in 2020.
Franklin D. Roosevelt was another beloved president, but his 1935 Social Security Act excluded domestic workers (maids: Black women) and agricultural laborers (40 percent of Black men). He also opted not to pass an anti-lynching bill. Yes, all the dead Black bodies hanging from trees in our grandparents’ day and the bodies bleeding onto the streets in our day (most recently, former National Football League player Joe McKnight) could’ve been outlawed. But Franklin D. Roosevelt said no, because he was afraid of sabotaging his own political standing. You’ve just got to sell those n—— when it comes to protecting your votes, you know?
But all jokes aside, Washington has been two-timing Black Americans since we got here (in chains). And from what it looks like, we wouldn’t have seen any better change with Hillary Clinton than we’re about to see with Trump. Hillary was so gung-ho for Bill’s strategy that she was collecting money because of all our men her husband stacked in jails like sardines until October of last year. In comparison, Eleanor Roosevelt was apparently in favor of not killing Black people for no reason. (Why, thank you, Eleanor—of course, only if the rumor is true.)
Ultimately, I’m actually glad Trump won. Yup, I said it. I’m also someone who’s tired of Washington’s lies. Now we can’t excuse anybody. We undoubtedly know where we stand in America’s priorities. And perhaps this will be the spark that gets Black people angry enough to not allow politicians to take advantage of our vulnerability in the future (of course, if we have a future). If the apocalypse arrives, and we go first, at least we can say we weren’t surprised.
Elisheva Azarael is a Collegian columnist and can be reached at jsimpson@umass.edu.
This “student” is why any prospective employer perusing a resume will be very unhapyy seeing a line that that reads:
“(whatever degree) University of Massachusetts”
That alone says what you will get for an “employee”
Warning! Warning!
We could only have proven we weren’t racist if Obama got 100% of all votes. Any opposition is looked at as racism.
Racist America. Where’s that?
The same rules apply to everybody for a good life: stay in school, keep your legs together and pants on until married, no drugs, no alcohol, no tattoos, don’t commit crimes. If you manage to do all these things, you’ll be much more likely to have a successful life, a contributing member of society, not a parasite that blames everyone else for their problems.
But some people are just too stupid to manage that.
Mr. Trump received a much higher percentage of Black Americans’ votes than did either Romney or McCain.
Mr. Trump received the same, or slightly higher, percentage of White Americans’ votes than did Romney and McCain.
An argument could be made that Black Americans are responsible for electing Donald Trump - but that doesn’t jibe with the “racist America” meme perpetrated by the “UMass Collegian”, does it? Therefore, it must be ignored.
Stopped right there.
“Not surprised Trump elected in racist America?”
Neither am I. It was the racism of the lef-tards that drove many former democrat=voting white people to the safe haven afforded by Trump. White people don’t like being stereotyped any more or less than people of other “races” (I put the word in quotes to signify “so-called”, because I only recognize one race = human).
Planning on losing more elections I see.
Keep it up.
dUMass and (M)asshole
That poor woman must have fallen and hit her head. Somebody call the bambalanz.
Elisheva’s race card has expired.
Obama's victory is unsurprising in racist America
There. Fixed it.
That same racist America who elected Obama twice?
Got it.
bedrock premises
Exactly — a la Fred Flintstone’s famous quotes.
I remember when the black community was begging politicians to impose heavy sentences for crack dealing and use because it came in so fast and was so destructive in their communities.
The pols obliged them — and now are being called racist for it.
What is the point of having state universities? Something to do with land grants.
I don’t know. While she and I won’t reach the exact same conclusion today, I at least see her starting to think and challenge some of the conventional thinking within the Democrat party, and that’s a good thing.
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