Caution!: The Dangerous Myth-Making of Donald Trump

Written by Jack Hassard

On July 15, 2019
What Donald Trump is doing by calling four women of color in the U.S. House of Representatives immigrants who should return to their countries of birth is not a new idea. It’s simply outrageous and appalling. Ayanna Pressley (Mass.), Rashida Tlaib (Mich.), and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (N.Y.) were born in the United States, while Ilhan Omar (Minn.) was born in Somalia.  Her family immigrated to the US amid a civil war when she was very young.  She became a U.S. citizen as a teen, and was elected to the U.S. House in 2016. Mr. Trump, Your Low I.Q. Shows Everyday The problem is, Mr. Trump that people of color were in what is now America long before Europeans and people from England and Scotland arrived.  The “sapiens” that became Native Americans arrived more 12,000 years ago, and Africans were here as early as 1526. Michael Guasco, Professor of History at Davidson College, provides evidence and context to understand the history of African peoples in America.  In an article the Smithsonian.com, he helps us understand:
Most obviously, 1619 was not the first time Africans could be found in an English Atlantic colony, and it certainly wasn’t the first time people of African descent made their mark and imposed their will on the land that would someday be part of the United States. As early as May 1616, blacks from the West Indies were already at work in Bermuda providing expert knowledge about the cultivation of tobacco. There is also suggestive evidence that scores of Africans plundered from the Spanish were aboard a fleet under the command of Sir Francis Drake when he arrived at Roanoke Island in 1586. In 1526, enslaved Africans were part of a Spanish expedition to establish an outpost on the North American coast in present-day South Carolina. Those Africans launched a rebellion in November of that year and effectively destroyed the Spanish settlers’ ability to sustain the settlement, which they abandoned a year later. Nearly 100 years before Jamestown, African actors enabled American colonies to survive, and they were equally able to destroy European colonial ventures.1
People of color were here long before the English and Scottish. Go Home Mr. Trump No Mr. Trump. You should go home. You are part of the illegal aliens that invaded America starting in 1619, and caused enormous harm and pain to people of color who’d established a civilization long before your ancestors thought about getting on a boat to sail west. Before we {Homo sapient} obtained the ability to imagine things that do not exist—to embody fiction into our language, you would never be able to rile up millions of people, as you do with your Twitter Mouth.  At most, you might be able to convince or upset about 150 folks. Trump’s Myth-Making as Racial Prejudice Trump’s myth-making centered in racial prejudice has been a part of his adult life.  There is evidence of his racism beginning as early as 1973 when the US Department of Justice sued the Trump Organization because he refused to rent to black tenants.  He signed an agreement in 1975 agreeing not to discriminate.  How did that work?  Then, in the 1980s, 1988, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993, 2000, 2004, 2005, 2010, 2011 incidents of racist behavior surfaced in a wide range of contexts, including the deplorable actions he took against the Central Park Five by taking out Ads in local papers demeaning these five people.  His actions probably led to their convictions, which were overturned 13 years later.  He still has not apologized, and is convinced they are guilty. In 2011, his false rumors that President Obama was not born in the US signified his racist views that he still holds as evidence of how he has undermined all that Obama did with regard to the environment, and international relations. On the day that Trump announced he was running for President his mouth was filled with a tirade calling Mexican immigrants rapists, who bring crime and drugs to the US.  And as soon as he took office, he called for a ban on all Muslims coming to the US. And his support of white supremacists as evidenced by his comments about the Charlottesville, VA protest furthered his racist views.  He had to be convinced to change his initial views, but still claims there were good people on “both” sides, meaning that neo-Nazi’s were good folks. The only way to shut his mouth is to vote him out of office.
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1Guasco, Michael. “The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S. Damages Our Understanding of American History.” Smithsonian.com, Smithsonian Institution, 13 Sept. 2017, www.smithsonianmag.com/history/misguided-focus-1619-beginning-slavery-us-damages-our-understanding-american-history-180964873/#JKkbEgi7GAOCApkl.99.

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