CASH MICHAELS
MAKE AMERICA WHITE SUPREMACIST AGAIN
by Cash Michaels
No, I have no hatred of, or for, white people. Anyone who really knows me knows that to be true, and always has been.
What I do have though, is a profound hatred for white supremacy! And most sensible, knowledgeable people I know, hate it too for what it’s done, and is doing, to our country!
Growing up as a kid in Brooklyn, NY, I watched a lot of television during the 1960’s. Virtually everything I saw were white TV and movie heroes - Superman, Batman, John Wayne, James Bond. Even my favorite comedies, be they Abbott and Costello, the Three Stooges or Jerry Lewis, were all lily white too.
And little did I realize then that I saw no positive representations of me or mine on television or in the movies because of white supremacy. If a black person showed up on any of these shows (which was extremely rare), it was because they were the butt of some racist joke. Especially the cartoons. A caricature of a human being. That was the dictate of American culture then. The best place to accurately take this country’s racial tolerance temperature was, and still is, the TV screen.
Amos ’n Andy? Don’t forget, on radio, the popular show about two dimwitted black buddies actually starred two white actors in “Black” voice. When it came to TV with Black actors, the portrayals were so racist, the NAACP forced the show off the air.
Tarzan? A virtually naked white guy, always struggling to hold his stomach in, ruled the natives with a white woman named Jane by his side. And when he grew older, the same white actor, Johnny Weissmuller, put on some clothes and changed his name to “Jungle Jim” for the same shtick.
So for me, when it came to positive representation of my color on either the big or little screen during that period, it rarely appeared, and when it did, it was through the unsavory and mocking prism of white supremacy.
I and other little Black kids were being told by the country we were growing up in, that we could never be heroes, never be worthy of respect or adulation by anyone.
Probably why I went crazy when Bruce Lee, a TV hero of color (though not mine), came along. Sure other Asian heroes like Charlie Chan were on the screen (Charlie was always portrayed by a white actor, by the way), but none had the action and precision of Lee’s “Kato” in “The Green Hornet.”
What I didn’t know then was that he was also a victim of white supremacy, so much so that Lee - born in America - and his family, would later have to leave this country to find the international stardom he always dreamed of, and deserved.
And even when the infamous blaxploitation movies of the 1970’s, like Shaft and Superfly, came to the 42nd Street movie theaters in double feature, though my friends and I piled into the seats to see badass “brothas” stick it to “the man,” that was white supremacy too. White producers fed us poorly made crap they thought we would pay to see. Hollywood’s movie industry was in serious trouble in the 1970’s, and used over-sexed, foul and ultra-violent “black” films about pimps, pushers and crime bosses to juice up the box office.
We were kids, and had never, ever seen characters who looked like us, do the things we normally saw our white heroes do, so we spent our money going to see these cheap, insulting and racist “black” flicks with R ratings, produced by greedy white movie producers to get our money.
But even that didn’t make us hate white people, though obviously someone thought we did, and made tons of money behind it.
However, our parents raised us to understand that all white people weren’t bad.
There was nary a black home during those days that didn’t have framed pictures of President John F. Kennedy and his brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, hanging up right there on the wall right next to civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr..
These were three brave slain heroes we should love and trust, we were told, because they believed in freedom and justice for all people, and died for that cause.
And, most importantly, we were taught NOT to hate the sinner, but hate the sin. In other words, you don’t hate all white people, because all white people don’t hate you.
Instead, we were taught, hate the disease that certain troubled white people possess, and can’t seem to shake - white supremacy, the feeling they apparently have that God put them on this Earth to rule over others and control everything. Especially if those “others” are people of color, who God obviously, according to them and their "bibles," placed on this Earth for white supremacists to have dominion over like the beasts of the land or fish in the sea.
White supremacy, as I said, is a disease, because of the self-righteous, and misguided entitlement some people, who happen to be white, feel in their rancid, racist souls. Instead of recognizing the intent, beauty and power of Almighty God in creating men and women in a colorful array of humanity and cultures, the sickness that is white supremacy sees anything but God’s grace in His creation.
That’s why I call it a sickness, a disease.
All of which now brings me to my weekly subject.
Donald Trump.
It has never been a secret that this son of a Ku Klux Klansman who, with his father, once denied Black people the lawful opportunity to rent apartments on Trump properties in New York City back in the 1970s, has it in for people of color he can’t control.
And that’s the rub. Control. If Trump can’t control you, he wants to destroy you.
That sick mindset was dangerous when he was a prominent real estate mogul in New York. But it’s even more dangerous now that he’s a convicted criminal president of the United States, out to settle scores and reshape the country.
We’re very well aware of Trump’s disdain for DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) and so-called critical race theory. And part of the reason why he has such an obscene obsession with it is because of his hunger for power and control.
The “America” Donald Trump wants to control isn’t allowed to believe in the equality of all men and women. Indeed, it can’t believe in equality at all. There can only be one authority on who is equal and who is not, and that authority must be one of corrupted strength through power.
That corrupt power is manifested in the acquisition of wealth and territories, and cultural and racial superiority.
It’s a God complex on steroids.
What was that Trump said last week when he signed the executive order promising to gut the Smithsonian Institution’s museum network of “improper anti-American ideology?” Something about restoring “… truth and sanity to American history.”
Translation - he specifically wants the world famous National Museum of African-American History and Culture, a source of immense pride for this nation, not just black people, to be defunded by the federal government if it doesn’t change its tune.
That's white supremacy talking!
The same with the forthcoming Women’s History Museum.
In his order, Trump has directed VP J.D. Vance, who sits on the Smithsonian board, to “remove improper ideology” from not just the Smithsonian’s 21 museums, but the education, research centers and even the National Zoo.
This outrage follows Trump’s Dept. of Defense recently scrubbing Arlington National Cemetery’s website of anything honoring heroic figures of color like Gen. Colin Powell and the Tuskegee Airmen. Heroic women of the military were also eliminated. All because, in Trump’s twisted mind, these heroes smacked of DEI. How sick!
My esteemed NC Spin colleague, columnist Lib Campbell - who is white - wrote an excellent piece a few weeks ago about “The whitewashing of America” under Trump.
“Racism and misogyny have bubbled among us since our country’s founding. The number of hate groups is up, and people feel license to be cruel, pushy and demeaning. The fish rots from the head down. In America, there is no question that the head is rotten.”
That insightful paragraph from Lib’s superb commentary is the essence of describing what “Make America Great Again” really is.
In the twisted minds of Trump’s MAGA followers, America was “great” BEFORE the 1960’s civil rights movement, and before people who looked like me began to attain our rights as lawful citizens. If that hadn’t happened, MAGA folks believe, the floodgates for other subjugated groups of people would have never opened.
No U.S. Supreme Court rulings for civil rights; no President Kennedy or LBJ standing up for civil rights; no Martin Luther King, Jr. marching for civil rights. America’s toxic whiteness and false belief that all that was white was good, would have been upheld and maintained the way “God” wanted it, MAGA believes.
And this is why Trump is so popular with the MAGA nation. He’s literally turning the clock back to a “better time” with his asinine executive orders.
Turning the clock back to a time when, as a nation, we weren’t required to respect the rights, let alone the citizenship or humanity, of people who were not white, unless they first acknowledge who’s boss.
And one of the many ways you do that is lie about history. Bury the truth like a bone to a dog so that future generations have no idea about this nation’s true racial background.
That’s going to take a while, but the effort has actually been underway for years before Trump. I remember back in the ‘90s when the Republican Party desperately wanted to recruit new members who had no first-hand knowledge of the ’60’s civil rights movement. The hope was that blacks born after the movement would not be so resistant to the GOP message.
When that didn’t work, Republicans then corralled conservative members of Dr. King’s family to “reinterpret” his famous “…not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character" mantra.
Republicans have been rolling with that “combatting reverse racism" ruse ever since, especially when combatting DEI.
In fact, NC Senate Majority Leader Phil "Head Ham" Berger has now sponsored a bill (SB 558) not only outlawing DEI in all North Carolina public colleges and universities, but even prohibiting any official investigations into claims of racial or gender bias.
No, there’s little doubt. Trump has tapped into a national vein that is as white supremacist as the day is long.
And now I read that some silly MAGA Randolph County state representatives have filed a bill, HB 557, to designate the 65-year-old “Andy Griffith Show” as North Carolina’s “official television show.” Apparently these folks long for the days when white people of “positive character values and awareness” could live in a happy-go-lucky Southern town (Mayberry) where folks strolled to the nearest pond with their fishing pole and "youngun" in hand, whistling their fool heads off, with not a care in the world.
Well as I recall, the show featured no black people living or working there, even though it was on during the height of the civil rights movement - 1960-68 (only in the background occasionally, but you had to look very hard to see them).
Hate to break it to those NC MAGA lawmakers that the television “Mayberry” was created by three city slicker producers - Sheldon Leonard ("Dick van Dyke Show, "I Spy"), Aaron Ruben ("Gomer Pyle USMC," "Sanford and Son") and Danny Thomas ("Danny Thomas Show," "Mod Squad"), who apparently didn’t have the guts to portray the real Mayberry (Mt. Airy, NC) as a place where black people were actually born, lived and worked, even today (8.48% of the population).
In fact, every inch of the fictional "Mayberry" was filmed in ultra-liberal Los Angeles, California, NOT good ole' North Carolina (watch Ted Koppel’s take here ).
And why not just honor Mt. Airy native Andy Griffith, Republicans? Can't do that. Andy was a dyed -in-the-wool staunch Democrat until the day he died. Better to honor the fake Mt. Airy, with Aunt Bee, Opie and the rest of the fine, fake white folks. Tsk, tsk..that’s what happens when you want to make America white supremacist again. You get stuck with facts you can't control!
While the cost of living is blowing up beyond the average NC citizen’s reach, our lawmakers want to waste our time and tax dollars trying to distract us from reality with old segregated TV sitcoms that they hope have us dreaming of a better, idyllic whiter world.
Got news for Trump and his MAGA minions. We’re too far down the road in this multi-cultural society today for that to successfully happen.
Even Barney Fife knows that! Ain't that right, Andy?!!!
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