And Still They Say Nothing

Dog whistles have become air raid sirens, and bombs are falling from the mouth of the president. How much more damage to this country and to the world will he have to inflict before he is removed from office?

Trump has confirmed others’ long-held belief that he was a hateful, narcissistic, racist, sexist, xenophobic former reality star who is unfit for the office of president. And while we have heard from many people decrying what Trump has made clear for all to see, members of the leadership of his own political party remain mute.

The president has gone from chanting words at rallies about making America great again, to declaring his true message: “Make America White Again.” And still they say nothing.

Trump slams the Haitian and African immigrants (some of us, by the way, who got here by the old school Chain Migration aka slavery) and all of the other Black and Brown people who come from the shitholes of the world. He’d rather welcome folks from Norway to come here, if they wanted to come, which they don’t.

Trump has finally come out from under his sheet and said what he really believes (or what his fan base believes, which is all this ratings-obsessed Vaudevillian can relate to). He has no use for your duskier people who may as well stay in their “huts” and get away from his clean, white country. And still they say nothing.

Except, unfortunately for you and your brethren believers who long for a time that never was – it’s too late.

You should have sent us back to Africa immediately after emancipation. You should have wiped us all out when you first got here instead of using the Trail of Tears and the reservations to produce a slow death.

You should have never spread rumors about streets paved in gold and never run the Shanghai kidnapping system to bring workers to build your railroads. You should have built a wall a long time ago, if your aim was to keep people from shithole countries from polluting your pure, clean country.

But you didn’t do those things, so now it’s time you faced some hard facts.

People of color were here before you, we literally built this country and we have contributed every bit if not more than any of your followers who consider themselves real Americans. People who, themselves, had ancestors who came here from other shithole countries fleeing things like war and famine and religious intolerance. People like, well, not to go all “playing the dozens on you” -- like your German mother – or your Slovenian wife.

This country has never been all white and it never will be. Instead, we had such rigid segregation that it allowed some folks to pretend that we didn’t exist.

We weren’t on TV or in the movies or in the newspapers or in Congress or in the shops you patronized. We weren’t in your schools or hospitals or churches or lunch counters.

Those who were so inclined could ignore the fact that America has always been racially and ethnically and religiously diverse. Oh, it was easy enough to discount your errant person of color as an exception – or you could call every Pullman Porter “George” so they’d seem even more invisible, but it didn’t work.

Now, and for the last fifty years or so, you see us on TV and in the movies and on your sports teams and in your schools. And as always happens when people are allowed to get to know one another, we are now even part of most families in America.

So the majority of children under 5 in this country are non-white, and 44% of children under 18 are non-white and by 2044 – in a mere 24 years – American will be majority “minority.”

And now you want us to go home. Newsflash geniuses: we’re already here.