CommentsBELL VIEW-When I was just a kid, I liked Ronald Reagan. He seemed upbeat, competent, presidential. He had a sense of humor. Then, during the 1988 presidential campaign, I saw the Willie Horton Ad. It hit me like a freight train. “My god!” I thought. “These guys are racists!”
At the time, I believed racism was the biggest problem we faced in America. And I still believe that. It’s not just the overt hatred and the resulting political catastrophe of a Trump presidency that racism has brought us. It’s at the root of every issue facing America today. Climate change. Healthcare. Housing. Education. Endless war. Income inequality. All these issues boil down – at the very bottom – to an inability of a large segment of White America to join hands with the rest of the country, to pull together to solve our common problems. It is the fuel behind the modern Republican Party.
I became a liberal – for lack of a better term – literally the moment I saw the Willie Horton ad. But still I was clueless. When I was in high school, I never thought the Confederate Flag was a symbol of racism. It just never occurred to me that the flag some of my favorite bands were flying behind their amplifiers was a symbol of white supremacy. But I evolved. The latest meme running around the wing-nut side of the Internet claims that no one ever considered Confederate symbols racist till Trump came along.
Seriously. That is a wide-spread belief among Trump supporters. The essence of privilege is blissful ignorance. The challenge of privilege is constant vigilance. A constant willingness to reject beliefs based upon a fundamental lack of understanding. I can’t really be blamed for what I don’t yet know. But I can be blamed for failing to investigate and failing to understand what’s plainly in front of my face. That I still reap the benefits of privilege I don’t even comprehend yet makes me privileged, but it doesn’t make me racist. Knowledge is an essential element of guilt.
And here is where we can say that Trump has actually given the American people a gift. The gift of knowledge. Like Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, we don’t always want it. But knowledge of good and evil is what makes us truly human.
We have reached a moment where equivocation is no longer logically possible. Despite the racial acrobatics of Rush Limbaugh and Ann Coulter and Sean Hannity, we all know the flag-waiving, swastika-tattooed, Hitler-loving, drooling, screaming racist in the neighborhood. And now we know the President of the United States is on his side. He is their voice. From saying some “very fine people” marched through the streets of Charlottesville, to pardoning Joe Arpaio, to threatening to rescind DACA – Trump has issued the equivalent of a Willie Horton ad a week. There’s no more nuance. No more wiggle room. When commentators say on television things like: “I don’t know whether Donald Trump is a racist, but ….” They’re lying. They know. We all know.
There’s nothing wrong with admitting you were wrong. Robert Byrd did it. George Wallace did it. Those Americans who supported Trump need to do it. And they need to do it now.
I’ve been told many times that calling people racists is no way to win elections. We need to understand the plight of poor white Americans – those driven to see Donald Trump as just the medicine the country needed to get back on track. I never bought that excuse. But fine. Let’s give them all the benefit of the doubt. But now we know. Donald Trump has painted a bright red line around the unrepentant racists in America. We know who they are, and we can start to rebuild our country without them.
(David Bell is a writer, attorney, former president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council and writes for CityWatch.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.