Less Twitter, More Action: Dismantle White Supremacy
In October of 2017, I was blocked by @realDonaldTrump on Twitter. I’m not going to lie, I felt very proud. Still do. It was a ridiculous task, to try to counter the man’s lies, but I guess I got under his — or some aide’s — skin. One morning I’d included the hashtag #TrumpleThinSkin in a reply to his nonsense and it went viral. My tweet trended for about an hour, an eternity on Twitter. I doubt I was the first person to use that name for him, but it was a hit. I was blocked almost immediately.
As a result of this, I pulled back on using my @MartinaClarkSFO account and returned to an account I’d set up years ago to post writing under my pseudonym, Lucy Eaker. Since late 2017, @LucyEaker has been tweeting in my stead, responding to the narcissist-in-chief, calling out his incessant bullshitting, and joining gleefully in the online #resistance.
When Trump was finally banned from Twitter late last week, I felt a mixture of things. Relief that he’d finally been shut down. Vindication that our collective counter-tweets and reporting of his continual Twitter violations had not been misplaced. But also, I felt a tiny void emerge. I’m not proud of this, but I spent a lot of time on Twitter. A lot.
Now I have to use that time in a new, more productive way. @LucyEaker will be pulling back and I’ll revert to @MartinaClarkSFO and get back to more substantive writing.
With this, I have a few more thoughts on last week’s coup attempt.
What happened last week was shocking, to be sure. The more we learn about the intent of the insurrectionists, the more disturbing the scenario becomes. But none of this is surprising. Trump has been inciting his followers for years, long before he took up residency in the White House.
In 1989 he spent $85,000 on ads in four New York City newspapers to call for the death penalty for the so-called Central Park Five. Five boys — black and brown boys to be specific — wrongly accused of a rape for which they were exonerated more than a decade later. His words were vile then and they are vile today.
My point in raising this is that beyond our outrage at the heinous events of the past weeks, we cannot lose sight of the fact that all of this is based in our gravest ills: systemic racism and white supremacy.
For all of my friends, family, and readers who are white, please feel free to use this moment to roll your eyes. Then take a deep breath and please keep reading.
On the surface, Trump’s base are fighting for an allegedly stolen election landslide. This is a lie, Trump lost. Trump incited an attempted coup. But why? Clearly, he is a sore loser and his ego cannot comprehend that he was not reelected and rejected by the populace.
But what they’re fighting for goes far beyond Trump’s legacy. Trump and his supporters are fighting to bring back everything prior to the Civil Rights movement, perhaps prior to the Civil War, to even further suppress people of color and marginalized communities.
They are fighting to perpetuate and deepen our systematic racism and amplify white supremacy. After watching eight years of the Obama Administration, some white people began to fear that they were losing dominance and that perhaps other Americans were gaining equal footing. They feared the loss of control over this stolen land and this nation built by slaves.
When Trump came along, they saw him as a savior. Openly racist and sexist and allegedly pro-American. America First. But who’s America? Certainly not the America of brown and black people. Trump was looking out for only the white people. I’d say the people who look like him, but I don’t actually know of any other orange people. But, you get the point. He was not a president for all Americans, only for his America, those holding on to outdated notions of the superiority of one race over another.
In reality, Trump wasn’t really even looking out for his base. His only concern was, and is, himself. I’m sure many of his supporters now feel betrayed. But many don’t. They are in for the long haul and will continue fighting to return this nation to something from the antebellum.
The next days, weeks, and even months, will be nerve-wracking and unsettling. But, God willing, we will make it to the other side of this current political chaos.
As the dust settles, or at least shifts, however, do not begin to think for a moment that we should “go back” to the good old days.We have to stop lying to ourselves about what a perfect, unified, country we pretend to be. We need to own up to our past and move in a new direction, one that is inclusive of all Americans and all who call this country home.
The United States of America needs to rebuild itself in the image of our actual citizenry, not some hateful memory of people owning and controlling other humans. This may seem like a stretch but a look at the prison industrial complex will back this up. The food deserts, the inequity in access to health care, the wealth and wage gaps, the profiling of young brown and black men and women. The state sanctioned murders of black and brown Americans for eating ice cream on their sofa, for allegedly spending a counterfeit note. For sleeping in their own goddamn bed. It has to stop.
We need a serious reboot if we are to survive as a nation. I beg of you, think about this and think about what you can do to stop the hatred, lying, and racism that is so ingrained in our culture. The first step is acknowledging the problem. There are miles and miles of steps that follow.
This is not a problem to be fixed by people of color. They did not break our nation, indeed, they did all of the hard labor. White people created a cruel system that has crushed souls, destroyed families, and ruined lives. We must fix it. Please, get onboard proactively and join this journey toward redemption.
