Edit: Just after posting this, I saw that Mr. Trump had said something like this on “60 Minutes.” That’s good… but it’s not enough. A targeted and specific message is needed.
Dear President-elect Trump:
I don’t know if you concern yourself with events on the ground among the “little people.”
In the week since your election, the news has been full of some terrifying and truly disturbing events. In a list compiled on Twitter by Insanul Ahmed:
- Students as Southern Illinois University put on blackface and posed in front of a Confederate flag
- A group of guys yelled, “Time to get out of this country, Apu!” at a Middle Eastern-looking man at a gas station
- A woman wearing a scarf was told, “Your time’s almost up, girlie.”
- A Trumpkin pulled a knife on a Muslim woman near the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
- A white person called a black man a “nigger” and said he should be picking cotton
- Students at Lehigh Valley High School were chanting, “Cotton-picker, you’re a nigger”
- A white man approached a woman who appeared Mexican and said, “I can’t wait until Trump asks us to rape your people and send you over the biggest damn wall we’re going to build. Go back to hell, wet back,” and threw his cup of water in her face while flipping her the bird
- A group of white men followed a woman wearing a dress onto the subway, yelled, “Grab her by the pussy!” and then proceeded to do so
- Students at Wake Forest University were running around shouting, “NIGGER!” inside the residence halls
- A group of white men confronted a black woman at a gas station and said, “How scared are you, you black bitch? I should just kill you right now…you’re a waste of air!” and another said, “You’re lucky there’s witnesses or else I’d shoot you right here.”
- A black woman in Queens, NY was asked to go to the back of the bus
- An LGBT couple found a note on their car saying, “Can’t wait till your ‘marriage’ is overturned by a real president. Gay families = burn in hell. Trump 2016”
- High school teens yelled at a black woman to go back to Africa
- A white man told an Asian woman at a gas station, “We won. Now get the fuck out of my country.”
Whether it was your intention or not, whether you want to admit it or not, you started this firestorm of hate with an implicit message that immigrants, Muslims, or anyone who is “other” or “less than” are not welcome in this country.
☞ And only you can put it out. ☜
I’m probably not wrong to suggest that most of your supporters are as appalled by this kind of behavior as I am. That these are the acts of the lowest common denominator of ignorance, hatred, and willful stupidity.
But these acts of horror are being committed in your name. And as President of our nation, the buck stops in the same office occupied by Harry Truman. With you.
There is only one way to stem the tide of this horror, which will only increase as the bigoted and the ignorant become more and more emboldened by the message that they heard during your campaign.
You spent countless millions of dollars courting the discouraged, the forgotten, and the disenfranchised, demonizing your political opponents. It is time to get in front of those same people who voted for you and personally tell them that acts of racism and hatred are not part of your platform. That they need to stop. That if they don’t stop, they will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law for hate crimes.
You’ve got the money, and for you it would be chump change. Get that message out there.
Do this, and even though I didn’t vote for you, you will have taken an important step to becoming “my president.” Do it not, and there is no way you can be president for “all Americans.” Do it not, and you will reap the whirlwind in a political backlash that you and the GOP may not recover from during this century.
The Old Wolf has spoken.
Playing in the World Game 