All American

As much as I promise myself not to get into the muck with Donald Trump, apparently, neither he nor I can help ourselves. There was the guy, having recently been shot at, having recently had his ear clipped by either a bullet or shrapnel, having recently talked about a more peaceful, unifying Trump, taking a dump in the crapper. All that talk about unity lasted about a nanosecond. Maybe less. DJT went from kumbaya to “I didn’t know she was black until a number of years ago when she happened to turn black, and now, she wants to be known as black . . . All of a sudden, she made a turn, and she became a black person.” Oh. Surprise, surprise. Trust him to revert to his long history of racist BS, something that dates back at least as far as his unwillingness to rent apartments to Blacks when he was working for his father as a young man.

Regardless of how Kamala Harris regards her own identity, there isn’t a white American who wouldn’t identify her as Black or, maybe, bi-racial, with one-half of the bi being Black. That’s one of the things about being Black in whole or in part: You don’t have the freedom to define your own racial identity, at least when it comes to white America. It’s done for you. That’s something that has nothing to do with political parties. Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, it doesn’t matter. There’s an old nursery rhyme: “If you’re black, stay back; if you’re brown, stick around; if you’re yellow, you’re mellow; if you’re white, you’re all right.” These days it seems kind of quaint. For Trump and his MAGA followers, only one line matters: “If you’re white, you’re all right.” Everyone else belongs in the “stay back” category. This kind of racism, or perhaps call it colorism, is not limited to white folks. In at least some parts of the Black community, the whisper might be, “Is she black enough?”

Aren’t you tired of this yet? All this harping on race and color? I find it exhausting and mildly depressing. Or, to put it another way, I really, really, really don’t like identity politics. One may decry identity politics on the Democratic side, but it is equally prevalent on the Republican side. It’s just that Republicans can just be more covert and downright nasty about it.

In the past, in the days of the Dixiecrat Southern Democrats, the so-called solid South, the racism was out front and even nastier than Republicans are today. Remember George Wallace in 1963? “Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” Also, in 1963, remember Bull Connor, who turned the police against Black demonstrators with clubs, fire hoses, and dogs? The murder of Medgar Evers, also in 1963. How about the murders of Andrew Goodman, James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner in 1964? (Remember the days when Blacks and Jews saw themselves on the same side?) Or Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968? Yes, it was Democrats who did all that.

But, and it’s a big but, there also was Lyndon Johnson and the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and the Fair Housing Act of 1968. Johnson knew very well what he was giving up, at least in terms of electoral votes — he was surrendering the solid South to Republicans. Nixon certainly knew it with his “Southern strategy.” And Regan knew it too when he railed against “welfare queens” in Mississippi and Bush 41 with his Willie Horton ads. Never a direct word about disfavoring Blacks by Republicans, but covert words and political actions became part and parcel of the Republican playbook. Trump didn’t invent racism in the GOP. He simply inflated it. Bigly. When I heard how he said that he had done more for Blacks than any president other than Lincoln, I couldn’t help but remember what Johnson did, the extraordinary political courage it took to do what he thought was morally right. Trump doesn’t know the meaning of the word “morality.” Nor does he know the meaning of the word “courage.” He’s no different from any other bully.

I wonder if anything I’ve written in the last two paragraphs is real to Trump. In 1963, he was seventeen years old, the son of a racist, an American Firster, a supporter of the John Birch Society, and a father who tried to pass on his beliefs to his children. Maybe he thought those events of 1963 — George Wallace, Bull Connor, and Medgar Evers — were all fine and dandy. Or maybe he didn’t think of them at all. And how about you, dear readers? If you are just a bit younger than Trump is now (78), maybe those events mean little to you either. We have a way of thinking that things that happened before we were alive or were old enough for them to be meaningful to us at the time aren’t very real to us and, so, don’t mean all that much now.

But, yes, I am exhausted by all this. I am exhausted by the effort of Americans to be defined by others or to define themselves primarily by the color of their skin or the country of their ancestors’ birth.

Here’s a short story for you. When my stepdaughter was in high school, she thought she had a decision to make. Her father was born in Cuba, and her mother was born in America to Sicilian-American parents. She thought she should decide whether it was more advantageous to present herself to colleges as a Latino-American or an Italian-American. She asked what I thought. I said, “All that means to me is that you’re 100% American.”

So, too, for Kamala Harris. Black-American? Indian-American? Black-Indian-American? All I know is that she was born in America and that makes her 100% American. As is Donald J. Trump, by the way.

I wish more of us thought that way.