Throwback Thursday: Why Donald Trump Could Be Great for Black America

When Donald Trump won the Republican nomination in 2016, he exposed the truth about a "post-racial America."

(Screenshot, ABC News via YouTube)

This story appeared on NegusWhoRead on March 3, 2016.

Perhaps the greatest fictional examination of what makes us human is Mary Shelly’s Frankenstein. Contrary to pop culture misinformation, Frankenstein was not a monster. Victor Frankenstein was the name of the scientist in the story who — overcome by loss, curiosity and a thirst for power — created an experimental eight-foot-tall sentient being. Aside from being large and hideous, the creature was actually quite sensitive and intelligent, except for one thing:

It killed people.

In the end, Victor Frankenstein expired trying to capture and subdue the beast of his creation. But before he perished, Dr. Frankenstein was exposed to an in-depth view of the worst and best parts of the human psyche and the thin line that separates the two. He died knowing he had created the monster who killed him.

As the era of Obama winds to a close, the country wipes its collective hands, figuring we have overcome the “negro problem.” While the world was readying Welcome signs for a post-racial America where the white-hot flames of hate had been extinguished with body cameras, social justice warriors and diversity committees, something funny happened. An eight-foot-tall Donald Trump monster flung the door open, dragging the KKK, Islamophobia and all the flaws in the political system behind him. The Republican Party is the Dr. Frankenstein that created Donald Trump, and it looks like he is going to kill them.

Make no mistake, no one thinks Donald Trump would make a good president. No one even thinks he’d make an adequate president. In fact, Donald Trump might have the lowest IQ of anyone who ever came this close to the Oval Office. But his ascendence to the presumptive Republican nominee is great for Black people because he simultaneously shines a light on the worst parts of America’s psyche while devouring the party that created him.

Have you ever been to a party at work or in a restaurant and seen the woman or man wearing something that is all wrong for them? The white lady with no booty wearing leggings that sag in the back? The pear-shaped guy with womanly hips wearing skinny jeans? When I see this, the first thing I think is “Did they even look in the mirror?” Donald Trump is now America’s mirror.

Lately, neo-liberals, conservatives and America-loving pragmatists have shifted the responsibility for police brutality, the education gap, the disparity in incarceration rates and every obstinate problem plaguing Black communities to a problem of economic inequality and “lack of resources.” It is more evolved and less icky to the white conscience to believe that America doesn’t have a “hate problem,” it has a problem with allocation of resources and educational opportunity, which results in dumb niggers, which results in poor niggers, which results in dead niggers.

The liberal mind either couldn’t or wouldn’t allow itself to believe in the simplicity of hate, until people started heaving votes at “The Donald.” The fact that the tangerine-tinted tycoon’s vote totals increased as he grew more outlandishly racist erases the myth of our new post-racial, “we-already-had-the-conversation-about-race” society that presupposes Black people’s problems come from shiftlessness, single parents, insufficient school lunches and resisting police. But it also erases the fact that racial disparities is the fault of some white people.

There is not a single problem in the history of this country that remained ignored once white people collectively decided to fix it.

Women were not guaranteed the right to vote for the first 144 years of this nation’s existence. The 19th Amendment was ratified on August 18, 1920 – just before that year’s election – partly because the majority of states (27 of 48 states) already allowed white women to vote for president. It wasn’t until 1946 that a majority of white Americans conceded “negroes are as intelligent as whites,” four years before Briggs v. Elliot became the first of five cases that desegregated schools. Most white people believe law enforcement officers treat racial and ethnic groups equally, so we can’t fix the police.

Polls might show that white women support Hillary Clinton, but I’ll have to see it to believe it. Can you imagine if white folks were as angry about how this country treats Black people as they are about someone mistreating a puppy?There’d be a sea of wedges and yoga pants-wearing white women screaming at their grandpappies about “negro cruelty” while throwing blood on anyone in one of those stupid red hats. Trust me, if white people didn’t want a racist, sexist, idiot for president, Donald Trump wouldn’t stand a chance.

I found it hilarious to hear liberal media reporters perplexed at how he could denigrate Mexicans and rise in the polls. They were baffled when he proposed a ban on Muslims and scores of people cheered as his stock rose higher. When a legitimate, milky-voiced, fellow white man asked Trump about the Ku Klux Klan, on network TV, with cameras running, the carrot-colored combover essentially responded with “Yeah, they’re cool,” and everyone lost their motherfucking minds – or pretended to — I can’t really tell. I don’t know if the guffaws were because Trump said it out loud or if they were genuinely shocked that white supremacists were backing a political candidate. They had just started telling the fairy tale about an America that vanquished Jim Crow and embraced the dream of Martin Luther King Jr. when Trump interrupted, screaming “nigger,” kicking Black kids out of his rallies and spreading tales of Mexican rapists and Muslim terrorists.

Thank you, Donald, for holding up the mirror and fucking up the narrative.

Donald Trump is the monster they created. The Republican Party’s existence is tied to the part of America that holds on to the Confederacy and whose air still smells of slavery. It has always dog-whistled white supremacy to willing listeners while the rest of the world acted as if the nigger-hating pitch was too high for them to fear. It survives wholly off gerrymandering, exploiting Jesus and the prospect of keeping Black people in their place with woeful tales of big government, welfare queens and the dangers of affirmative action. Donald has now split the party into two parts:

1. Conservatives

2. Torch-and-pitchfork wielders

3. Jesus-y white people.

Because of Trump, we know conservatives never actually existed. If they were fiscally conservative or believed in “family values” they’d want the rich people to pay taxes and love when people — gay or straight — wanted to get married. If they were really Christian, they wouldn’t rejoice at his cruelty or embrace his hate. I asked Jesus what he would do, and he said, “Not that.”

It’s just racism.

I’m not saying everyone who votes for Trump is a racist. This doesn’t even mean that Donald Trump is racist. I don’t believe Donald Trump hates Black people any more than I believe he reads Two Corinthians, wants to end abortion or is a shotgun-toting gun nut. I am willing to believe that an entitled billionaire who built his fortune off bluster and bullshit is willing to say and do anything to become the most powerful man on Earth — including tossing Black people under the bus and playing to the xenophobic fears of a white populace who feels the brown people closing in on them. I’m saying that Trump allows us to see America for the monster that it is.

I’m saying that America is racist.

There was a time when people believed that serious candidates for president were required to have a resume steeped in public service and experience in government. For others, it was always a popularity contest for rich white men. Donald Trump is proving that. He has turned the presidential campaign into a reality show and is showing everyone that the cult of personality and the politics of fear can propel anyone in America.

Ultimately, Trump’s greatest accomplishment in politics may be the revelation to America that votes don’t count. When we are lining up at the polls to cast our ballots, the Orange Haterade may get the most votes and still lose out in the nominating process because delegates choose the nominees, not votes. A small group of electors choose the president, not votes. Both the Electoral College and the nominating process are weighted to specifically undervalue the African-American vote. No one ever mentioned it before. Before The Donald, that is.

I was dreading post-Obama America. I thought my existence would be wrought with hipsters explaining mass incarceration with test scores and demographic data. For a little while, I had resolved myself to a lifetime of Megyn Kelly parroting that America had become a place where we could pull ourselves up by our bootstraps because politicians weren’t making policy because of race or gender, and Fox News reasoning that failure to signal sometimes results in jailhouse trash bag suicides.

So, thank you, Donald Trump,

Thank you for exposing the myth of a “post-racial America.” Thank you for preventing future generations of Black children from saying, “The world is not like that anymore.” Thank you for holding up the mirror to America, exposing her flaws and telling her to change her pants. Thank you for inspiring America to be itself.

When the Republican Party finally expires, I imagine its last words will be spoken while peering at its apricot-colored candidate, whispering the words of Victor Frankenstein when he saw the beast of his own construction:

“I beheld the wretch — the miserable monster whom I created.”