Two weeks after Donald Trump’s 2016 inauguration, I wrote a commentary titled “America Chose Donald Trump, Now It Will Choke on Him.” It has been four years in coming, but America has finally choked.
On Jan. 6, 2021, as the U. S. Congress was on the verge of certifying Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 election, Trump incited a violent mob of thugs to riot and attack the U.S. Capitol for the purpose of effecting a coup that he hoped would keep him in office.
There is no question that Trump sought to void a lawful election using violence and intimidation when he whipped this mob into a destructive frenzy that resulted in an insurrection.
But while Trump lit the match that ignited the flames of insurgency, we must keep mind that the rioting mob comprised Americans who claimed to be aggrieved for one reason or another.
Even among those who did not vote for Trump, too few said or did anything to try to dissuade their families, neighbors and co-workers from voting for him.
It is time for our white friends to stop standing on the sidelines with sad faces as their loved ones and neighbors cheer Trump’s hateful and racist rhetoric. It is time for them to confront these bigoted people and demand that they be better citizens.
It is also time for people of color to stop tiptoeing around those who give their friends and relatives a pass when it comes to bigoted behavior.
This is an uncomfortable conversation. Once we begin this pushing, if our white friends are still willing to allow people of color to be abused for the sake of harmonious relations with white friends and family, then it will be clear our friendship has limitations. It is as clear as when the white friends of our Southern childhood would play with us in their yards but not dare to allow us in their homes.
There are those who may try to normalize what happened during the Trump years as “just politics.” They may say the Muslim ban was not really a ban against any one religion, or even that locking children in cages was not as bad as it appeared to be. They may try to explain that Trump’s calling NFL players “sons of b****es” for taking a knee during the national anthem was just his reaction to what he saw as an attack against our national symbol. But that does not square with his calling the insurrectionists who vandalized the U.S. Capitol “very special people” and telling them that he loved them.
On Jan. 6, we got a good hard look at the enemies of America, and the enemies are us. The enemies are certainly those who attacked democracy by assaulting the seat of our national government. But the enemies are also those of us willing to give a pass to loved ones — and those of us people of color who subsume our best interests for the sake of harmonious friendships with people willing to allow us to be hung from the gnarled tree of white supremacy.
Ibram X. Kendi, in his book “How To Be An Antiracist,” points out, “The opposite of ‘racist’ isn’t ‘not racist.’ It’s ‘antiracist.’” And we are choking as a nation because Donald Trump has shoved racism down America’s throat. America will continue to choke on it until we all become antiracists.
It is time for people of color to put our white friends on the spot and call out their complacency with bigotry and racial hatred. We cannot move forward as a nation if we are content to stay tucked away in our separate comfort zones. This country will move forward only when each one of us steps forward.
Oscar H. Blayton is a former Marine Corps combat pilot and human rights activist who practices law in Virginia.
