More on Why Dave Chappelle Is Wrong About Trump

Refusing to Accept a Fascist America Is Everybody’s Problem

by Carl Dix

November 21, 2016 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us

 

On Saturday Night Live, Dave Chappelle said Black people have survived worse than Donald Trump and they’ll be able to survive this too. And that Trump was white people’s problem and they should deal with it. This is straight-up wrong and very dangerous.

Trump has demonized immigrants and Muslims. He has demeaned and degraded women and boasted of sexually assaulting them. He has advocated for torturing and murdering families of people accused of terrorism. He has called climate change a hoax and promoted policies that will escalate the devastation of the planet we live on. His election has unleashed white supremacist forces to attack everybody they see as “others.”

It is incredibly narrow and selfish to say a fascist coming to power in the most powerful country in the world is “somebody else’s problem.” This is a problem for all of humanity, and everybody has a responsibility to stop this. When people stand aside while fascists come after other groups of people—it strengthens the ability of the fascists to consolidate their rule and later come after those who stood aside.

Anyone who says Trump isn’t a problem for Black people is refusing to look reality square in the face. I know Black people have caught hell in America since the first Africans were dragged to these shores in slave chains. The savage oppression they’ve been subjected to—slavery, Jim Crow segregation, lynch mob terror, and today’s New Jim Crow of mass incarceration and police terror—has been built into the fabric of this capitalist-imperialist system from the beginning. Anyone who looks at this history and comes to the conclusion that Black people should just tough it out through whatever Trump might add to it has lost their goddamn mind. This savage oppression is unacceptable and illegitimate. It’s one big reason why this system should be ripped up from its foundations and replaced with a totally different and far better way for people to live, why it must be done away with through an actual revolution at the soonest possible time. If this was the only thing wrong with this system, and it’s far from the only thing wrong with it, this would be reason enough to make revolution to wipe it off the face of the earth.

I have called the current situation faced by Black people, what it comes down to, a slow genocide. But a slow genocide could become a fast one, and this is what a Trump regime is objectively moving to bring about. His election has unleashed a lynch mob mentality, with his supporters targeting immigrants, Muslims, women, LGBT people, AND Black people. Trump is appointing racists and even an outright white supremacist to his cabinet and key positions on his White House staff.

People like Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions. This man called a white civil rights attorney a traitor to his race. His racism was so out there that a Senate committee headed by Republicans wouldn’t approve his nomination to be a federal judge back in the 1980s. Now he’s Trump’s pick to be the new Attorney General. Steve Bannon, who headed up the Breitbart online news site, a platform for fascist and white supremacist forces, has been picked to be the chief strategist and senior counselor to the president. Or Rudolph Giuliani who unleashed draconian and police state measures when he was mayor of New York. He was a major surrogate during Trump’s campaign and is now being considered for a cabinet post.

In a country that already offers no future for Black youth and has many of them on a track to go in and out of prison, Trump has declared he’ll be a Law and Order president and will implement stop-and-frisk throughout the country. Think of what this will mean. At the height of stop-and-frisk, the NYPD stopped tens of thousands of mostly Black and Latino people every month. They subjected them to the harassment of being stopped by the police and the humiliation of having a pig run thru their pockets in front of neighbors and strangers and worse. Every Black and Latino person in New York City knew this could be done to them at any time for no reason other than the color of their skin. And that this could end with them being brutally beaten or even murdered by the cops, even if you hadn’t done anything wrong. Then there’s Trump’s stance on the case of the Central Park 5. These were five Black and Latino men who were railroaded into prison on charges of rape in 1989. Back then Trump called for the reinstatement of the death penalty so these men could be executed. Even though the real rapist came forward and confessed and the courts found these men innocent, Trump still says the Central Park 5 should still be in jail.

What does all this say about what a Trump regime will mean for Black people? That even more savage oppression will be enforced on Black people. And this will come down as part of an overall program of demonizing immigrants and Muslims, taking the right to have an abortion away from women, and more.

This is a problem for all of humanity, and everybody who has any concern for the future of humanity needs to be a part of standing up against the horrors this will mean for the people of the world. The fact that a whole lot of people, especially large numbers of white people, have taken to the streets to reject a Trump presidency is a good thing for humanity. More people of all nationalities, including larger numbers of Black people, need to flow into the streets and join these protests and get involved in the resistance in many other ways. The future of humanity is at stake here.

 

 

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