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On 8th November businessman and reality TV star Donald Trump shocked pundits, pollsters and the world by being elected the USA’s 45th president, defeating Hillary Clinton, former first lady and wife of Bill Clinton. Trump had to fend off 16 other candidates to become the presidential nominee for Republican Party, also known as the GOP (Grand Old Party) while Clinton defeated her two opponents.
From the time he launched his campaign for the presidency on June 16, 2015, Trump’s candidacy was treated with scorn and even ridicule. With the real estate mogul having never held political office, pundits predicted that he would be quickly dispatched by his more experienced opponents. As political observers mused back in June 2015:
“There are about eight billion reasons Trump won’t be president. He was pro-choice until recently. He supported massive taxes on the ultra-rich. He has advocated tightening gun laws. He backed single-payer healthcare, a policy that conservatives abhor even more than Obamacare. His approvals are 32 points underwater in his own party, making Trump the least popular presidential candidate since at least 1980.” (1)
How wrong they were.
In 2011 Trump became one of the leading light of the ‘Birthers,” the movement that asserted that Barack Obama was not really a US citizen and therefore an illegitimate president. (2) This helped him to connect with the white nationalist base in the country. But it was his dispensing of the proverbial political ‘dog whistle,’ the use of implicit racial code words and concepts that was a staple of modern US politics, enabled him to bond more directly with the electorate than his tooting rivals. (3) Thereby earning him “praise from a who’s who of white nationalists, neo-Nazis, Klansmen, and militia supporters.” (4)
The groups that regards itself as the new “vanguard” of this white base is the so-called “alt-right… the only political movement that really gives a damn about white Americans.” (5) Richard Spencer, one of the “alt-right” pioneers, regards the election of Trump as a political game changer:
“Trump has been declared a deplorable racist, and [yet] he won. So the whole PC game of ‘we can call you the R-word [Racist] and you will vaporize,’ that game has been shattered.” (6)
On the one hand, the “alt-right” has a direct lever into the Trump administration. Stephen Bannon who has been appointed Trump’s chief strategist, is the former executive chair of Breitbart News, the ultra-conservative website that he himself regarded “the platform for the alt-right.” (7) On the other hand even a cursory examination of the “alt-right” conjures up notions of wine and old bottles. As Black Agenda Report editor and senior columnist Margaret Kimberley mused:
“There is nothing new about the so-called alt-right movement. There is always a way to brand white nationalism. They may be the Tea Party one day and alt-right the next but it all amounts to the same thing. The dictates of white supremacy are ever present and the numbers of white people who do anything serious about it are small.” (8)
Indeed, almost a century ago the Most Eminent Prophet and King – His Excellency, Marcus Mosiah Garvey proclaimed that the Ku Klux Klan represented the “white American majority viewpoint.” (9) The demographic breakdown of 2016 voting patterns serves to confirm this. With the exception of college educated women every single white demographic (men, women, young, old, rich, poor, educated uneducated, class etc.) preferred Trump over Clinton, dispelling the idea that his appeal was mainly towards poor, uneducated whites. (10) Consequently, the myth that Trump’s core support was disenfranchised “angry white men” was dispelled. Nevertheless for many perception was sufficient:
“No doubt Trump supporters are people who felt they’ve lost something. But what they’ve lost is something that wasn’t rightly theirs to begin with: Unearned privilege. The Trump revolution was driven by white men who are watching women and people of color making gains that put them closer to equality. They are rebelling at the erosion of the sense that white men are better and more important than everyone else, simply because they exist. This loss is real. The anger that it causes is real. The anger is not valid, but it exists.” (11)
A key “gain” that stoked white ire was the election of the first Black president. As Carol Anderson Ph.D., the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor and Chair of African American Studies at Emory University and the author of White Rage: The Unspoken Truth of our Racial Divide, explains:
“The median income of a Trump supporter is more than $70,000 per year, which is well above the national average, and a 2016 study noted that it would take African Americans 228 years to equal the wealth of whites in the U.S. Clearly, Trump’s pathway into the Oval Office is not really about white economic angst. Rather, Barack Obama’s election — and its powerful symbolism of black advancement — was the major trigger for the policy backlash that led to Donald Trump.” (12)
The irony is that even this “powerful symbolism” arguably has no substance with the likes of as author Demetrius Minor among those offering “9 Facts Shatter Obama’s Claim that Black America Is Better Off Since He Took Office.” (13) In addition to the economic indicators the two Obama terms included the proliferation of militarized killer cops, an extension of the mass incarceration state, the flint water scandal and increased encroachments in Afrika. (14)
It appears now that Afrikans in the USA have awoken from eight years of an Obama induced with a different attitude. Amidst reports of a post-election rise in racial attacks there’s been a four-fold increase in Afrikan gun ownership since the election. (15)
(1) Alex Altman & Charlotte Alter (16/06/15) Trump Launches Presidential Campaign With Empty Flair. http://time.com/3922770/donald-trump-campaign-launch/.(2) Ashley Parker & Steve Eder (02/07/16) Inside the Six Weeks Donald Trump Was a Nonstop ‘Birther’. http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/03/us/politics/donald-trump-birther-obama.html?_r=0.(3) Lucia Graves (13/07/16) Donald Trump used to dog-whistle racism. Now he just yells it.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/jul/13/donald-trump-dog-whistle-racism.(4) Josh Harkinson (22/11/16) White Nationalists See Trump as Their Troll in Chief. Is He With Them? http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/trump-white-nationalists-hate-racism-power.(5) Josh Harkinson (27/10/16) Meet the white nationalist trying to ride the trump train to lasting power. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/10/richard-spencer-trump-alt-right-white-nationalist.(6) Josh Harkinson (22/11/16) Op. cit.(7) David Corn (16/06/15) Here’s Why It’s Fair—and Necessary—to Call Trump’s Chief Strategist a White Nationalist Champion. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2016/11/why-its-fair-and-necessary-call-trumps-chief-strategist-stephen-bannon-white-nationalist.(8) Margaret Kimberley (22/11/16) Freedom Rider: How Not to Protest Trump. http://blackagendareport.com/how_not_to_protest_trump.(9) Tony Martin (1986) Race First: The Ideological and Organizational Struggles of Marcus Garvey and the Universal Negro Improvement Association. The Majority Press. p. 346.(10) Paul Ifayomi Grant (27/11/16) The Trump Supremacy.http://www.houseofknowledge.org.uk/site/index.php?option=com_joomailermailchimpintegration&view=archive&Itemid=112.(11) Amanda Marcotte (12/11/16) Yes, the White Male Anger that Fueled Trump’s Victory Was Real—But It Isn’t Valid. http://www.alternet.org/election-2016/yes-white-male-anger-fueled-trumps-victory-was-real-it-isnt-valid-0.(12) Carol Anderson (16/11/16) Donald Trump Is the Result of White Rage, Not Economic Anxiety. http://time.com/4573307/donald-trump-white-rage/(13) Demetrius Minor (12/11/16) 9 Facts Shatter Obama’s Claim that Black America Is Better Off Since He Took Office. http://ijr.com/2014/12/220847-obama-claims-black-america-better-off-but-facts-say-otherwise/.(14) Margaret Kimberley (15/11/16) Freedom Rider: Obama’s Hollow Legacy. http://blackagendareport.com/obama%27s_hollow_legacy. Danny Haiphong (22/11/16) Obama’s Departure is One Reason to Feel Optimism for Trump’s Arrival. http://blackagendareport.com/trump_in_obama_gone.(15) Ben Popken (27/11/16) Trump’s Victory Has Fearful Minorities Buying Up Guns. http://www.nbcnews.com/business/consumer/trump-s-victory-has-fearful-minorities-buying-guns-n686881.
So tonight we ask the question:
What does Trump’s presidency mean for Afrikans?
1. Does the election result victory mean that race trumps class and gender?
2. Would Hillary Clinton have been a better option for Afrikans?
3. What is Obama’s legacy for Afrikans in the USA?
4. Is the “alt-right” really an alternative to anything?
5. Will there be a proliferation of racist attacks?
6. Are Afrikans right to buy more guns?
Our very special guests:
Bro. Ldr. Mbandaka: Resident guest who is Spiritual Leader of the Alkebu-Lan Revivalist Movement and UNIA-ACL Ambassador for the UK and national co-Chair of the interim National Afrikan People’s Parliament. Bro. Ldr is a veteran activist of over 30 years standing, a featured columnist in The Whirlwind newspaper and author of Mosiah Daily Affirmations and Education: An African-Centred Guide To Excellence.
Bro. Paul Ifayomi Grant: in addition to operating his own consultancy firm Paul Grant & Associates Ltd, Bro. Ifayomi is the author of six exciting and dynamic books ‘Niggers, Negroes, Black People and Afrikans’ and ‘Blue Skies for Afrikans’, ‘Saving Our Sons’, ‘Sankofa the Wise Man and His Amazing Friends’, ‘Why Willie Lynch Must Die’ and ‘Buy Now, Pay Later’. He is an active member of the Afrikan community and is involved in a number of community groups, most notably: Nubian Link www.nubianlink.org.uk a community education group, ABDF Ltd (formerly Afrikan Business Development Fund) www.abdf.co.uk a community economic development company which he conceived and co-founded, Vice-Chair and co-founder of the Nottingham Black Families in Education Parent Support Group which provides educational advocacy and support. He was a founder member of Brother II Brother an Afrikan men’s group that delivered rites of passage programmes (1998-2008). He is an executive member of the Foundation for the Sustainable Development of Africa (FOSDAF) www.fosdaf.org an international group promoting grassroots Afrikan economic empowerment.
Hear weekly discussions and lively debate on all issues affecting the Afrikan community, at home and abroad. We talk it straight and make it plain!
ASwA Hosted by Sis Kai Ouagadou-Mbandaka and Bro ShakaRa
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