Monday, November 21, 2016

LETS GO THERE: CLINTON OR TRUMP, WHO ACTUALLY IS THE RACIST?

Icheoku says may be the better question to posit is which of them is not a racist? In a world where every one race is dug in, in the "we and them" battle of supremacy raging on among the races, it is a great disservice to just single one particular individual as being a racist while by the same token exonerating another as not a racist. A situation compounded more because there is no particular litmus test for determining who is a racist and who is not a racist; and what indeed qualifies or makes one a racist. 

Every race and its people are engaged in a tug of war with each other over who is superior and who shall dominate the other and in a small world that seemingly have little to no room for everyone. A world which is increasingly shrinking in size, with scarcity everywhere - in habitable spaces, in arable agricultural lands and water resources; and where people want to acquire everything for themselves and their kind, before allowing whatever is leftover to be scrapped by the others. This "we and them", "ours and theirs" philosophy is what drives people of the same race to bandy together to defend themselves from the others and in order to ensure their survival. This protectionism, which to the other side from which the protection is sort, manifests in the form of prejudice, discrimination, antagonism and exclusion, gives rise to racism. Racism is a belief that members of a race possess characteristics or abilities specific to that race; especially as to distinguish it as superior to other races. A racist therefore is a person who believes and espouses this ideological philosophy that his or her race is superior to the other races. 

Icheoku says based on this premise therefore, who indeed is truly not a racist in this world; and does it therefore make any sense whatsoever pointing accusatory finger at another person or people as racist when we all nurse certain prejudices against people who do not look like us. Sometimes it is overt and some other times covert, but inside us all, there is always present this resentment against other people who are different from us and it manifests in one form or the other. It is also a given that while some people are good at masking their prejudice publicly, others are not so subtle about theirs. Even within our closer communities, discrimination exists including cronyism, nepotism, tribalism, sexism and other isms which are all forms of micro or quasi-racism, because it is implicated among the same racial group, sort of intra-racial but not inter-racial. What should be desirable or rather imperative is for people not to be the bad or horrible racist who wants to do harm or hurt other people who do not look like them. That way we all can learn to navigate the maze of racism as we all try to survive a very racist world.

This analysis is necessary in order to understand the futility of the current narrative by the Hilary Clinton's camp which is trying to pigeonhole Donald Trump as somewhat different from their Hillary Clinton or her husband Bill Clinton or even Chelsea Clinton or her husband Marc Mezvinsky. All these four people are whites, admitted Mr Mezvinsky is Jewish white while the other three are caucasian whites. Donald Trump shares similar if not the same racial equation as Hillary Clinton. Hillary Clinton is a white caucasian and married Bill Clinton who is also a white caucasian; and so did Donald Trump, himself a white caucasian who was previously twice married to two white caucasians and again for the third time, married to another white caucasian, his present wife Melania. Hillary Clinton's daughter Chelsea Clinton, a white caucasian married a white Jewish guy named Marc Mezvinsky; and so also did Donald Trump's daughter Ivanka, a white caucasian who is married to a white Jewish guy named Jared Kushner. 

It is also on record that Hillary Clinton's closest and best friends are mainly white caucasians and the neighborhood of Chappaqua New York where she calls home is populated largely by white caucasians too. Donald Trump's best and closest friends are mainly white caucasians and the neighbor of Fifth Avenue New York and Trump Towers in particular where he lives is also largely occupied by white caucasians. Then factor in the fact that Hillary Clinton, by marriage, is a Southerner and the Deep South is known for being more racist than the rest of the country; compared to New York which is largely cosmopolitan and more diverse and more inclusive. 

Further, both candidates ran for the United States of America presidency and had an opportunity to distinguish from each other their racial inclinations. To the chagrin of many people in the African American community, Hillary Clinton rejected the recommended black Senator Cory Booker as her running mate. Instead, she settled for her fellow white caucasian, the hillbilly from Virginia, Tim Kaine, leaving many wondering how deeply rooted was her fabled love for African Americans. A matter made worse because Tim Kaine did not bring anything spectacularly wonderful to the ticket other than that he speaks Spanish. If Hillary Clinton was courting Hispanics and not African Americans, why did she not pick someone like HUD Secretary Julio Castro who is 100% Hispanic American? But no, the same disdain she has for African Americans she also has for Hispanics who she once described as "needy Hispanics." Yet this is a woman many of her supporters claim is not racially biased, yet when an opportunity called to prove this, she failed and this is despite the fact that such a masterful choice would have galvanized the Hispanic or African American bloc to her side. 

As for Donald Trump, he is a straight shooter and the outcome of the presidential election shows that he was very pragmatic in choosing his vice presidential running mate and that he chose wisely. That Donald Trump recognized the gap between African Americans and their caucasian counterparts and made a direct appeal to African Americans to give him a chance is also very instructive. His slogan "what do you got to lose" has now entered the annals of political sloganeering and more African Americans voted for Donald Trump believing him, than ever voted for any other previous Republican Party's presidential candidate. As for Hillary Clinton, she made a calculated decision not to go there, not to provoke the discussion of inequality of races in America. As far as she was concerned, African Americans are satisfied with their place in America and they are not complaining nor have they threatened to jettison their support for the Democratic Party. 

Like her double-faced Janus character and her trait of bifurcated double-speaking, she lied and lied and lied, thinking to safely ride the campaign to the White House in her usual way of getting things on the cheap and without breaking such sweat. Her claim of always carrying hot sauce in her purse and speaking black whenever she is addressing black audience was the height of condescension ever witnessed in any modern political campaign. But black people saw through the sham phoniness and refused to troop out in numbers and thus helped saw to the election of Donald Trump instead.

It is also quite telling that neither Donald Trump nor Hillary Clinton has a personal assistant who is black or colored. At least Donald Trump was not pretentious about it but promised to help improve the lot of African Americans; while Hillary Clinton was coy about it and would rather ride it out than commit to doing something tangible about the glaring disparities. Icheoku says with the much that is known about Hillary Clinton and her relationship with people whose skin color is different from hers, there is no ground nor basis for emphatically stating that she is color blind, because she is not. Nothing she has done either by marriage or relationship or association categorically depicts her as loving the other people as equally as herself. She is a typical white caucasian who believes that her race is the superior race, hence her associations with mostly people of her kind only. She had several opportunities to prove otherwise but did not and having passed on them cannot pretend otherwise now. Her case is the worse type who pretends superficially that they are down with black causes but behind the close door are the cheerleaders of KKK and such other minority hating groups. 

In summation therefore, Icheoku says that Colin Kaepernick captured it very succinctly when he said as between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, they both were struggling to see who is the lesser racist than the other. Icheoku agrees with Kanye West too that everybody, whites, blacks, Asians, Hispanics, etc are all racists as each group is trying to be on top of the race ladder in this racist world. It is therefore not right nor correct to isolate  Donald Trump as the racist here, because he is not. And assuming he is, he is not the only racist in America nor the entire world. Hillary Clinton as well as the over 320 million people that call America home are all racists, in one form or the other. The better approach should be finding a way on how everyone could just get along despite our varied skin pigmentations. This way, it will be possible to avoid creating the bad racists who would wish death on other people who do not look like them. This is what is more important and not the failed attempt to paint Hillary Clinton as the color blind loving Mother Teresa of African Americans and other people of color; and then use a different brush to paint Donald Trump as the new African Americans-hating Jim Crow because he is not. 

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