By Roger Caldwell
In 2018, all Americans would like to believe that racism is over, and the society is moving toward equality and certain inalienable rights for everyone. Both parties, the Democrats and Republicans should respect every American based on the content of their character, as opposed to the color of their skin. But with the election in 2016, President Donald Trump is the leader of the Republican Party, and it is going in the wrong direction.
Instead of the Republican Party working to be more diverse and reflecting the rainbows of the different cultures and races in the society, the party has become primary, exclusively white. This has created a division in the country, which appears to be growing.
“When Thomas Jefferson wrote that ‘all men are created equal,’ he did not mean that all men were equal in all respects. In other places he wrote with conviction about the existence of a natural aristocracy among men, based upon virtue and talent,” says John Van Til, writer at Foundation for Economic Education.
It was very easy for our founders to extol the virtues of equality on one hand, and on the other hand own slaves, and whip a human being into submission. Based on wealth, power, and violence, our great founders massacred an entire nation, as if they did not exist, and justified their actions through religious, economic and political liberty.
Hypocrisy has always been a reality in America, saying one thing and doing another. Once White men in America realized they could abuse and enslave people of color around the world, and no one would challenge their authority, the great society was born.
America has always been a racist society, but with civil rights, voter rights, political and economic rights, people of color believed that equality and Democratic principles were just around the corner. There have been tremendous strides in equality, in every aspect of the society, and with the election of the first Black president, there was change in the air.
But in 2016, a new ideology of racisms and xenophobia took over American politics, and Donald Trump became president. “Trump’s victory was regarded as the elevation to the highest office of a political misfit, when it was actually a return to normalcy. The permanence of the Trumpian discourse, and the heyday of white nationalism under a president prone to stoking the flame of division and prejudice,” explains Professor Serge Ricard, writer of the Trump Phenomenon.
Trump has connected with White voters who are anti-immigration and racially conservative, and the Republican Party has made the president a mouthpiece for White nationalism. There are times that Trump represents almost 45% of Americans who are White, and many of these residents are motivated by racial resentment. The rule of law under Trump is about what you are able to get away with, and between 6.7 million and 9.2 million primary White voters switched their allegiance and vote from Obama to Trump, according to writer Zack Beauchamp of the Vox.
The reality of racism is deeply entrenched in the alt-right, and the redneck mindset of White America. White racial prejudice and bigotry has raised its ugly head again, and the Republican Party is following their hero, leader, and mouthpiece, President Trump.
When the president says something ridiculous and racist, the White Republican Party acts as if the statement never existed like slavery, or the destruction of the Indian nation.
The challenge for the Democratic Party in 2018 is to speak the truth, and address lies for what they are, when they are spoken. America must be elevated to include the diversity of the entire country, with all its colors and cultures.
How long will it take prejudice, bigotry and White nationalism to be erased from the Republican Party, with leaders like Trump, and replaced with progressive ideas and healing?
