I Stand with Them
“DEFINITION OF RACISM - 1 : A BELIEF THAT RACE IS THE PRIMARY DETERMINANT OF HUMAN TRAITS AND CAPACITIES AND THAT RACIAL DIFFERENCES PRODUCE AN INHERENT SUPERIORITY OF A PARTICULAR RACE.”
“NATIONAL ORIGIN DISCRIMINATION - NATIONAL ORIGIN DISCRIMINATION INVOLVES TREATING PEOPLE (APPLICANTS OR EMPLOYEES) UNFAVORABLY BECAUSE THEY ARE FROM A PARTICULAR COUNTRY OR PART OF THE WORLD, BECAUSE OF ETHNICITY OR ACCENT, OR BECAUSE THEY APPEAR TO BE OF A CERTAIN ETHNIC BACKGROUND (EVEN IF THEY ARE NOT).
RACE/COLOR DISCRIMINATION – RACE DISCRIMINATION INVOLVES TREATING SOMEONE (AN APPLICANT OR EMPLOYEE) UNFAVORABLY BECAUSE HE/SHE IS OF A CERTAIN RACE OR BECAUSE OF PERSONAL CHARACTERISTICS ASSOCIATED WITH RACE (SUCH AS HAIR TEXTURE, SKIN COLOR, OR CERTAIN FACIAL FEATURES). COLOR DISCRIMINATION INVOLVES TREATING SOMEONE UNFAVORABLY BECAUSE OF SKIN COLOR COMPLEXION.”
“SO INTERESTING TO SEE “PROGRESSIVE” DEMOCRAT CONGRESSWOMEN, WHO ORIGINALLY CAME FROM COUNTRIES WHOSE GOVERNMENTS ARE A COMPLETE AND TOTAL CATASTROPHE, THE WORST, MOST CORRUPT AND INEPT ANYWHERE IN THE WORLD (IF THEY EVEN HAVE A FUNCTIONING GOVERNMENT AT ALL), NOW LOUDLY…AND VICIOUSLY TELLING THE PEOPLE OF THE UNITED STATES, THE GREATEST AND MOST POWERFUL NATION ON EARTH, HOW OUR GOVERNMENT IS TO BE RUN. WHY DON’T THEY GO BACK AND HELP FIX THE TOTALLY BROKEN AND CRIME INFESTED PLACES FROM WHICH THEY CAME. THEN COME BACK AND SHOW US HOW…IT IS DONE. THESE PLACES NEED YOUR HELP BADLY, YOU CAN’T LEAVE FAST ENOUGH. I’M SURE THAT NANCY PELOSI WOULD BE VERY HAPPY TO QUICKLY WORK OUT FREE TRAVEL ARRANGEMENTS!”
“I COULD STAND IN THE MIDDLE OF FIFTH AVENUE AND SHOOT SOMEBODY, AND I WOULDN’T LOSE ANY VOTERS, OKAY? IT’S, LIKE, INCREDIBLE.”
NOTE: I originally wrote this on July 27, 2019, and I’m still horrified. Looking around now, I know it was just a glipse of things to come.
The Fall of the Republic
I have been shaking my head for a week. I’ve been going over and over in my head how to write this blog for a week. And I’ve been staring in horror at people who I used to love and respect defending blatant racism for a week.
“Go Back…”
Trump’s series of tweets last Sunday were vile. First, they show how ignorant the man really is – telling four women who are all American citizens to “go back to where they came from” – when three of them came from the United States. It was ignorant, it was arrogant, and it was racist. It echoes the racists of America’s past screaming for African Americans to “go back to Africa!”
Secondly, to suggest that the fourth women in the group, Rep. Ilhan Omar, should go back to her country is also vile – considering she is a refugee of war, and has been an American citizen since she was 17 years old.
And finally, he is saying this because he doesn’t agree with them. He says that they hate American because he doesn’t agree with what they want for this country. He says they hate America because they don’t agree with him. That is not hating America – that is wanting to make it better.
Trump also shows his hypocrisy once again with this statement – because he did not agree with Obama when he was running for office. Does that mean Trump hates America as well?
Trump vs. Omar
For those of you who defend him – shame on you. If any other white man in this country said that same thing, you would all be agreeing with me. You would be clutching your pearls, and you would have looks of shock. And if you wouldn’t? Then you’re a racist too. You just don’t want to admit it.
And even worse than defending it, this echoes Trump’s stance in the 2016 quote listed above – he could shoot someone in full view of everyone, and he wouldn’t lose votes. That is what we are seeing. His base does not care if he is racist. His base does not care if he stokes the fires of white supremacy hate groups. His base does not care – and we saw that at a rally in Greenville, NC this week where the crowd began chanting “send her back” about Rep. Omar after Trump gave a speech littered with a series of lies about the Congresswoman.
On the Philip DeFranco show on July 19th, 2019, DeFranco pointed out these falsehoods and put what was actually said into some context:
Claim by Trump: “Omar minimized the September 11th attacks on our homeland saying, ‘Some people did something.’ I don’t think so.”
Actual Quote by Omar: “It doesn’t matter how good are, if one day you find yourself in a school where other religions are talked about, but when Islam is mentioned we are only talking about terrorists, and if you say something you are sent to the principal’s office. So to me I say, ‘Raise hell!’ Make people feel uncomfortable, because here is the truth, here’s the truth: far too long we have lived with the discomfort of being a second-class citizen. And frankly I’m tired of it and every single Muslim in this country should be tired of it. CAIR (Council on American-Islamic Relations) was founded after 9/11, because they recognize that some people did something and that all of us were starting to lose access to our civil liberties.”
As you can see, Omar did not attempt to downplay or minimize 9/11. She was saying that all Muslims should not be penalized for the actions of few. That would be like all Christians being seen as murderers due to the few who have shot and killed abortion doctors or bombed abortion clinics.
Claim by Trump: “She pleaded for compassion for ISIS recruits attempting to join the terrorist organization.
Actual Action by Omar: Nine Somali Americans were found guilty of attempting to join ISIS in 2016. Omar wrote a letter recommending lighter sentences for young people attempting to join ISIS since there is a better chance of getting them back from the terrorist mindset with compassion instead of punishment – which makes sense. So, she didn’t plead for them to be set free. She pleaded for a lighter sentence than 30 years to show compassion – winning hearts and minds, so to speak. She believes a compassionate and restorative justice system is a better way to combat extremism. She wrote, “such punitive measures not only lack efficacy, they inevitably create an environment in which extremism can flourish, aligning with the presupposition of terrorist recruitment: ‘Americans do not accept you and continue to trivialize your value. Instead of being nobody, be a martyr.’”
Claim by Trump: “Omar laughed that Americans speak of Al Qaeda in a menacing tone and remark that you don’t say ‘America’ with this intensity. You say Al Qaeda and it makes you proud, Al Qaeda makes you proud!
Actual Interview Comment by Omar (2013): She was talking about how Islamic terrorist groups seem scary to Americans because the names seem foreign, even though they usually come from every day Arabic words. She said she took a class about terrorism in college and goes on to say, “The thing that I thought was interesting in the class was every time the professor said ‘Al Qaeda’ his shoulders would go up.’ That was all she said. She never said anywhere in the interview that she was proud of the terrorist organization or that she supports them. She actually described terrorist groups as evil and said that they are taking part in spreading terror around the globe.
Claim by Trump: “And in a press conference just this week, when asked whether she (Omar) supported Al Qaeda, she refused to answer. She didn’t want to give an answer to that question.”
Actual Quote by Omar: When a reporter asked Omar on a press conference last week what her response was to Trump’s claim that she supported Al Qaeda, she said, “I will not dignify it with an answer. I would not expect every time there is a white supremist that attacks or there is a white man who kills in a school, or in a movie theater, or in a mosque , or in a synagogue, I don’t expect my white community members to respond on whether they love that person or not.”
Strange, I don’t see one of Trump’s claims that can be substantiated here.
So, after all this, the crowd began chanting “Send Her Back” over and over again. Trump stood there, soaking it up. He didn’t address it. He didn’t as the crowd to stop. Then, he tried to claim the next day that he didn’t agree with it. He will just keep pushing the line, and there are people who will still keep supporting him.
Trump and Hitler
Awhile back, I posted a political cartoon to my Facebook feed that compared Trump to Hitler due to taking children away from their families and keeping people in camps without due process for what are, for the most part, misdemeanor offenses.
People jumped all over me because they believe that there is no comparison between Hitler and Trump, the Holocaust was awful, that is not what is happening here, and how dare I say something so offensive.
That really got my wheels turning. I started to wonder how Hitler got all those people, who saw themselves as good people, to follow him. I’m not talking about 1939-1945 Hitler. I am talking about early Hitler.
In the 1920s and 1930s, Hitler began his rise to power. He spoke of an “Us vs Them” narrative. Once given an ounce of power, he suspended civil liberties, and arresting those who he saw as an enemy of Germany – communists, socialists, homosexuals, Germans of African descent, and Jews. That is when the first concentration camp, Dachau, was created – to hold those prisoners, many of whom were put into the camp without even being told why they were arrested.
He began chipping away at civil liberties, little by little. He handed out radios to Germans, and the radios could only pick up a frequency that he spoke on. They were constantly barraged by Hitler’s ideas, and they began to believe that yes, these people were the enemy. These people were the problem with their country. Without these people, their country would be better.
See anything familiar yet? Hitler and Trump are using the same playbook. Hitler spread the same lies and vitriol about Jews that Trump spreads about undocumented immigrants – they are rapists, they are criminals, they are animals. They need to be deported. When Hitler began to gain power in Germany, one of his first orders of business was to tighten up the German borders. That sounds like something I started hearing before and just after Trump was elected. Hmmmm, weird.
At this point, it should come as no surprise that according to unsealed divorce documentation from Ivana Trump, she claimed that Trump kept a book of Hitler’s speeches by his bed every night. I guess if that is true, then he has been preparing for awhile now for this opportunity.
I Stand with Them
I am hoping beyond hope, that eventually Americans will wake up. They will realize why so many white supremist groups currently support the President. They will realize that claims like “Trump has done great things for our economy” is not even an argument anymore, because economists have show that the government upturn started in 2009, early in Obama’s presidency and has had little to do with Trump’s policies.
And I don’t care what he has “done for this country.” We cannot have a racist at our helm. We don’t want a racist as our leader. As I have stated, if you support him, then you might as well admit that you too are a racist. I hate to say it so definitively, but that is the case. Telling American citizens who were elected by this country and serve this country to “go back to where they come from” is abhorrent behavior by any American, and inexcusable coming from our leader.
Trump is doing this because these are women of color. He is doing it because they are women. He is doing it because he is a sexist (that is a whole other blog in itself) and a racist.
I stand with Ilhan. I stand with Alexandria. I stand with Rashida. I stand with Ayanna. I stand with all men and women who are from this country, and those who came to this country, who want to make this country better – better for everyone, not just better for them. And I stand with them to speak out for their constituents and their communities.
I stand with them. I will not stand with him.
