(Michael Harriot is a critically acclaimed author and an opinion write for Very Smart Brothers, Ebony and The Root. He has very strong feeling about the reluctance to bring impeachment hearing on the Orange Menace. If you are white and can’t take some heat...stay out of his kitchen.)
Mr. Harriot begins with a quote from Martin Luther King Jr., penned in a jail cell in Birmingham, Alabama.
“First, I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in his stride toward freedom is not the White Citizen’s Counciler or the Ku Klux Klanner, but the white moderate, who is more devoted to “order” than to justice...who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by a mythical concept of time and who constantly advises the Negro to wait for a “more convenient season.”— Martin Luther King Jr., “Letter From a Birmingham Jail”
His second paragraph (and I again fervently implore you to click over and read the whole thing) states his reason for harking back to MLK Jr. regarding the matter at hand.
“White people really believe in the idea of America. They trust that they live in the land of the free and the home of the brave. They have the privilege of using the “Star-Spangled Banner” as a deflector shield, knowing it will envelop them in the loving embrace of freedom and protect them from injustice. It is why they find it inconceivable that anyone would burn a flag or kneel during their beloved lullaby of a national anthem. It must be a wonderful thing to believe in America.”
He goes on to quote Democratic leaders counseling patience in un-lodging the orange lump from the throat of America and their suggesting that we wait for the next election.
Then the reading, if you are a white democrat, gets a little tough.
“How excellent it must feel to be exempt from the whims of an addlebrained white supremacist with unchecked power who repeatedly points a rifle loaded with racist policies at your head! It is easy to call for patience when your children are not being ripped from your arms. White people can stand to ruminate on their course of action as the president packs the courts with far-right judges who have displayed anti-black animus both anecdotally and statistically. It does not hurt white people to delay or even deny justice while Trump dismantles affirmative action, reverses rules on discrimination, destroys health care, promotes gentrification, champions police brutality and downplays the rise of white supremacist hate groups.
Yes, waiting is for white people.”
He goes on to explain why he feels that patience is no virtue before continuing his virtual tongue lashing:
“ We are supposed to believe that the Democratic presidential candidates will fight tooth and nail for wage equality, reparations, equal education and black lives. Yet, those same politicians are content with sitting on their hands and abdicating their responsibility to remove a Nazi-sympathizing, dunderheaded dictator wannabe as the leader of the free world. This is either callousness or wanton disregard, otherwise known as not giving a fuck….
...” The only logical conclusion one can reach is that either these politicians don’t care because they are immune from Donald Trump’s racism, or that they are more concerned with gaining political power than they are with the oaths, racism and non-white people in general.”
This is what our base is reading folks.
We need to write a different story.
………………………………………………………………………………………………………………
To receive articles of mine not published elsewhere become a patron on Patreon.
Please follow me on Twitter @durrati
[cross-posted to PolitiZoom]