It’s been one year since the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Va. And now, we are all bracing for what is being called Unite the Right 2, planned for this weekend in the Washington, D.C. area. A state of emergency has been declared in Virginia ahead of the gathering of white supremacists and Neo-Nazis.
Recent Pew Research Center findings show Donald Trump is the most divisive president in modern times. The extent of our nation’s division is important to understand.
Trump’s support does NOT come exclusively from uneducated white people, there are plenty of educated white Trump supporters but they are mostly men.
For those who may ask, “Why he is divisive”
The answer he’s a bigot, racist and misogynist.
On his show, CNN’s Don Lemon read a tweet that highlighted what Trump has said about different groups of people. I could not find the tweet, but recreated a list of my own:
- Mexicans: Rapists
- Haitians: Have AIDS
- African countries: Shitholes
- POWs: Not a war hero
- Woman: Blood coming out of her whatever
- Muslims: Countries that have tremendous terror
- American Muslims: Cheering as the buildings came down (on 9/11)
- Barack Obama’s birth certificate: A fraud
- Black congresswoman: Low IQ
- Black athletes: Sons of bitches
- American Indian: Pocahontas
- White supremacist: Some very fine people
I’ve heard apologists say, “It’s just talk” or “He’s shaking things up,” but you have to be extremely isolated or uninformed to believe that at this point.
For his own benefit, Trump cunningly uses race baiting to exploit the bigotry of a significant portion of our citizens.
Let’s be clear you can believe anything you want to, but if your job is the CEO of a corporation, you have higher responsibilities than your political beliefs.
For everyone, including CEOs, it’s come down to something a close friend said to me yesterday, “If you support Trump, you hate who I am.”
If you’re a curious white person and wonder if this only applies to Black people, think again. Walking down the street, you would see that I am disabled, but you would not see that I am also in a biracial family, and have loved ones who are Black, Asian, Latino, LGBT, etc.
We are well past the point of credible denial or needing to be respectful of “other views.” Supporting or even appearing to support this president has severe and unrecoverable consequences.
Many of us, and we are the majority, will neither forgive nor forget.
