Throwback Thursday: Yes, Donald Trump Is My President

...And this is my country, too.

(Screenshot via YouTube)

This story was first published on Jan. 24, 2017.

I remember my first day as a Black boy.

Before I earned enough years to express my opinions when grown folks were talking, I was just Mikey. A “youngin’.” A lactose-intolerant, still-wet-behind-the-ears kid with Similac on his breath and a hard head that, for some reason, contributed to a soft behind. And because I was homeschooled in a Black neighborhood surrounded by Blackness, my interaction with white people, and therefore the specter of racism, was limited to the books my mother made me read and the tales I had heard while my grandmother cleaned her collard greens.

I was Black. I was a boy. Then I became a Black boy.

It happened when I was a freshman in high school and officially joined the nerd team. To be fair, I was always a member. I was raised in a family of nerds who had actual wrestling-style championship belts for the family Scrabble champion. I read encyclopedias for my own enjoyment. I played chess against a computer for hours on end. As my mother home-schooled us during my pre-adolescent years, before she left for work, she would leave notes around the house with multisyllabic words we had to look up before she arrived home. Every evening, as my family of nerds gathered around the television to begin our prescribed television viewing hours, our opening ceremony was watching a game of Jeopardy. Yes, we took score.

When I was 11 or 12 years old, the family and I both knew that no one in the house could beat me.

So I signed up for the nerd team when I started going to high school. The actual name of the group was the “Quiz Bowl Trivia Team.” One of my favorite teachers, Ms. Merck, hand-picked me for the after-school activity, and we would travel to other schools to challenge their nerd teams in sanctioned nerd-off bouts. I was the only Black person on the team, but I was clearly the standout. So when we prepared for the statewide Quiz Bowl championship—which was televised on a local television station—my team was confident, because…Mike

Countee Cullen’s poetry had taught me about Sisyphus’ never-ending stair. Anyone who followed the beef between the brilliant Nikola Tesla and Thomas Edison’s bitch-ass understood the difference between alternating and direct current. I had learned about Michelangelo’s Pietà during the summer that I read the entire 1982 edition of World Book Encyclopedia (except for U-V, which my sister left on the church bus during a vacation Bible school trip).

On the day of the big competition, Ms. Merck somehow couldn’t go with us. Before the first bout, our substitute coach gathered the seven team members together to select which three of us would compete. This was significant because the team couldn’t substitute players for the remainder of the bouts. Three played, and the rest would be alternates. She scanned us up and down, and–without knowing any of our skills or ability–chose the three white males on the team.

We lost the first bout.

There are times when the weight of Blackness crashes down on you like Atlas carrying the Earth on his shoulders. I knew why she didn’t select me. I watched my teammates struggle through that first match from the bleachers in the television studio, and as I mouthed all the correct answers that they didn’t know, I struggled to hold back my emotion. I will never know for certain if I was overlooked because of racism, but it felt like it.

Even before he placed his Cabbage Patch Doll-sized hands on the Lincoln Bible and recited the oath of office for president, there were already people holding signs and repeating the mantra “Donald Trump is not my president.”

I understood their sentiments. He had already indicated that he had no intention of being an advocate for certain groups of Americans. He explicitly stated how he would take the constitutional rights of freedom of religion for Muslims. He intimated that he would deport millions of people who were mothers, fathers, sisters and brothers of citizens born in this country. He belittled women and disabled people. I can’t blame the people who didn’t vote for him and did everything they could to prevent him from being elected for stiff-arming the idea that he was their leader.

But I also remember when they said it about Barack Obama. I remember how right-wing Confederate flag-wavers said he was born in Kenya. I remember how politicians ginned up so much fear that people went out and bought guns, because they thought that jack-booted thugs would kick in their doors and round up their weapons. They were so afraid of the idea of a Black president that the vote totals, the Electoral College and the Constitution didn’t mean anything to them. They were “true American patriots,” but he was not their president.

I also know the difference. I know their hatred for Obama was based on racism, low-information and #AlternativeFacts spread by people who wanted to obstruct everything he tried to accomplish. They feared what they thought he would do, whereas the Trump resistors fear the things he actually said he would do.

I also struggle with this. When Republicans filibustered every bill, I called it “anti-constitutional.” I said that needing 60% of senators to approve any legislation or bill is not what the Constitution intended. Now that they are in power, I sometimes hope that they will filibuster all the conservative efforts to marginalize gays, people of color and immigrants. I wonder if it is hypocritical for me to wish that Democrats would stall his Supreme Court nominees when I railed at Republicans for doing the same thing.

But here is the thing:

This is my shit, too. My ancestors spilled as much blood for this country as any of the Heil Hitler-waving alt-right adherents. People of color have fought and protected this country since Crispus Attucks took the first bullet of the American Revolution. When they say they want “their country back,” I know what they are talking about, and I liken it to the person who lived in my house before I bought it showing up at my doorstep and telling me he wants me to move out. We should show them our bloody mortgage and our tear-stained deed of ownership and tell them to get the fuck off our doorstep.

There is a tendency to call people like me who point out the faults of this country ”anti-American,” as if trying to fix the broken gutters and repair the weakening structure of our home is an indication that we don’t like it. It is quite the opposite. I am not one of those people who said they are moving to Canada if their candidate didn’t win. I am sorry, white people, but I have too much sweat equity in this motherfucker to “go back to Africa.” I ain’t going nowhere.

When he took the oath of office, the Orange Shasta Stalin pledged to represent me too, and, although I didn’t vote for him, I will not remove myself or my people from the equation with the neo-liberal, progressive whine that he is “not my president.” I will be a rock in his shoe who calls out every misstep and mistake he made. I do not throw my hands in the air in futility; I will ball up my fists. I am not that easily dismissed. He is my president, too, and I will hold his feet to the fire and work every day to make sure he doesn’t overlook me.

No, I am not a flag-waving patriot. I am a realist. I know that Black people aren’t going to move into some dreamed-about Utopia and reclaim their homeland. Those of us who are here have only two choices:

Either remain silent as overlooked victims and remove ourselves as participants in this so-called “democracy”…

Or we can fight.

We can make sure they know we are here by raising our voices.

I plan on being loud as a motherfucker.

Barack was their president, even if their hatred and ignorance made them refuse to acknowledge it. Even though I hate everything Donald Trump stands for, if they gave me a front seat at his first State of the Union, I wouldn’t scream out, “You lie!” If someone insinuated (as they did with Obama) that he should be assassinated, I’d think they were evil (plus, that would make Mike Pence the president–and trust me–no one wants that). When the SNL writer made a joke about his son, I thought it was out of bounds, because I’d be mad as fuck if they said that about Malia or Sasha.

More importantly, when it all falls apart—and trust me, it will—the white people who empowered Trump will never accept responsibility for the havoc they wrought. They will feign ignorance or distance themselves from the dunderheaded president they chose.

That’s why you never met any proud descendants of slave owners. Even the Confederate flag-wavers who claim the white supremacist banner is part of their “heritage” will clarify that their family didn’t own slaves. It’s also why you never meet any ex-lynch mob members or supporters of segregation. Those white folks who spat on our parents and slaughtered our grandparents haven’t disappeared into the ether.

They’re still here. They call themselves “patriots” and “real Americans.” They haven’t changed. They still believe the same things. They raised your college friends who are red-meat conservatives, your co-workers who “don’t have a racist bone in their body,” and your Quiz Bowl teammates.

America is their country…

Until it’s not.

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After we lost the first day of the competition, Ms. Merck showed up for the second day—the consolation rounds. My teammates recounted to her how we crashed and burned, and she immediately knew why I wasn’t chosen. Although she was usually a bouncy, positive flower of a woman, she pointedly asked the substitute why she hadn’t chosen me. She asked the team why no one had spoken up for me. No one had an answer.

Ms Merck allowed me to pick who would play during the consolation rounds, but I told her to allow the teammates who hadn’t been on TV yet to play.

I sat out.

I wasn’t even angry at our substitute’s decision or mad at my teammates. I wasn’t even sad. I was just shocked by the realization that my friends and peers, the best and whitest nerds in my entire community, had remained silent. Instead of challenging the teacher’s bias, incompetence or outright racism, they had seized the opportunity to shine under the bright lights. Aside from a few afternoon practice sessions, I hadn’t lost anything. The entire state had watched them get beat at the nerd-off.

I never played on that team again. My family never got to see me shine on the glorious stage of our local public television station. Everyone on that team sat in the same gifted and talented, Advanced Placement nerd classes with me for the rest of my high school years, and I became buddies with some of them. But, in the back of my mind, I knew that when push came to shove, they would throw my Black ass under the bus. I sometimes wonder if that is racism, privilege or simple self-interest. I wonder if I would have spoken up if their shoes were on my feet. In the end, I know I would have said something. If I were one of the scrubs on the team, I would not take the spot from an undeserving player for my own glory. Maybe it is because I know about sacrificing small bits of myself for the greater good of the team. Maybe it is because I am not accustomed to unearned privilege or opportunity falling in my lap.

I can understand the reasons people say it, but I am a Black descendant of the people who built this country, and yes, Donald Trump is their president the same way Barack Obama was their president. I know saying it won’t make him any more open to the issues I care about, but writing him off completely means that the only voices he hears are from his blind supporters. Maybe he believes all Americans want to lock up Muslims and don’t want to see his tax returns because he has only heard the echoes from the red-state base screaming at his rallies. Perhaps he thinks we all want “law and order” because he surfed to the presidency on a wave of white tears and chants of “build that wall.” Maybe he thinks that is America.

Nah, bruh. You’re my president, too, and it ain’t gonna be that easy.

I might not believe in the same “America” as the MAGA white folks, but I pay the same taxes and live under the same laws. Trump has my tax dollars and is in charge of a democracy that my people built.

I know not everyone will side with me on this, and I’m not even advocating that anyone takes this position. I know there are people who wholly reject the entire idea of being “American” because of how we were historically treated. But I also am not one of those people who black out profile pictures or refuse to watch inaugurations. I am not with symbolism for symbolism’s sake. When I say, “Donald Trump is my president,” it makes me cringe. It is supposed to hurt. Just because I didn’t watch the inauguration doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. The presidency is not like that bullshit legal message that passes around Facebook every few months. Just because I formally, publicly declare him “not my president,” it doesn’t make me immune to the laws he passes.

I will not repeat the mantra “not my president” like the butt-hurt tea partiers or the pink hat-wearing, white liberal whiners because I knew it was wrong when they said it, so I won’t do it just because it benefits me. I am a lot of things. I am sometimes petty; I can be an “Angry Black man”; I am competitive, loud, and I don’t like being overlooked. But I am not a hypocrite, and even more important…

I am not like them.

A few months after the Great Quiz Bowl beatdown, all the after-school clubs and organizations took their official photo. When they called for the Quiz Bowl team, only Ms. Merk and I stood up. To be clear, the other kids were present; they just didn’t want to be in the photo. So according to my high school yearbook, Ms. Merck coached, and I was the captain.

The worst Quiz Bowl team in South Carolina was my team…

And Donald Trump is my president.