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Trump on the Stump
Guest Column
The
‘orange blond’ one is still at it—changing his cast of
characters to try and shore up a campaign that has energized
itself only by changing all the rules of decency, and then
pretending that America is broken.
The
response to his “straw man” hypothesis is to then offer up a
promise to “make America great again”—a promise that makes
one wonder where the “Donald” was during the days of the
civil rights struggle that began to offer promise for
African Americans—and other minorities—where many of us
would for the first time have the opportunity to begin to
share in the opportunities that whites, like the Donald
always took for granted.
Now,
he—in his superior-feeling way – suggests that he just needs
to wave his hand to blacks and we will “come a-running” to
his wayward campaign because he asks: “what to hell do you
have to lose?”
How
appropriate for the Donald, who—in his superior, but
sophomoric way of thinking—feels that he only has to offer
up a hollow appeal and blacks will heed his beck and call!
Trump
never read writers like W.E.B. du Bois who wrote “the
problem of the twentieth century is the problem of the color
line”—or James Baldwin’s book The Fire Next Time – where
Baldwin suggested that blacks should “dismiss white people
as the slightly mad victims of their own brainwashing.”
And, of course, we clearly see this brainwashing in Trump
and his misguided thoughts of privilege and leadership.
No,
Donald, America is not broken in the sense you suggest
–where you extol that the lot of blacks and other minorities
can be laid at the feet of a few Democrats who have offered
up hopeless programs that have resulted in the formulation
of ghettos in Detroit and all of America’s other great
cities.
Just
remember Donald that you have already been called out— not
only by blacks and other minorities, but by your own kind,
including many among the Republican leadership and your
fellow New
Yorker Michael Blumenthal who says that he “knows a con when
he sees it”.
As a
black American who has bootstrapped himself into middle
class America, allow me to express my view of your
“misguided way of thinking” which to me suggest that you,
sir, are not even close to what America needs as its next
president. And we blacks see you for the con man you are.
Walter E. Douglas, Sr.
(Former
president, New Detroit and current chairman of Avis Ford)
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