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Yes, It Is Always About Race [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2025-02-26
Many White Americans will reflexively recoil at the title of this offering. As a Black American man hoping to enjoy the seventh decade of my life, I can say without reservation it has always been about race in American life. From the time the first slave ship, the White Lion, docked, ironically, in Port Comfort, Virginia, in August of 1619, the enslaved men, women, and children who emerged from the bowels of the ship not only lost their freedom but were denied their humanity. Once the hazy concept of the “White race” came about in the 17th century, it took on the mantle of supremacy that has lasted throughout the history of America.
It has manifested itself in the near extinction of the Native Americans, unspeakable violence to maintain the sense of supremacy over the ancestors and their descendants, the denial of entry of the Chinese, and the imprisonment of Japanese Americans in the 1940s. You may ask yourself, what about Reconstruction and The Civil Rights era—America tried? Reconstruction was met with Jim Crow laws and more violence. Civil Rights just hid segregation and racism, not remedy it: red-lining, securing bank loans, jobs, and housing discrimination. What was all the resistance based on? RACE! I have dragged you through this short recap of history that many will close their ears, eyes, and sphincters to like a liberal at a Trump speech.
White people often ask, are Black people not tired of bringing race into everything? The answer is yes, but also, are White people not tired of making everything about race? The internet is flooded with think pieces and videos asking where black people are in the resistance against Trump. Most of these questions are coming from other marginalized groups who felt safe and voted against a black woman. Black Americans overwhelmingly voted for former Vice President Kamala Harris, so I find it odd the question is asked of blacks: where are you? When the real question for a lot of Americans from black people should be, where were you? Daily, I am reminded of what many White Americans feel is my place in this world, and no disguised language is a salve for the picked-at scabs that mar this country.
Rep. Jeff Van Drew (R-NJ), a one-time Democrat, issued a statement early this week before the House passed a resolution on the President’s budget last evening. “Don’t touch seniors’ Medicare, and don’t cut Medicaid because it isn’t just for lazy welfare people. It’s for real people,” Van Drew told the Washington Post this week. “That’s the new Republican Party, a populist party, a party of working people, a party of blue-collar people,” said Van Drew. Jeff Van Drew did very little to hide his feelings or who he meant while at the same time practicing that old white American custom of supremacy while robbing people of dignity and humanity when he said, ‘It’s for real people.’ So, the next time you think black Americans are paranoid or fixated on race, think again.
Your Vote is Still Your Voice
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