President Donald Trump (Official White House portrait)
Less than three hours after being sworn into the presidency, before a roaring crowd of his Make America Great Again (MAGA) supporters, President Donald Trump revoked 78 of former President Joe Biden’s executive orders and issued a few new ones of his own. Chief among them were the reversal of federal diversity and equity initiatives (DEI), protections for voting rights, and the dismantling of the 14th Amendment.
Before a throng of cheering people adorned in red caps emblazoned with the MAGA mantra and on a national holiday celebrating the life and legacy of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., the President declared, “This week, I will also end the government policy of trying to socially engineer race and gender into every aspect of public and private life,” he said during his inaugural address.
“We will forge a society that is color blind and merit based. … As of today, it will henceforth be the official policy of the United States government that there are only two genders, male and female,” Trump said. Then, at the conclusion of the ceremony, a Black preacher from Detroit made a mockery of Dr. King’s “I Have A Dream” sermon by reciting parts of it in an exaggerated, loud, and comical delivery similar to Black minstrelsy.
The 45th and now 47th president, like his first predecessor Barack Obama, had once again chosen Abraham Lincoln’s bible upon which to take his oath of office. But this time around, Trump did not place his hand on the holy book used during the Republican’s 1861 ceremony.
Lincoln’s Republican Party has evolved significantly since the lawyer and statesman took office and its founding in 1854. Then, it was branded as the political party for federal protection and social, educational, and economic development, and it was responsible for the end of slavery. In the 20th Century, the Republican Party began to shift to pro-business and limited government policies in response to the Great Depression. It also began attracting a large number of Democrats willing to abandon their party in protest of civil rights laws enacted by Democratic leadership.
Republicans, more inclined toward liberal and progressive policies, including expanding civil and voting rights to Black Americans, shifted into the Democratic Party. By the time all African Americans received the right to vote in 1964, most had begun to vote as Democrats following the assassination of President John F. Kennedy the year before.
Following the Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade in 1973, the Grand Old Party (GOP) made another shift to the right and by the 1980s and following the election of President Ronald Reagan, the Republican Party cemented its ideological shift. In 2009, the Tea Party emerged from Chicago as a conservative populist movement and, within a year, had been replaced by political dynamics that ultimately catapulted Donald Trump into the White House.
An hour after the president took his oath, Afrikaner immigrant Elon Musk, who came to the U.S. on a work visa and helped finance Trump’s campaign, took to the podium to give his own victory speech. The venture capitalist and champion of Eugenics has been appointed by Trump to ensure government efficiency and eradicate (DEI) in federal agencies.
Millions watched on live television as the “world’s richest man” —dubbed the “shadow president” by some observers–twice made a gesture that appeared to be a Nazi salute. His supporters said it was nothing more than an “awkward gesture.”
“This was no ordinary victory. This was a fork in the road of human civilization,” Musk proclaimed. “…My heart goes out to you. It is thanks to you that the future of civilization is assured.” The billionaire bit his lip, snapped forward, thumped his chest and extended his right arm outward and then upward at an angle with his palm down and fingers together. He turned to the people behind him and did it again.
The gesture caused an uproar and concern that he was sending a white power message. While Musk has not been accused of racism given his hobnobbing with Black celebrities, his Tesla company has been successfully sued by Black employees for racial discrimination.
Like many white South Africans, his family members fled their homeland after the fall of apartheid in the 1990s and the rise of Black political leadership. The whites took their enormous wealth with them and South Africa’s economy plunged. Most Afrikaners moved to the U.S. territories of California, Illinois, Minnesota, New York City, Maryland or Canada. According to various online sources, the richest people in the United States are of white, South African heritage.
Though Musk and First Lady Melania Trump are immigrants to the United States, this hasn’t stopped the Trump administration from vowing to make good on its promise to stop the flow of undesirable immigrants into the country—specifically those from Central America, Mexico, the Caribbean, and various African nations. However, Musk and another Trump confidant caused an uproar when they admitted they would welcome technologically skilled immigrants from India who would take on American jobs.
The president and his appointed border czar, Tom Homan, have vowed to make an example out of the Land of Lincoln. The Trump administration has pledged to specifically target Chicago, a “Sanctuary City” founded by a Haitian explorer. The president has repeatedly said he will hold Chicago’s mayor and the Illinois governor accountable if they stand in the way of federal law enforcement. Both are Democrats.
“The previous (presidential) administration has embedded deeply unpopular, inflationary, illegal, and radical practices within every agency and office of the Federal Government,” President Trump said of Biden’s executive orders. “The injection of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) into our institutions has corrupted them by replacing hard work, merit, and equality with a divisive and dangerous preferential hierarchy.
“Orders to open the borders have endangered the American people and dissolved the Federal. State and local resources that should be used to benefit the American people,” he continued. “…To commence the policies that will make our Nation united, fair, safe, and prosperous again, it is the policy of the United States to restore common sense to the Federal Government and unleash the potential of the American citizen.”
The president then overturned 78 decrees by Biden, including but not limited to Executive Order 13985, “Advancing Racial Equity and Support for Underserved Communities Through the Federal Government;” Executive Order 13988, “Preventing and Combating Discrimination on the Basis of Gender Identity or Sexual Orientation;” Executive Order 13999 Protecting Worker Health and Safety;” Executive Order Supporting the Reopening and Continuing Operation of Schools and Early Childhood Education Providers; “ Executive Order 14015 “Establishment of the White House Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships;” Executive Order 14006 “Reforming Our Incarceration System to Eliminate the Use of Privately Operated Criminal Detention Facilities;” Executive Order 14009 “Strengthening Medicaid and the Affordable Care Act;” and, Executive Order 14050 White Initiative on Advancing Educational Equity, Excellence and Economic Opportunity for Black Americans.”
The “Birther Movement” president also attempted to reduce the power of the 14th amendment to the U.S. Constitution by decreeing that U.S. citizenship is no longer guaranteed to a child born on U.S. soil unless both parents are legally recognized U.S. citizens prior to the child’s birth.
Any deconstruction or reinterpretation of the 14th Amendment should put Black America on high alert. It, along with the 13th and 15th constitutional amendments, is what gave our ancestors U.S. citizenship, emancipation, equal protection under the law, and conditional voting rights. These protections came at the cost of a four-year-long Civil War, which resulted in the loss of up to 850,000 lives and the assassination of a U.S. president.
Trump, a lame duck, rescinded other executive orders pertaining to immigration, gender, political ethics, climate and environmental justice, and specific to Latinos, Asians, Native Americans, Pacific Islanders, the disabled and other marginalized communities. Read them at whitehouse.gov. He also pardoned all 1,500 people accused of crimes in the January 6, 2020, insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, in which some people threatened to hang then-Vice President Mike Pence.
The president’s defiant promise to reclaim America’s greatness is deeply rooted in the country’s troubled past and cemented in the blood and stench of the trans-Atlantic slave trade, U.S. chattel slavery, colonization, political repression, and war.
With each turn of history’s page, the oppressed and marginalized people of the United States have mounted defenses to ensure their human rights, protect their families, and give meaning to the tenets of the U.S. Constitution and its Preamble.
It appears that now that each aggrieved group has recently had its own era of comeuppance – Civil Rights Movements I & II (1930 – 1968); Black Power Movement (1968-1975); American Indian Movement (1968-1978); Gay Rights Movement (1970- 2008); Latino Rights & DACA (2006-2012 ); Occupy Movement (2011); #Me Too Movement (2017-2019); #Black Lives Matter Movement (2013 – 2021); Criminal Justice Reform & Policing (2015-2023); Stop Asian Hate (2020 – 2021); LGBTQA/Trans Rights (2008-2023)—it appears the country has moved into its phase of White Male Rights Restoration Movement.
Its formal launch appeared with the convergence of the Alt-Right Movement, Birther, and MAGA Movement sometime in 2016. By 2022, the white male reclamation campaigns appeared to gain significant support from corporate, finance, media, and technology elites.
Now that this is the season for white men “to reclaim their time,” a phrase California Rep. Maxine Waters popularized in 2017 during Trump’s first presidency, what might that mean in terms of socioeconomic and political policies?
Does President Trump’s lame-duck presidency represent, symbolically or figuratively, the changing of the social guard and the return of white male power and dominance over all others, including white women, in today’s society? If it is so, then perhaps people can stop questioning how or why Vice President Kamala Harris lost the 2023 presidential election despite exit polls, pundits, data, and momentum that suggested the outcome might be otherwise. “You don’t even have to vote,” Trump told his supporters on the election trail.
After he was elected in a landslide, the New York real estate tycoon turned reality TV star turned politician, turned convicted felon bragged, “(Elon) knows computers better than anybody,” the president-elect said. “All those computers. Those vote-counting computers. And we ended up winning Pennsylvania in a landslide.”
Trump’s victory led millions to take to social media and other public forums to decry the fall of America and an “end to democracy.” His supporters said otherwise. “The president is going to make America great again,” a man holding an American flag draped in MAGA gear told a TV news crew as he waited for Trump to take power. He, like many other excited citizens who’ve chanted the phrase, did not indicate in which or what period was America at its height.
IS THIS INVERTED
HISTORY
During the November elections, Americans were bombarded with televised and printed graphics showing the U.S. states coded in one of three colors—red, blue or purple, with the latter representing a political landscape closely divided between Democratic (blue) and Republican (red) voters.
The U.S. Confederacy, founded in 1861, chose red as its primary color to symbolize valor and the willingness to “sacrifice.” The federal Union Army, formed the same year, inherited its color from the Army’s traditional uniforms dating back to the Revolutionary War. The dark blue distinguished Union soldiers from the British “Redcoats.” Blacks, who have been in this nation prior to its inception and eventual founding in 1776, have fought in every war that has propelled the U.S. to “greatness.”
Ironically, the branding of the colors red and blue to both major political parties became standardized during the 2000 presidential election between Democrat Al Gore and Republican George W. Bush. Prior to the image upgrade, both parties, the public and the media, used each color interchangeably, given that both are represented on the national flag. In 2020, USA TODAY took credit for the branding, assisted by the NY Times.
During Obama’s first campaign for the presidency, the phrase “Not My President” emerged as a rallying cry for those opposed to the Democrat’s rise to power. Today, both the political left and right use it to symbolize their discontent. However, the phrase has its roots in the lead-up to the Civil War.
In 1861, Jefferson Davis was elected president of the Confederate States of America by the Confederate Congress. Lincoln, out of Illinois, was elected a year earlier and immediately angered Southerners due to his proposed tariffs and economic policies they believed favored the Northern industrial interests over Southern agricultural interests. Supporters of the Confederacy said Lincoln was not their president, and many openly wished death upon him.
As debates mounted and became incendiary on both sides, the Civil War was sparked after Lincoln and his congressional supporters hinted they would end the business of free labor if the southern states and business leaders did not comply. The governors of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Texas, Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee, Kentucky, and Missouri claimed the Feds were violating “states’ rights.” War broke out, Lincoln called their bluff and emancipated the slaves in those states—and all hell broke loose.
When the war ended, the South had been blown to bits. Thousands on both sides were dead. Millions of frightened, illiterate, poor, but highly skilled Black people were left to fend for themselves. Black churches quickly formed Black schools, and the government’s newly created Freedmen’s Bureau tried to triage the situation. Federal officials attempted to crack down on white vigilantes and terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan and other offshoots.
The vicious and prolific white backlash to “Black Reconstruction,” as coined by Dr. W.E.B. DuBois in his seminal work on the subject, was fueled by the notion that the newly freed Americans were beneficiaries of slavery or were “the cause of their personal failures.” The loss of “slave property” resulted in the disappearance of hundreds of millions of dollars in “wealth” now walking about U.S. territories proclaiming their right to self-determination.
The Civil War cost working-class whites, landowners, farmers, and merchants. Shipping magnates, business moguls and service providers a whole lot. In addition to their anger toward the formerly enslaved, all of them turned their anger toward the federal government.
“Large amounts of real estate and other property had been destroyed, industry had been disorganized, 250,000 men had been killed and many more maimed,” DuBois wrote. “With this went the moral effect of an unsuccessful war with all of it letting down social standards and quickening of hatred and discouragement. Add to all of this the presence of four million freedmen demanding access to education, housing, living wages, and protections against raging mobs and masked white supremacists’ vigilantes, and the situation is further complicated.
So, after continued propaganda campaign against President Abraham Lincoln failed to stop a second term, a conspiracy was hatched and James W. Booth, a wealthy actor with ties to the wealthy Afrikaners Botha families in apartheid South Africa, blew the 16th president’s brains out days after he announced further measures to stabilize the lives of newly freed Blacks.
It did not matter to the Confederates that Lincoln actually shared their sentiments on so-called Black inferiority and publicly lamented that he wished he had not been forced to emancipate enslaved Blacks. Soon after the president was put to rest, the new president (Andrew Johnson) reversed the purpose of Black Reconstruction and gave everything promised to Negroes (40 acres of land, seeds, supplies, and a mule) to white citizens, who still felt it still wasn’t enough.
After Lincoln’s murder, the 17th President, Andrew Johnson, a Confederate sympathizer, began reversing federal protections his predecessor had conceived as part of Southern Reconstruction.
A slew of anti-Black laws were passed, aided by U.S. Supreme Court decisions. Segregation propagandized as “separate but equal” became the law of the land. Society nicknamed this era “Jim Crow.” Black resistance mounted and Black resistance raged, more Black progress was made. We called them “movements” for Black Freedom, Black Education, Blacks Arts and Black Labor and positive social change began to take root. Malcolm X, Dr. King, Fannie Lou Hamer, Huey Newton, Chairman Fred Hampton, Stokely Carmichael, Angela Davis, and scores of other Black leaders were murdered, imprisoned or forced into exile. Shirley Chisholm and Rev. Jesse Jackson ran for the presidency. The give and take between Black America and its government continued well into the historic 2008 election that put a Black family in the White House.
Days after President Obama took office, the U.S. media and wishful thinkers attempted to declare that America had transformed into a “color-blind society” and that Obama’s ascendency to the throne of white political power proved that racism was dead. White America, on the other hand, rebelled, having, in their opinion, lost the last symbol of white and global superiority to a half-Kenyan. Police brutality and reports of lynchings mounted, culminating in the 2015 mass murder of nine Black churchgoers in Charleston, SC., by Confederate-flag waving white supremacist Dylan Roof, who wore a jacket emblazoned with the flags of apartheid-riddled Rhodesia (Zimbabwe) and South Africa.
As Trump takes command of the White House, in a time in which he also controls both the Congress and the U.S. Supreme Court, is it time to question if the Confederacy has been resuscitated or is this another evolution in American democracy.
The first Civil War was fought with cannons, guns and bayonets. This version, perhaps, was fought and won with technology, data, social media, propaganda, disinformation and a battle-weary American public seeking relief from government malfeasance and economic instability.
Instead of Confederate soldiers glad in grey uniforms with blood-red sashes across their bodies, today’s patriots drape themselves in the U.S. flag and sport creative red apparel. Instead of the freeing of Black slaves as the subject of their angst against their government, today, it is the border policies and social safety nets provided to Venezuelan and Haitian illegals that have drawn them to the cause.
Just as enslaved Blacks joined their masters in fighting against the Union—either by force, fear or ignorance—today’s MAGA Movement is a multiracial coalition that includes many African American citizens who done red caps, or ideological red-t-shirts, to verbally attack Democratic leaders, progressive officials, and those who are “taking away our money and giving it to those illegals,” as one Chicago woman yelled at the mayor. “We will turn Chicago red!”
Screaming that the Democrats are to blame for all of their economic and social woes, African American MAGA supporters in Chicago find no alignment with former President Biden, who, like Lincoln before him, had been accused of putting white interests over the good of all Americans. Even Vice President Kamala Harris, who first ran against Biden for the presidency in 2019, accused her eventual boss of standing in the schoolhouse door and disrupting Black children’s access to desegregated schools. [The protection of white interests appears to be central to the MAGA political platform.]
Black MAGA supporters join their white counterparts in calling for a return of the historically great America, an end to race-based treatments, “identity politics,” and African American allegiance to the Democratic Party. Some of these people have even taken to social media to suggest the trans-Atlantic slave trade is fictional or greatly exaggerated, that Black Americans are actually the real Native Americans, and that the demand for reparations is foolish because “we were the original slaveholders.”
Before leaving office, and perhaps to the surprise of white women, President Biden admitted that the 1972 Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) was not guaranteed by the U.S. Constitution. On Jan. 15, the actual date of Dr. King’s birth, the National Archives, an agency responsible for certifying new amendments, stated the ERA cannot be certified without action from Congress or the judiciary because the original deadline for certification had long passed. The ERA provides “equality of rights under the law… on the account of sex (gender).”
In Trump 2.0’s greater America, the ERA and protections guaranteed to unborn children on U.S. soil, and other “preferential” measures secured to right systemic wrongs, are no longer needed.
