Tears We Cannot Stop: A Sermon to White America(26)
It is not simply a matter of voicing disapprobation for Trump; his supporters, too, must be answered. Many are driven by rage that for eight years a black man represented a nation that once held black folk in chains and that still depends on the law to check black social and political aspirations. Barack Obama so spooked the bigoted whites of this country that we are now faced with a racist explicitness that we haven’t seen since the height of the civil rights movement.
Trump, more than anything else, signifies the undying force of the fear unleashed by Obama’s presidency. He manipulates a confused and self-pitying white public. Yes, yes, some will say—but not all Republicans are like Trump. Not all of them even like Trump. It is true that parts of the Republican establishment finally, and unconvincingly, rebelled against Trump. But it was these same “reasonable” Republicans who ignored his early impact. They refused to listen to those who insisted that his vitriol was destructive to the country. As long as it didn’t impact Republican, or white, interests, the lives Trump imperiled didn’t matter. Now that he has been elected president, many Republicans have overcome their misgivings and enthusiastically returned to the fold. The party for which he is now standard-bearer must be held accountable for his creation.
It wasn’t so long ago that Obama led millions of white Americans to believe that they were voting for a transformational figure. He would make the country permanently better. A vote for him was a vote for decency and intelligence, a vote against hate and chaos. It meant, simply, being on the right side of history.
Yet Obama’s impact has been so quickly and thoroughly eclipsed by a pervading sense of racial and national doom. What many of us didn’t see coming is that Obama’s success would also be counted as his failure. The election of the nation’s first black president tapped into a deep vein of escapist hope, that it would be a simple, painless way to heal our historic wounds. We projected onto Obama our desire to crush bigotry with enlightened democracy. Obama, a stalwart of social justice, a wonder of political rhetoric, would be the unifying force of national identity and speak redemption into our bones.
But too many of you, my friends, more than I could bear to imagine, resented Obama’s rise. What we did not fully understand, or account for, is the deep-seated, intractable anger of the white Americans who never viewed Obama as either fully American or quite human. Donald Trump has exploited these people, promised them a different transformation, one that returns the country to what they would like to believe it once was: theirs. This is the naked, unapologetic face of white innocence on steroids. We have moved backward in so many ways since the high point of Obama’s first election.
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The sort of willful innocence that Trump conjures is far more visible, and thus susceptible to opposition, than subtler visions of whiteness tied to American identity. For so many of you, what it means to be white is what it means to be American, and vice versa; your American identity is indissolubly linked to your whiteness. It is a possessive whiteness, too, one that hogs to itself the meanings of democracy.
Very little reveals the heart of innocent whiteness more than a challenge to professional football. It is a game that tests the durability, and rigidity, of American ideals of patriotism and national belonging. It is a game that also seeks, paradoxically, to cast out the very black bodies that have come to define the sport.
Beloved, this became clear with the uproar over the decision of San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick to kneel, instead of stand, during the playing of the national anthem. He did so to protest injustice against black folk. Despite the backlash, Kaepernick says, “[I am] going to continue to stand with the people that are being oppressed. To me, this is something that has to change, and when there’s significant change—and I feel like that flag represents what it’s supposed to represent, and this country is representing people the way it’s supposed to—I’ll stand.”
Kaepernick has been accused of being a traitor to the nation, a disruptive, self-aggrandizing narcissist, and a loathsome human being who disrespects the military. Clearly, it is still difficult to talk about race in an informed and intelligent fashion. And clearly conservative forces are arrayed against athletes, making it difficult for an athlete of color to forge ties to his people, and to speak out about issues that affect a significant portion of his fan base. My friends, can you not understand how this highlights the hypocrisy of a sport that has given second chances to players like Greg Hardy and Ray McDonald, who were accused of domestic violence? That warmly embraces Ben Roethlisberger, twice accused of sexual assault? And yet the sport is enraged at a player making a humane gesture of identification with the victims of racial violence?
Kaepernick has been criticized for his lack of patriotism. The accusation is nothing new. Black folk have been viewed suspiciously throughout American history because of a willingness to be critical of the nation even as they love and embrace it. How many of you who claim that Kaepernick is unpatriotic realize that many black men put on an American uniform and fought overseas, only to return home to be spurned and denied the rights for which they fought? How many of you realize that black soldiers who had fought valiantly for American liberties sometimes returned home to die on the lynching tree because racist whites resented them for wearing the uniform or hoisting the American flag? How many of you know that in 1976, the year of the Bicentennial, during a Boston City Hall demonstration against court-ordered busing, a white student protester turned an American flag, tied to a pole, into a weapon to viciously assault Ted Landsmark, a black lawyer?