By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
For the historically challenged readers who are not versed with the concept of Jim Crow, suffice it to know that this intentionally-created dim-witted buffoon was the product of a white Itinerant actor named Thomas Dartmouth (“Daddy”) Rice.
He was not the first white theatrical actor to don rags and use burnt cork to blacken his face in order to mock an exaggerated imitation of African-Americans, but he was the most successful to do it. His crude and vulgar act became a sensation with white audiences.
The word, Jim Crow, came later to encapsulate the fears and fascinations of white people about African-Americans and was used as a short-hand abbreviation for the strict racial segregation laws of both the South and the North and to show the racial animosity and hatred of white society against both the former enslaved person and the newly emancipated enslaved individual.
Its genesis was in the racial fears of white Americans that they needed a population of people whom they could step on and feel superior to and to give them a rationale for their blinding hostility towards the present enslaved population and later, towards those same enslaved folks who were demanding equal rights.
For all intents and purposes, the hatred embodied in the crude symbol of the black raven as a caricature of that hate and legal segregation is now fly-ing and circling the White House under Donald Trump and his sycophantic cabinet members who agree with his policies.
If you have been watching the news lately, Donald Trump has been on a d-spicable rant and rave about labeling Somalis as “garbage.” Garbage because he has been fed a diet of lies and half truths about the Somali population who live in Minnesota.
From Trump’s perspective, those Somalis are garbage people from a garbage nation and he does not want them “in his country”. He says they smell and offer nothing constructive and should be deported.
According to Trump, their country is a “hell-hole” (just like he characterizes the other African countries as, “s*ithole” countries) with no value and all they do is complain and complain. We all know that Trump is a stoogie for any information, good or bad, that touches his demented brain and he will run with it as being factually true.
His commentary about the Somalis and their nation is something that Jim Crow would be proud about his progeny, Donald Trump, speaking about people of color because such comments demean and degrade both people and a nation and that is what Jim Crow is about.
With Trump’s crusade against anything that remotely smacks of D.E.I., his metastasizing remarks filter into the private sector and also in the military and other institutions so that Jim Crow is gleefully crowing about his resurrected and new found life in the White House.
Trump’s crusade against anyone of color is the power push behind his invasions into certain US cities that he believes are infested with aliens who are not “like us.”
One should note that Trump’s plan of removal of illegal immigrants is curiously not being done in Houston, Dallas, Miami, Salt Lake City, Columbus, Atlanta, or Montgomery, Alabama, et. al.
The reason is that those cities are in red states and he will not invade the governorships of states that support him. Jim Crow’s travel restrictions are limited to fly only in blue states.
If you saw the presser in which Trump made these un-presidential comments from the Oval Office, you could not miss, at the end of his racist creed, applause from around the conference table.
Trump knows the ring kissers whom he assembled as his cabinet members and they are not going to cross Dear Leader. By their applause they are sharing in his racist remarks because, like Trump, they are birds of the same dark feather.
To his political credit (?), Trump was able to ascertain the racial animosity of his MAGA base and others and appealed to their latent racial fears about “they” being in power and “they” being more assertive in their rights as citizens.
Like a resurrected George Wallace, Trump played the race card and won two presidential terms. America still has a love affair with racism when you can tone it down and whisper it.
Yet the meaning is not lost on your intended voting audience.
So…Jim Crow is now cackling and strutting again around the Capitol seeking those he can devour with his racist tirades and a compliant GOP (aka: MAGA) dutifully dances to the tune of this Pied Piper, who no longer has to don a Klan robe to get his message across.
Jim Crow is still feasting on the carcass of the demise of D.E.I., and is now dipping its beak into the issue of blowing up so-called drug running boats, staffed by people of color who have now been labeled, narco-terrorists (Note: no evidence of the contents of the boats or the sailors on the boats because blown up boats and dead men tell no tales).
Jim Crow is now preening his feathers to hopefully latch onto the neutered US Supreme Court since it has agreed to determine if Trump’s executive order about ending birthright citizenship is legal…or not.
Jim Crow wants to “strut its stuff” if it can convince the docile GOP-led court that affirming birthright citizenship would mean that babies born here would grow up to be adult people of color and it could mean a loss for anxious white America who see themselves becoming a minority population in a decade or two.
Remember, Trump has offered advantageous immigrant rights to white South Africans who want to come to America to “escape” the majority Black population from exercising political, legal and economic rights in their own country! Figure that one out.
Fly on Jim Crow…fly on.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at lafe5x@gmail.com