Trump Is A Racist, Trump Was A Racist President...So What? Big Effin Deal.

Philip Roth, author of The Human Stain, noted that “America’s oldest communal passion, historically perhaps its most treacherous and subversive”, is the “ecstasy of sanctimony.” The relentless commentary regarding Donald Trump’s racism is a perfect example of this sanctimonious euphoria. Further, it is intellectually dishonest and totally disingenuous; more of a political tool than a righteous societal moral affront.

The first U.S. President, and your “founding father”, George Washington stated: “Blacks are ignorant and shiftless; they are careless, deceitful, and liable to act without any qualms of conscience.” In a conversation with British actor John Bernard, pertinent to fighting for freedom while holding slaves, Daddy Washington stated: “This may seem a contradiction, but it is neither a crime nor an absurdity. When we profess, as our fundamental principle, that liberty is the inalienable right of every man, we do not include madmen or idiots; liberty in their hands would become a scourge. Till the mind of the slave has been educated to perceive what are the obligations of a state of freedom, the gift would insure its abuse.” How ominous today, as it was then.

The third U.S. President, and your “founding father”, Thomas Jefferson stated: “Blacks smell bad…Blacks are ugly…Blacks suffer loss less deeply…whites have flowing hair, a more elegant symmetry of form…Blacks are inferior to whites in both endowments of body and mind”. Father Jefferson was also a rapist and pedophile sickeningly enamored of the stinky, ugly, unfeeling, curly haired beasts that he found so inferior.

The sixteenth U.S. President, Abraham Lincoln, touted for “freeing the slaves” and the subsequent Emancipation Proclamation starkly stated: “I can conceive of no greater calamity than the assimilation of the negro into our social and political life as our equal.” Lincoln went on to state that “we can never attain the ideal union our fathers dreamed, with millions of an alien, inferior race among us, whose assimilation is neither possible nor desirable.”

The thirty-fourth U.S. President Dwight Eisenhower, while speaking to Chief Justice Warren about white southerners, stated he understood why they wanted to make sure that “their sweet little girls are not required to sit in school alongside some big, black buck”. Old D-wight tapped into some heavy stuff on that one. Seriously heavy.

The thirty-sixth U.S. President, Lyndon B. Johnson, loftily referenced for his signing of the Civil Rights Bill loved the word nigger. I am not allowed to write his exact quotes because white editorial sensibilities (sanctimony, if you will) preclude these truths though they are matters of historical record. How weird is that? It is a term invented by the very people that claim to be so offended by it and, furthermore, regularly use it towards a group that I am part of. I suppose some folks do not like the smell of their own excrement.

Most unfortunate.

President Johnson once said to a black chauffeur who requested that the president not refer to him as “boy”, “nigger” or “chief” the following: “As long as you are black, and you’re gonna be black till the day you die, no one’s gonna call you by your goddamn name. So no matter what you are called, nigger, you just let it roll off your back like water, and you’ll make it. Just pretend you’re a goddamn piece of furniture.”

President Johnson was known to, in an irony of ironies, when discussing civil rights legislation with men like Mississippi Democrat James Eastland, who committed most of his life to defending white supremacy, call the Civil Rights Bill “the Nigger Bill.” Johnson, in reference to his appointment of Thurgood Marshall to the U.S. Supreme court stated: “Son, when I appoint a nigger to the court, I want everyone to know he’s a nigger.” Most notoriously, Johnson said: “I’ll have those Niggers voting Democratic for 200 years.” Frighteningly prescient. Though there are some Democrats that say this particular statement is a Republican propaganda plant, they do not dispute the others. Very, very, odd.

So far, so good.

The thirty-seventh U.S. President, Richard M. Nixon, on top of being an arch criminal, was thoroughly convinced that blacks were intellectually inferior. In a conversation with Harvard Professor Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had been one of his house intellectuals, about the nature of his interest in research on the intelligence of Black People in the United States, Nixon stated: “The reason I have to know it is that as I go for programs, I must know that they have basic weaknesses.” With regard to African nations and their leadership, Nixon stated to Moynihan: “Have in mind one fact: Did you realize there is not, of the 40 or 45-you’re at the United Nations-black countries that are represented there, not one has a president or a prime minister who is there as a result of a contested election such as we were insisting upon in Vietnam?…I’m not saying that blacks cannot govern; I am saying they have a hell of a time. Now, that must demonstrate something.”

The fortieth U.S. President, Ronald “Maximus” Reagan, in reference to Alkebulanians in so-called “Africa” eloquently stated: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” He was speaking to U.S. President number thirty-seven when he made the impassioned remark.

The forty-third U.S. President, George “Dumbya” Bush.

Katrina.

Done.

Clearly, I could continue ad nauseam with both verbal examples and, more importantly, policy examples from every last one of the forty-six U.S. Presidents that verify racial animus; especially towards Black People in the United States. The fact of the matter is that this society is steeped in racism; especially Anti-Blackism. And, it is patently unfair to single out Donald Trump as a racist however intoxicatingly burlesque his behavior.

I said unfair, not inaccurate.