Are We Great Yet…?

In the midst of a continued government shutdown, over the construction of a boarder wall between the US and Mexico, another polarizing racial event took place in the land of the free. Here’s a quick synopsis from Democracy Now! :

On Friday, thousands took part in the Indigenous Peoples March in Washington, D.C. The next day, video went viral of an interaction that took place soon after the march ended between an indigenous elder and a group of Catholic high school students from Kentucky who had attended a March for Life protest the same day. In the video, Omaha elder Nathan Phillips is seen peacefully playing his drum and singing while being encircled by the students — some of whom were wearing red “Make America Great Again” hats. The video appears to show the students taunting and mocking Phillips. Some of the students are seen making a tomahawk-chop motion with their arms. One student wearing a red MAGA hat is seen standing directly in front of Phillips while grinning and smirking. The videos sparked widespread outrage, but some commentators walked back their critique of the students after more videos were posted online.

Hey guys. Seeing all the additional videos now, and I 100% regret reacting too quickly to the Covington story. I wish I’d had the fuller picture before weighing in, and I’m truly sorry.

-A Tweet from S.E. Cupp

In the cult, the people in power dictate what cult members are to do. Children raised in cults are systematically stripped of their own autonomous power and forced to feel powerful only in the destructive context allowed by the cult, and always under the power of the leader.

-Lynette S Danylchuk

What propelled me to even comment on this situation is the walk back from mainstream media on this situation. The apologies I’ve seen are a bit mind-boggling. A group of MAGA hat wearing teens, from a majority white private school, a school I might add that recently had fellow white students wear black face during a basketball game to intimidate the opposing black players, are ostensibly innocent from any intimidation/racism.

First off, those young men were there to protest a woman’s reproductive system and her right to have governance over that. They weren’t there to offer any critiques of capitalism and how our growing inequality is leading people into more desperate situations that might lead one to feel the need to have to get an abortion, oh no, they were just there to insert the male dominance over the female uterus. When provoked by a VERY SMALL group of Black Israelites, they got belligerent and were empowered by the spirit of the MAGA hat to act as disgustingly racist as possible toward the Black Israelites and a group of Native Elders. After being part of a protest, in some effect, to subjugate women, the moment these boys saw a group of Native Americans ending their rally for the first Indigenous Peoples Day, march. They chanted at the Natives, “Build that Wall” . They became a horde of hate. Descending on the small group of Native Elders trying to keep some sort of peace, they mocked, they yelled, the acted in accordance with the MAGA hat doctrine of racial intimidation through fear. It’s funny, Gillette razors, recently called out the culture of toxic male masculinity and they were criticized for playing to the a divisive trend of identity politics. Oh how prescient that ad was. These young men, and the adults tasked to chaperone them, reinforced that pernicious sentiment that the Gillette ad exposed.

“We have no right to sit silently by while the inevitable seeds are sown for a harvest of disaster to our children, black and white.”
― W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk

“Imperialism leaves behind germs of rot which we must clinically detect and remove from our land but from our minds as well.”
― Frantz Fanon

I ask you, is this the greatness that America, according to the Trump-loving right, are longing for? Is our country’s greatness depicted by our love for patriarchy and white supremacy? When we say “Make America Great Again”, do we harken back to post WW2 era America? Now, that was a time of great growth in the country due to higher taxes for the rich and influx of government programs as well as infrastructure programs designed to help get the country out of a staggering economic depression. Is that the greatness we are looking to recreate? Weird, because if that’s the case, then why the enormous tax cuts for the rich. Tax cuts that have made the wealthy more wealthy and poverty and economic and inequality is increasing. Is that what greatness looks like? Or, is this a cry to the the time of Jim Crow and black people lived in an apartied state and were treated as second class citizens? Is this greatness that America is missing the time before woman had equal rights? When a single woman couldn’t even have a credit card in her own name (a time not long ago)or the era where women and black folks couldn’t vote? Or are we looking to a moment when injustice was policy? Think how red-lining created ghettos, while subsides created suburbs. Is this Greatness?

While I condemn the reactionary online vitriol in regards to the young white man’s bullying nature (he’s still a young man that can change, and condemning him forever is a bit much at this juncture in his life), we’re ignoring the entire picture that was shown to us a few days ago at the Lincoln Memorial. America is looking like a tinderbox, and our President doesn’t quell the flames, but is constantly stoking the fire. As I stated earlier in this piece these young high school students, without ANY HISTORICAL context whatsoever chanted, to a group of Indigenous Americans, “Build that Wall!” These kids come from a prestigious Catholic School, but showed no compassion in their mocking of Native traditions. Let’s face it, the MAGA hat is the new Klan hood. It doesn’t stand for “change”, or bringing us back to a more prosperous time. It thrusts us back to a time when the marginalized existed in the shadows and poverty stricken edges of society, and equality was but a whisper in a far off distance.

If we pause long enough and consider where we stand in relationship to the centuries-long quest to create a truly equitable democracy, we may be able to see that the revolutionary river that brought us this far just might be the only thing that could possibly carry us to a place where we all belong.

-Michelle Alexander in her essay for the New York Times, “We Are Not the Resistance”

As we are not all “woke” but “still waking”. Michelle Alexander writes in an essay for the New York Times that explains that we, the progressives are the new nation and the MAGA hat wearing masses are the push back against progress. It’s said that, “When you’re accustomed to privilege, equality can look like oppression.” As we’re starting to acknowledge our societal inequalities, we have to use this latest Trumpian incident as a learning tool and point of a new discourse. A conversation about patriarchy, about poverty, and racism, and colonization. Maybe this can happen and we can possibly grow…

I love America more than any other country in this world, and, exactly for this reason, I insist on the right to criticize her perpetually.

-James Baldwin