By Lafe Tolliver, Esq
Guest Column
For the sleepyheads who refuse to watch news, any news for that matter, you missed a recent bombshell coming from Dear Leader Trump. His current catechism that he is pushing to keep your mind off of the pending Epstein sex scandal is that…wait for it…Slavery was not all that bad.
Don’t take my word for it, Google it yourself and see how this 34 times convicted felon is trying to rewrite history (Note: spoiler alert: It will not work) by diminishing and outright denying the voluminous histories regarding slavery, both its impact since its inception and its current effects today.
Understand that Trump’s dystopian view of American History is filtered through his lens of his father being arrested at a KKK rally and ostensibly Trump’s inner core beliefs that America was intended for the sole benefit of its brutal conquerors, white people.
For all intents and purposes, Trump is a dyed in the wool White Nationalist who, without shame or embarrassment, magnifies the worst impulses of his MAGA base on issues of race.
Trump’s endgame is simple. He wants to try to attempt a gross rewriting of American History so that the American story is told from the vantage point that white Americans are the saviors of the planet and the issue of slavery was a mere trifle.
Be assured that neither Trump or his newly appointed MAGA stoogie to the Sminthsonian’s administration of its vast collections has toured the famed African American Museum of National History in Washington D.C.
And…do not expect them to, because the facts on exhibit there will excoriate their simpleton explanations about slavery not being a “big deal.”
For an illiterate such as Trump who does not like to read or to take advice, it would be telling to see what is on his bookshelf (if he even has one!) about this cruel and exploitative portion of American History.
Would he even have basic history books that with valid scholarship explore the vagaries of American slavery and its brutal system of apartheid, free labor, Jim Crow laws, murders, lynchings and the horrors of the Atlantic slave trade.
Ten dollars to a donut that Trump is totally clueless about: Harriet Tubman, George Washington Carver, Nat Turner, Medgar Evers, Fannie Lou Hamer, Ralph Ellison, Harper’s Ferry, Buffalo Soldiers, Ruby Bridges, H. Rap Brown, name five HBCU’s, Benjamin Banneker,
Crispus Attucks, Deacons of Defense; and thousands of other names that due to their lives and some with untimely deaths, help make America what it is today.
And, when you mention that due to hundreds of years of slave labor, such labor was the financial juggernaut that allowed America to become a superpower and allowed white America to amass fortunes on the backs on that slave trade.
But, to state the same in a national museum, makes Trump and others of his ignorant cult, embarrassed and shamed because it rightfully places a “massive stain” on this country and counters the lie that America was and is the land of the free and home of the brave.
Thousands of lynchings and missing Black bodies and the wrongful taking of Black property, North or South, tells a different story than the whitewashed nonsense that Trump is seeking to rewrite.
Ask the Indigenous Americans (aka: Indians) about the genocide committed against them for their lands and mineral rights by the US government under the guise of, “Manifest Destiny.”
The Civil War was fought due to slavery. The Black Codes came about after the Civil War to control the movement and settlement of people of color.
Jim Crow laws were intentional acts by the states to attempt to reintroduce a “modified” system of slavery so that White America could still both profit and control the lives of Black people.
White America intentionally did not allow a full discourse of the above forbidden topics in their schools and universities because they wanted to put lipstick on a pig and the American book publishers for the school industry, “whitewashed” that history to make it sanitized and thus palpable to its White consumer.
So, here comes a pathological liar, bully and criminal convict who surrounds himself with a veritable clown car of sycophants who are put in positions to do his corrupt will, who wants to tell us what history should look like vis-a-vis the Trump mindset!
Imagine telling Jews that the Holocaust is being overplayed and that they need to move on and learn valuable lessons from being interned and taken to the ovens. How would that go over with Jewish voters?
Imagine telling Native Americans that the reservations they live on are not that bad and they need to stop with their demands for more returns of their lands taken by military fiat or outright thievery.
I dare, I double dare Trump to get on national television and tell Black Americans that the thousands of documented lynchings were “unfortunate” but nothing to dwell upon and the intentional creation of ghettos were only temporary housing.
Trump is fighting this “cultural war” because it is red meat to his base who love a good story about bashing anything non-white because it makes them feel superior to those “others” even though Trump’s policies are giving them a good butt kicking!
My recommendation? Simple. Go to the library and check out Black History books so that you do not fall for this cruel shell game; teach and tell your family members that Black History is American History, in spite of what the morally deficient moron in the White House would have you to believe.
Contact Lafe Tolliver at tolliver@juno.com