AT LENGTH-Far be it for me to try and stop the fearless Donald, as in Trump, from speaking his mind as he runs for the Republican nomination for president. But his run has done a lot to expose some of the underlying racist attitudes still held by many in this nation who love to repeat, “with liberty and justice for all.”
In his blustery campaign speech, he accused Mexico of “dumping its worst citizens” at our borders, people who are “rapists and drug dealers.” Later, he said that these immigrants are bringing “tremendous infectious diseases” into the United States.
This is a lot of hubris for a man who probably hires more Mexicans to clean his hotels, mow the greens on his golf courses and wash his cars than live in Wilmington. He is the leading Republican candidate in the early opinion polls which shows that there is considerable support for his inflammatory race-baiting and scapegoating candidacy.
As shocking as such hate speech is to the rest of America, if not the world, he exemplifies the disconnect that exists in our discourse about racism in this country. He actually believes what he says and doesn’t consider himself a racist!
So why pay attention to an egotistical blowhard like Trump? It’s because he is the poster boy for elitist white capitalists who have historically used race to avoid discussing the inequalities of class in this country, stirring up historic antagonisms fueled by biases projected in the media.
Trump is so stupid that he thinks America is still going to buy this old line and that his “celebrity” status is going to protect him or propel him toward attaining the power that he just can’t purchase or steal otherwise.
The Donald is not alone. On a recent Saturday in front of the capitol building in Columbia, SC, supporters of the Ku Klux Klan came out to protest the removal of the Confederate battle flag.
Yes--the very same flag South Carolina’s state legislature finally voted to remove and was signed into law by Republican Gov. Nikki Haley following the massacre of nine church members by an avowed white supremacist. During debates on the floor of the legislature, a small but vocal minority defended the flag as an “historic” symbol of the South.
So what’s the deal about these state flags anyway?
Prior to the Civil War, the majority of states—with the exception of California and Texas—didn’t even have a state flag. If you remember, California and Texas were independent republics before they entered the union. Then came the war of separation, the costliest war in terms of lives lost that this nation has ever fought.
You may recall that the South lost that war, the nation’s union was preserved and the institution of slavery was broken by the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863, and codified in the U.S. Constitution with the 14th Amendment. The Confederate battle flags did not fly over Southern statehouses for the next 82 years.
Only when President Harry Truman gave the executive order to integrate the U.S. military after World War II did the Southern Dixiecrats rebel. Sen. Strom Thurmond (D-SC) ran a campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination in protest and lost. Only then did the former rebel states raise their “historic flags.”
You see, these flags were less about the Civil War and the cause that they lost in 1865, than about the white political hegemony of Jim Crow laws and segregation that the “new South” had maintained even until the Civil Rights era of the 1960s.
The odd footnote to all of this is that Thurmond, the final bulwark of the Old South, had an illegitimate black daughter who he had financially supported through the years. This only adds another layer of complexity in discussing race or racism in America. Flags are symbols that hold different meanings for many people, but the hypocrisy of Thurmond should make us all wonder aloud about the color line in these here United States of America.
As shocking as it may be for some of you to see the Klan rise up in South Carolina today, don’t be so smug as to think that there aren’t folks in these parts who still hold such sympathies. It was not so long ago that the Klan marched down from its local headquarters above Gaffey to throw out the local IWW (Wobbly) Hall on 12th and Centre streets, in part because they had an integrated union in 1924.
It was not that long ago that racial real estate covenants in California restricted people of color, as well as Jews, from owning property in cities like Torrance, Palos Verdes and parts of San Pedro or Long Beach and elsewhere—a practice that didn’t end until 1968.
And it was not that long ago that a local workman found fascist Italian propaganda hidden in the wall of an old San Pedro home and that Harbor College was used as an internment camp for Italians of “questionable loyalty” during World War II. And then, there was the internment of Japanese Americans during that world war as well.
What is astoundingly stupid in a country that has become the melting pot of the world—ethnically, culturally and racially—is that we still have people of great wealth and power like Trump, along with those who follow him, that attempt to divide us by race or religion. They don’t have a clue as to why people from south of the border or from China are drawn to immigrate here. Are their reasons so different from those of Trump’s people or mine, of German and Scottish heritage, came here?
Like I said before, far be it from me to stop The Donald from expressing his racist views as he leads the GOP down a disastrous path. Just don’t expect Random Lengths to endorse anything that he propounds. Ever!
(James Preston Allen is the Publisher of Random Lengths News, the Los Angeles Harbor Area's only independent newspaper. He is also a guest columnist for the California Courts Monitor and is the author of "Silence Is Not Democracy- Don't listen to that man with the white cap--he might say something that you agree with!" He was elected to the presidency of the Central San Pedro Neighborhood Council in 2014 and has been engaged in the civic affairs of CD 15 for more than 35 years. More of Allen … and other views and news at: randomlengthsnews.com where this column was first posted.)
-cw
CityWatch
Vol 13 Issue 61
Pub: July 28, 2015
