The Black Eyes left by Trump’s America
On January 6, 2021, Black people across America collectively watched, unsurprised, as the same people who lambaste us to protest peacefully and “within the law”, while alleging we are hypersensitive to cold-blooded murder by government authorities with no repercussions, scaled the steps and rampaged the halls of our revered Capitol…without a single care or concern that they would be punished, let alone met with force, lethal or otherwise.
Having time and free rein to build a hangman’s noose but a few yards away from its steps, breach barricades, run the halls, pose for selfies (some with law enforcement in the photos), squat in the offices and kick their feet up on the desks of the Nation’s highest elected officials, Trump fanatics were permitted to terrorize America’s leadership with little resistance. I will state the obvious as a perfunctory matter, but this was only possible because of the white privilege held and leveraged by the perpetrators of these acts. That is nothing profound honestly, and is not the point of this story. Instead, it is simply the foundation for what January 6th truly means for America’s eyes — the black ones it has as a result of the embarrassing blows to the head it received as well as the Black eyes viewing it all and trying to reconcile the discrepancy between the promise of America and what they see every single day.
My Black eyes and this Nation’s black eyes received from the insurrection and attempted coup perpetrated by anti-democratic, white supremacists under the guise of “protest” tell me that the question of whether America’s racism is State sponsored is immediately on trial. Sure, I’ve seen the day late and dollar short denouncements from the likes of Republican Sens. McConnell and Graham. I’ve watched the 11th hour 59th second Cabinet member resignations. I saw Democratic Representatives make strong statements against it and blast out that Trump should be removed. I witnessed the President come out and tell the perpetrators to go home and verbally utter words about being peaceful. And yet no one is talking about suppressing this very serious threat to our democracy with unequivocal comprehensive definitive action. Indeed the President told these people he LOVED THEM and called them patriots. He took the time to shoot and publish a video for broad dissemination communicating these sentiments. This act by our country’s highest leader, combined with the failure of his Cabinet, Congress, the Department of Justice, or any other body with the power and authority to stop it, counter it, or hold the President accountable for it, if that is where we land… could not be seen as anything other than the will of the leaders of the United States and cause for ruling that America’s racism is State sponsored.
Our Founding Fathers contemplated the power of the Presidency, the military might tied up with it, and the bully pulpit that comes with it, needing to be checked. There are features and mechanisms abound in our Constitution and its Amendments, as well as statutes that are meant to contain a President that is incapable of doing his or her job, and who is at odds with the health of the Republic. If inciting an attempted coup by raving maniacs running around the Nation’s Capitol don’t move any of our leaders to take real, immediate, decisive action to quash by removing the President, finding every single co-conspirator and prosecuting them to the fullest extent, then there is no other conclusion for these Black eyes to come to other than it is supported.
My Black eyes did not deceive me when I compared the phalanx of military police protecting the White House in response to real protestors, actual patriots, voicing their pain over the 8 minute and 46 second torture and murder of George Floyd by government authorized enforcement officers, to that of the friendly neighborhood community policing chummy chum tact taken towards the unjustified, whinny, conspiracy believing, Trump puppets. My vision is clear; I am not afflicted by any deficiency in eyesight. My white brothers and sisters, often even the best of them, seem to always be in genuine wonder of why me and my Black brothas and sistas are so skeptical of America’s promises of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness — why we raise the alarm on racism in matters. The answer is quite simple. We have Black eyes that are forced to see America’s black eyes in our every day experience while their eyes are only drawn to the handful of catastrophes that no one can escape seeing for an acute fleeting moment.
During the summer of 2020, in the wake of the George Floyd killing, there was no shortage of “interest in understanding” and “outreach to members of the Black community to hear directly.” Because the gruesome brutality of George Floyd’s murder was front and center and inescapable. But within just a few sunsets, non-Black eyes were allowed to move on and look at something else. Meanwhile Black eyes were left behind to focus on justice for Breonna Taylor, Jacob Blake, Walter Wallace, Jr., A.J. Crooms, Sincere Pierce, Joshua Feast, and numerous others who died at the hands of excessive force by police just in the year 2020 despite a global pandemic.
My Black eyes see that the very same people who celebrate treasonous conspirators who took up arms against their own blood in mortal attacks against these United States in civil war in 1861, carried the very same flag flown by such into the hollowed chambers and floor of our country in insurrection. America’s black eye of suffering homage to traitors of the Republic, the erection of statues to individuals who would declare themselves their own nation within American soil and announce a competing capitol within the state adjacent to where our one and only Capitol lies, has resulted in its inevitable destination. The time for concern about mending the splinter between the North and the South by giving a pass to those who committed high crimes against the U.S. has passed (if it ever truly existed). It is clear through my Black eyes that you do not let losers of a fight to the death for the balance of power and control of your land remain prominent, proud or with a pulse through symbols and idols lest you want their residue spilling into your legislature halting the People’s business through disorder and violence some day.
My Black eyes are getting messages relayed by my Black ears that they are hearing this is not who we really are as America. My President-Elect stated that this is just the acts of a small number of extremists. Okay then, my Black eyes know how America deals with terrorists and extremists. We do not negotiate, and we eliminate them wherever they may be. Or will we take another black eye and require a qualification for radicalized white nationalist acolytes of aspiring dictators? The actions of these extremists cannot be divorced from the man in the office of the Presidency who spun them up and maneuvered them to the doorstep of the People’s House. HE IS THEIR LEADER.
So will the Republican party, the party that prides itself on law, order, national security and patriotism do more than just halfway denounce the acts of these villains and bring great fury and force upon them? Will they wield the extreme power they still have for the next 12 days to honor the ideal of America in deed and action? If they fail to meet the challenge, will new Democratic leadership do what it takes to embody American principles as a verb when they take control?
My Black eyes is looking on intently (read it fast and you’ll hear it the way I intended you to). Like myself, the rest of the world will be considering our official actions in response to the January 6th 2021 insurrection in determining whether America truly is that shiny city on a hill, or just a tattered village that looks good from a distance based on tall tales.
For my players of games of chance, where would you place your bets?
