I am also very sensitive to the pain I see people expressing the day after Donald Trump was elected President. That pain is real and people are frightened and they have every logical reason to feel that way. This man literally ran and won on a platform of dehumanizing African and Indigenous peoples after having a clear history of practicing discrimination in housing against those communities. He has exposed himself as a patriarchal liar and abuser and if he can win millions of votes and become president after trumpeting those types of primitive values, I understand why people are feeling insecure today.
So, my problem isn't that I don't respect the value of reform or that I am insensitive to why people feel an intense sense of loss today. My problem is I completely reject the entire model in the first place. You see, its impossible for anyone to convince me that I should see Donald Trump any differently than Barack Obama, George Bush, or George Washington for that matter. I say this because regardless of what the package looks or sounds like, it must act consistently in the interests of the capitalist and imperialist system that it represents. That means Obama as well as Trump. And, since my politics are revolutionary, and not reformist, we are trained to focus on the system and not just the issues the system creates. In other words, from my perspective, African people (using us simply as an example) within in the U.S. had absolutely no elected officials in this country in 1960. That means zero, nada, zip. We also couldn't live where we wanted even if we could afford it, get hired for jobs we were qualified for, expect our children to receive a quality education, or feel secure that the police would protect us in 1960. In 2016, we have the POTUS, dozens of members of Congress (and even a Congressional Black Caucus), and thousands of mayors, and other local elected officials across the country. Yet, the argument can easily be made that we have less power and resource capacity today than we had in 1960. The proof for that argument is we still regularly face housing discrimination, even from Trump, despite us being able to afford to live wherever we want. We still face regular and dependable discrimination when applying for and promoting on jobs. And police continue to act in the same mentally towards us that they perfected in their early days serving as the violent slave posses who brutally forced us to continue working in the oppressive cotton fields of the South. So, elected officials or not, the masses of African people lack power and since we lack power we lack the ability to transform our lives. This is a systemic problem and because its systemic, it can't and won't be changed just by replacing the personalities that drive the system with new people. Clearly, no matter who drives the car, its still the same car and therefore, it will perform the same way, regardless of the age, nationality, gender, or sensitivities of the driver.
I know that it is the system that must be changed in order for us to progress towards a better world. Although some people see the capitalist system as a system that can be improved, I see it as an empire that must be destroyed and I see our glorious work to create one unified socialist Africa as African people's outstanding contribution to the worldwide movement towards justice and forward human progress. So, since that's my vision of the world, I cannot tell you that I was saddened or depressed by Trump's victory. In fact, a part of me is optimistic because Trump's overt patriarchy and white supremacy has awakened a sleeping giant who had been lulled to sleep by eight years of Obama's implementation of imperialism's policies with a cool style that completely transfixed the African masses. What Obama's symbolic presidency did was convince people that progress can be judged by token advancement. The fact we have the image of an African family in the White House permitted millions of Africans to overlook Obama solidifying Afrocom's devastating effect on Africa where almost 100 U.S. military bases have been created in Africa. These bases are maintained there to insure imperialism's dominance there by identifying and uprooting any efforts to organize a sincere resistance to neo-colonialism in Africa. The imagery in the White House blinded us to Obama systemically murdering Muammar Qaddafi and destabilizing the most stable area in Africa. The Obama led North Atlantic Treaty Organization bombs completely obliterated the Wasra Dam Project in the Sahara desert that was supplying potable drinking water to thousands of Africans after experts said it was not possible. Now, that water is gone, but most of you missed that because while Obama was leading the charge to destroy Libya, you were distracted by his singing Al Green and starting a neo-colonial program to help our young men strive to become prosecutors, so that they can put more of our young people behind bars. With Trump's open anti-African rhetoric, you probably won't be so easy to fool. And, if last night was any indication, you are talking like you are finally ready to get to work. We'll see if that's true. Or, if after a few weeks/months, once you find a niche which gives you security that your personal reality won't change much, you will be back to giving only 20 - 30% effort towards organizing our people for liberation, if that.
Yes, Europeans voted for Trump in historical numbers and that scares you because the message is they don't need you and they don't care what you think. You have a right to be concerned, but if we couldn't see this coming then we have no one else to blame besides ourselves. There have been plenty of us telling you that capitalism in crumbling and since that's happening, White folks ain't protected no more. They are feeling some of the same sting from this system that you have grown used to functioning with, but they aren't used to it. And, they have proven repeatedly that they are never going to be willing to suffer the way we do. So since we know their incomes have shrunk (because we know ours have shrunk much more) we should have known that they were going to react the same way they have historically reacted - by blaming us - not the superrich who are really responsible, for their suffering.
Yeah, I really don't intend to dismiss your shock today, but I have to be honest when I tell you I don't share that sentiment for the reasons expressed above. And, there's one more thing. And, I don't mean to rub anything in, but if I don't say this, I'm being entirely dishonest. I have never seen myself as an American. I have always subscribed to Malcolm X's sane logic that "when a cat has kittens in an oven, you don't call them biscuit." Our ancestors were kidnapped and brought here to work as slaves to build up industrialization and the Western empire. At the time of that kidnapping, we were Africans. When we started our first church here, we called it - correctly - the African Methodist Episcopalian Church. When we started our first organization here it was called the Free Africa Society. America has tried to kill us for 500+ years so you will never be able to convince me that we could ever be Americans. That to me is like Jewish people calling themselves (in the words of KRS - 1) "Jewish Hitlers." Since I know I'm an African, and not an American, and I know American identity equals white supremacy. And, I know the masses of European White working class people are the most confused, coddled, and reactionary people on the face of the Earth. Nothing against them. I love them as the human family they are, but my love doesn't blind me. They have failed in the quest for justice for the last 250 years so there is no reason I would be surprised that they did yesterday what they have done consistently - align themselves based on white supremacy and white identity over human justice and working class people against the superrich.
This is one of the elements required for being a conscious African living in the U.S. You develop a strong capacity to face truth head on. No matter how painful or dysfunctional. That doesn't mean I'm heartless. I recognize that many people find it too painful to face the realities many of us have always known. So, I suggest that those of you who are hurting, take a couple of days to recover. You are the person who has found out the one you thought was worthy of your love is nothing except a low down dirty cheat and killer. You gave them your best so we'll give you the right to mourn for a minute, but you must also accept that I am one of those friends you had that has been telling you all along how rotten this person you love has always been. So, while you wipe your eyes, I'm going to be handing you a tissue and telling you to move on with your life. For us, that should mean getting involved in organizing work and building consciousness and capacity to make this world a better place. One thing you mourning folk have going for us is those same white working class folks who exercised such insulting racism against Obama over the last eight years? You already know we ain't trying to hear no validation of your guy Trump. This is especially true for someone like me who already wasn't validating Trump, Clinton, Obama, Bush, and any of the mouthpieces for capitalism and imperialism. Now, there's a thought. Maybe another reason why I'm not so distressed today is because I have an ideological home, and ideological family, an ideological mission, and practical work to do to define who I am and what I want to be. I had that before this and any other capitalist election and I'll have it afterwards because I knew that no matter who won this election, the masses of humanity would lose and that whatever it ended up being, my work would be the same as it was before yesterday. Maybe, that work is about to get that much more interesting.