OP-ED by Clifford Jackson
The election between Vice President Kamala Harris and former president Donald Trump is not the good vs evil reporting that we are seeing in the corporate media. At least most of the main stream media are reporting about the racism, xenophobia , white supremacy and pugnacious behavior and hatred that have epitomized the Donald Trump campaign and the millions who are depraved and sick in their support for him.
However their reporting of Kamala Harris is a sanitized image of someone who by no stretch of the imagination is the savior of democracy and advocate for the disenfranchised. Donald Trump has a history of racism and blatant discrimination that goes back to Fred Trump’s involvement with the KKK in the 1920’s on Long Island. Fred Trump also was lambasted by Woody Guthrie for his racist housing policies at the Brookhaven complex in Brooklyn. Guthrie wrote a song about how he moved into the complex in 1950 and was exposed to a housing policy that prevented blacks and Latinos from living there.
Fred Trump and Donald Trump continued this with their ownership of a housing complex in “Stuyvesant Town “ that prevented black world War 2 veterans from moving into. They were sued in a class action suit in 1973 because Trump and Roy Cohn violated the 1968 federal housing anti discrimination act. Trump has used the word N*&^%@ throughout his life especially when it came to his properties, he would say “ I don’t want to have people come here and the first thing they see is a N*&%$@#”. His niece and former property manager at several casino sites made that clear in their respective books on Donald Trump. I am pretty sure that with the Central Park Five ad, where he asked for their public execution, the “ N” word was flying out of his mouth.
Trump is Cosa Nostra on steroids with all of the banks and vendors that he has defrauded and stolen from. His relationship with the late Nicholas Scarfo, the John Gotti from Atlantic City, also brings this point home . As Geraldo Rivera said “any Latino man or woman needs to have their head examined if they vote for Donald Trump.“ This point was in effect long before the despicable comments about Puerto Rico at the rally in Madison Square Garden.
Kamala Harris is a typical mendacious politician. When you say ,as she and other politicians have said for decades when running for office, “ I am here to fight for middle class families. “ That is putative for politicians democrat or republican. When you make those type of statements as a politician you are pandering to mainly middle class white familes. That is what Kamala Harris and many other politicians do daily.
The most egregious quality of life in this society happens to the poor, including homelessness, substandard housing, so-called food insecurity, the highest level of infant and mother mortality, Medicaid that many times does not cover healthcare expenses or procedures that are necessary to save their lives.
As well as the self hatred that poor people especially black and brown deal with because they are daily dehumanized and defined as a cipher. The terms “ hand outs” their lazy “ something that poor people deal with everyday that helps make them feel less worthy. These are comments that middle class people especially middle class whites say constantly.
The reason why poor people have this level of contempt for themselves is because they are demeaned in a society where people are defined by the size of their wallet. That very American quality makes Christianity in this society a fraud many times over. This is what Kamala Harris, because she is smart enough, understands. When Harris says “we have more in common and that we should strive to emulate the founding principles of this nation,“ she is showing how pathetically dishonest she is.
The founding principles of this nation were white supremacy and the enslavement and destruction of African Americans and indigenous people. As well as white pathological violence that is expressed in terms of every president from Washington to Biden that have blood on their hands, and all of the Supreme Court decisions and congressional acts ,such as the Indian Reorganization Act of 1832 ,that enforced “ White mob rule.“ Harris, like Barack Obama, are educated enough to know this history and that is why they are the consummate dishonest politicians. I knew this about Barack Obama when he made that speech at the democratic convention in 2004 that made him an insult to the legacies of Malcolm X , Fannie Lou Hamer, Paul Robeson, Frederick Douglass, Dr. King , Ella Baker and many others. These people were honest about the evils of American History.
They were all in the MAWS of American racism, violence and injustice fighting these evils and lost their lives doing so. If it was not for the sacrifices of those human rights heroes, Barack Obama and VP Kamala Harris would not have made it to their respective seats within the American Political hierarchy. When Harris and Obama are honest about the brutally racist and barbaric state called Israel that Malcolm X , James Baldwin and others have condemned than maybe they will have some credibility.
Clifford Jackson, Larchmont
