White Supremists and Nationalists trash the capital; Black maintenance workers left to clean up the mess
Was it not poetic justice that the most hateful associations between African Americans and primates, proved more befitting a band of super-charged bigots and white supremists? Last Wednesday, America witnessed a horde of Trump supporters hanging from capital walls like monkeys, apes, and chimpanzees. Their mission, although pointless, was to overthrow a president-elect.
Imagine the mockery of Confederate flags slithering through a nation’s capital; the placement of pipe bombs at its steps; a policeman crushed between double doors; politicians being whisked away; murder, mischief, and mayhem in every hidey-hole. Then reflect upon that moment your eyelets become focused onto the grisly portrait of a democracy in peril.
During the siege, these loose cannons breached House Speaker Pelosi's corridor. One man lounged at her desk and lewdly inscribed his semi-literate scrawl onto her written correspondence.
Who were these animals? The lectern thief was husband to a prominent doctor; the birdbrain in fur pelts, son to a Supreme Court justice. I got this feeling that these apples did not fall far from the tree.
Yet judgmentally, these same simpletons are quick to vilify blacks for defacing confederate statutes, toppling slave-owner monuments, and presumptively throwing Molotovs cocktails at federal buildings.
Contrarily, on that soul-crushing day, blacks were in another sphere either appealing to their better angels or making a difference in the world.
I was dually astounded by the poses and smug looks which defiantly mocked, “Yeah motherfucker, what are you gonna do? I am white! Entitled! Privileged! And will not do a lick of prison time." The fuckery of it all is, they probably will not! That day, no arrests were made. Not even a single, stop and frisk!
Conversely, the world witnessed a band of renegades rubbing elbows with derelect cops who likely harbored their sentiments about, ‘Taking this country back' and ‘Making America Great Again.
Now, flip the script. Let us pretend those same Seditionists, Insurrectionists, and Domestic Terrorists were black. Undoubtedly, there’d be a bloodbath on the capital lawn with black bodies stacked up higher than the Chrysler Building.
Then, there is this matter of blaxploitation. The unmitigated gall of those who would dare use black people and their causes like bulletproof vests. Seems typical of our nation’s ‘privileged,’ to draw law-abiding African Americans into the fray, when their people’s asses are caught in a vice.
Many in the media and political realms condemned law enforcement's laissez-faire approach to radical Trump supporters in comparison to its conventional roughhousing of black protestors. But acknowledging the contrasts between this fuckery and previous BLM protests would have been more appealing, had they resisted the urge to use black people as human fodder and political talking points.
Point is, while these spin doctors aren’t wrong about this country’s flagrant two-facedness, their underlying motives—selling sensationalism or playing to an audience—hardly seemed benevolent. Worst, fancying themselves capable of speaking with black people's voice is never a clever tactic. Only those who live this folly day in and day out can give their story a proper spin.
Besides, black people did not need history lessons. Political pundits needn’t resurrect the dead or recite acquitted white cops’ unending quests to, ‘Do a Niggah’! The likes of Permit Patty, BBQ Becky, Karen, and others who weaponize their white privilege against blacks have left indelible footprints in our minds.
The hypocrisy that manifested itself on capital grounds reaffirmed the extent to which blacks are trivialized. For the umpteenth time, there was a red alert to their non-existence in America’s pecking order and its blatant opposition towards black lives mattering.
We had trusted nevertheless that this seditious white-on-white insurrection would serve as a warning sign to whites of an imminent self-implosion. Unequivocally, white America was handed clear evidence of just how much its self-contrived paranoia of blacks paled in comparison to the actual threat posed by its own, albeit it was to no avail.
What really compressed my soul into a single agony of prayer was the appalling image of Officer Eugene Goodman being chased like a fugitive by Trump agitators; too petrified to pull his weapon or wield that baton in his hand.
Uglier still, was my sneaking suspicion that his white counterparts would not have hesitated to pop a cap in a black agitator’s behind.
And what a pity, that harrowing portrait of black custodians sweeping up trash and mopping up damages left by a white mob who had just hung nooses around the capitol grounds.
Not nary a white sole stooped to assist in the degrading task of cleaning up blood, broken chards of glass, and yes, human excrement. By and large, an opportunity to denounce white supremacy, build social capital, bolster black people's faith in equality and racial pride was missed.
Eye-witnessing this three-ring circus, I underwent an echoing epiphany. Primarily, that not much was won by the previous election of a black president or is to be expected from the recent election of a black vice president. Or by those claiming to be so intellectually superior, politically correct, and so call united with black people in their cause—and yet so oblivious.
There was such blatant hypocrisy in erupting over boots planted on an official’s desk while turning a blind eye to the degradation of black janitors cleaning up human waste left by racist white radicles, who emphatically espoused the N-word.
In my peripheral, I could hear the utterances of firm believers in the inferiority of the black race amidst those who regard servitude as being our permanent fate. No attempts were made to quiet them. Why was I ever fooled into thinking there would be?