A Latina Realtor, Black House Buyers, and a MAGA Flag‑Waver

September 2, 2019 | revcom.us

 

From a member of the National Get Organized for an ACTUAL Revolution Tour

I want to share something briefly that I was reminded of after reading Andy Zee’s piece, “The Struggle for Historical Truth.... And the Fight for the Future.” And wanted to put it in that context.

I was talking to my mom on the phone the other day and she was asking me how Chicago was and what’s been going on with the Tour. I was telling her about what we did on Lake Shore Drive in the wake of the El Paso shooting and the apartheid conditions in this city. She was reflecting herself on this, on what it was like growing up in South Central in the ’80s and how there would be shootings at her high school and how that was a normal thing for her and her Black and Latino schoolmates and peers.

Mind you, my mom now is pretty liberal and loves people like Michelle Obama, although she hates Trump and what he’s doing and she knows the history of this country and the fact that it was founded in slavery and genocide. She is also an immigrant from Central America (but is now a citizen) and came here before the most violent period there, which informs a lot of her “GTF”¹ in how she justifies her love for America’s “greatness” because she was able to escape the conditions of poverty and misery in her country (which the U.S. had a role in) and was able to come here and have a better life. In other words, she is one of the few who was able “make it” out of the meat grinder in one piece to that “American Dream” of becoming middle class but on the terms of this system, while millions just like her who came from the kind of conditions in which she has continue to get grounded up.

That being said, she began to tell me a story of a house she’s selling to a Black couple in a predominantly white neighborhood in the suburbs. She had seen a few times a big truck driving around that neighborhood with two big American flags waving from the bed of it. Though she hasn’t had qualms with the flag because of what I described above, she said now when she sees that flag and people openly waving it around like that in light of what Trump has been doing to immigrants, Black people, etc. and all of the white supremacy he’s unleashing and fanning the flames of, she now becomes unsettled and frightened. She was also saying how the Black couple was also becoming very uncomfortable with seeing the truck riding around the neighborhood. In the same breath she also told me that they are both correctional officers. She saw that the car was parked next door and, to no surprise of her own, saw stickers that read, “Build the Wall” and “Trump 2020.” A few days later, while my mom and the couple were outside the house just talking, they noticed the owner of the truck had come outside of his house next door and was in his driveway wearing a “MAGA” hat and standing in what my mom calls a “superman” pose with his legs shoulder width apart and his fists on his hips. They looked at him and awkwardly said hello in which he nodded and said hello back. My mom then whispered to the couple, “I want you to say as loud as you can so that he can hear, ‘Oh my gosh I love this house! This one is it! We just HAVE to buy it!!’” Which they did.

She finished up her story in a laughter, but it’s a story that for some reason hasn’t left me and provoked me to put it in writing.

I told her how we have been taking out the provocation, “With a white supremacist in the White House fomenting a new civil war, why aren’t people in the streets? And what do we need to do to radically change all of this?” and explained to her how the majority of people responded with “fear” or the fact that the most oppressed and people who are at the boot of this system in this country are afraid to even go outside, or just in general people are afraid to step out in that way. I told her how this is a problem and an obstacle for the revolution that we need to solve and are trying to go to work on. She had an interesting response though, “You wanna know why people aren’t in the streets? It’s the fear, but it’s also the fact that people are so used to this white supremacy. It’s been in our culture for four hundred years, the racism has always been there and has been a fact of life for so many people that they just don’t know what to do about it.”

This also struck me profoundly and I have been thinking about it ever since and have been questioning is this the mood overall in society? What does this reflect in terms of the thinking of blocs of people who are affected by the Trump/Pence regime, but are also liberal? What does this reflect on how people are even viewing the flag and America and its role in the world and the role it’s playing today with a fascist regime in power? What openings does this provide for the struggle from below and the repolarization for revolution and putting this third (as yet) “unseeable” future of emancipating humanity on the map?

I also thought it needed to be shared because of how interesting this story is and does reflect the real divisions in society right now.

 

1. GTF stands for “Great Tautological Fallacy,” a term coined by the revolutionary leader Bob Avakian. The GTF is that “the U.S. is a force for good in the world so whatever it does is good.” This is a lie used to justify American crimes around the world. Watch Bob Avakian speak on this in this clip, taken from the longer speech, The Trump/Pence Regime Must Go! In the Name of Humanity, We REFUSE to Accept a Fascist America – A Better World IS Possible. [back]