Source: Win McNamee / Getty
At 12:53AM Black Death was on Donald Trump‘s mind.
“I can’t stand back & watch this happen to a great American City, Minneapolis. A total lack of leadership. Either the very weak Radical Left Mayor, Jacob Frey, get his act together and bring the City under control, or I will send in the National Guard & get the job done right………
“These THUGS are dishonoring the memory of George Floyd, and I won’t let that happen. Just spoke to Governor Tim Walz and told him that the Military is with him all the way. Any difficulty and we will assume control but, when the looting starts, the shooting starts. Thank you!”
This is beyond a dog whistle. This is beyond coded language. This was a call for the United States government to kill Black people for protesting the United States government killing Black people. This is a call for genocide. This is an appeal to his base of racists who support him in a time when his support is waning because his bungling of a generational pandemic has cost us 100,000 lives. This is a declaration of war against members of the United States. The time for euphemisms, journalism speak and cutting corners is over. There is a simple truth that has been obvious to many of us since he put out a full-page ad for the lynching of innocent Black and brown boys: Donald Trump is a white supremacist.
We can call phrases like “white supremacy” subjective but there is no definition of the term that excludes Donald Trump. He has called Mexicans rapists and thieves. He called NFL players like Colin Kaepernick sons of bitches. He refused to condemn racist rioters in Charlottesville even after they killed someone. He tweeted out support for armed white men storming the capitol in Michigan. He has put immigrant kids in cages. He is an American president. He is the worst of white people and, yet, he is so many of them.
The irony of this all is that Donald Trump is a product of looting. It took nothing short of looting for white people to come to a land that wasn’t theirs and for them to install a government that allows white men to feel like they can rule in the first place. Donald Trump’s wealth comes from the looting of marginalized people for generations. Donald Trump is, as we speak, accumulating wealth while the country falls into the chaos of mass death and job loss. He is looting on the grandest scale imaginable.
It’s easy for us to think of white supremacists as men with overalls, Klan hoods and mouthfuls of Skoal. That does not do justice to the widespread vastness of their hatred. White supremacy is in the American soil my ancestors toiled over for generations. White supremacy is in the water that has quenched the thirst of hatred across this land, and is too dirty for the people of Flint to let touch their lips. White supremacy is in the virus-infected air we breathe that is killing Black people at three times the rate it kills white people. White supremacy is in every tweet Donald Trump sends and every word he speaks.
Source: KEREM YUCEL / Getty
Trump doesn’t need a hood to cover his face because he doesn’t need to hide his hatred. That hatred has empowered him. That hatred allows other white supremacists to put the weight of their hatred on the necks of innocent Black men and allows them to rain down bullets onto beds of sleeping Black women.
I can’t go any further without acknowledging another fact about the election of the latest white supremacist into the White House. We can cut the demographics any way we want. We can break things up by education, wealthy or whatever makes white people sleep better at night. But the fact remains: A majority of white voters voted for Donald Trump to be president. White supremacy made him and white supremacy fuels every single vote of support he gets now or has ever gotten.
If you’re reading this you probably already know that Donald Trump is a white supremacist. You been knew. He is the embodiment of a very American evil. But the problem is that being Black means the more you know something the more white people will tell you you’re wrong. This article exists solely to remind you that your reality is true. What you’re seeing is real. You are living, surviving and loving in a time when a white supremacist president wants you dead; in a world where police officers want to put their knees on your neck to stop you from breathing. Which means every breath you take in and every step you take is a move towards freedom; a freedom that even the most powerful racist in the world can’t stop. No matter how hard he tries.
David Dennis, Jr. is a writer and adjunct professor of Journalism at Morehouse College. David’s writing has appeared in The Guardian, The Smoking Section, Uproxx, Playboy, The Atlantic, Complex.com and wherever people argue about things on the internet. Read more of his work on NewsOne here.
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