A Return to the Bad Old Days

By Roberta Cardwell

At almost 70, I think I would attend a protest at a Trump rally.  The white people who support Trump are angry, they want to make America white again.  Black folks have been angry for 400 years.   Having grown up in segregation, I am not interested in going back to the time when these people thought America was so great.

When I came to New York in 1970, I, like many who preceded me in the Great Migration, thought I was coming to America’s greatest city where things would, of course, be better.  They were and they weren’t.  I could eat in any restaurant, but I remember how upset and angry I was when I realized all the black folks were seated together in the back next to the kitchen.  I could shop in any department store and actually try on clothes, but someone still followed me around expecting that I would steal.  I was mistaken for a prostitute when I was out at night trying to catch a cab.  And forget trying to get a cab to go Uptown. (Or, when I cab finally pulls up in front of us, some white women running and jumping in it.  Remember that Candace?)  So, no, I don’t want to return to those times or the times before when things were even worse for black folks.

I can understand why these Trump supporters are so upset.  They see a browning of America, a time when they may no longer be the dominant culture.  Beyonce and Bruno Mars headline The Superbowl.  Kanye.  Adele singing rap. We even have a black President!! A man who is calm, but not ashamed of showing emotion, smart and articulate (a Republican candidate recently criticized him for using complex sentences). And a beautiful, classy, well-educated First Lady, probably the best I have ever seen...and I liked Laura Bush.  

These Trump supporters find themselves stuck in stagnant, low paying jobs with little hope of advancement or pay increases.  They can’t afford to buy a house. Their communities are being racked with heroin addiction (which for them it is a health problem, not a crime problem and for whom someone recently proposed providing with clean, safe places in which to shoot up). Record numbers are killing themselves from alcoholism and drug abuse.  Their life expectancy, as a result, is going down.  For many black people this is the life they know.   Trump supporters don’t want to be down there with us;  they want to remain better than us.  So they are angry and scared..

So am I.