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Sleeping Giant
Fifty five percent of Bernie Sander’s supporters say they won’t vote for Hillary Clinton. Some say that they will vote for Donald Trump. This is the candidate who stood next to Carl Paladino, the failed candidate for Governor of New York, when Trump won the New York primary. Paladino amused his friends by sending out emails showing the president as a pimp and his wife as a prostitute. Ha! Jewish journalists who criticize Trump or his wife have received anti-Semitic hate mail and Abraham Foxman of the ADL says that Trump rallies remind him of those held in Nazi Germany. Some pundits say that we should never draw such parallels but I trust Mr. Foxman to know what he’s talking about. We know Trump’s position on Hispanics. Of course, he has singled out Mexican Americans, but how many of Trump’s followers can tell Hispanics apart or distinguish between the different strands of Islam. Even Bill Maher, who is becoming less and less funny, can’t seem to make the distinction. When Sam Cooke included the line “Don’t Know Much About History,” in his revision of the song “Wonderful World,” he must have had those who are considered America’s “brightest and best” in mind.
Do you suppose that Bernie’s followers would sit out the November election or vote for Trump if he were threatening to deport millions of progressives or limit the entry of thousand of progressives into the United States?It could happen. Do any of them remember “The Palmer Raids?” This revives an old charge that the black left has made against white progressives. That they are an unreliable component of the left wing coalition. They don’t show any concern for how a Trump presidency will affect the lives of black, Hispanics, Muslims, and Jews. One Chinese American writer predicts that Trump’s constant Chinese bashing will raise hate crimes against Chinese -Americans.
Except for a few black intellectuals who are on the fringes of black opinion, the majority of blacks have voted for Hillary Clinton despite her husband’s spotty record on Civil Rights. This might stem from the rift that occurred between the two allies when in 1941 the American left decided that saving the Soviet Union was more important than the black struggles at home, including the issues of police brutality and home foreclosures. Harlem leaders like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr., who had made common cause with the white left, abandoned his former allies. Ralph Ellison among other black intellectuals was livid about what he considered a betrayal and wrote a novel about it. It’s written in an elliptical style because the writings of black Americans were under scrutiny by the government, which was looking for any signs of subversion. The late John A. Williams’s classic The Man Who Cried I Am exposed this scrutiny, which has been verified by William Maxwell’s book FB Eyes. Part 1 of Justin Desmangles interview appears in this issue.
Trump the birther and his supporters have a special itch about Mexicans and Mexican Americans, who occupied the West hundreds of years before his ancestors arrived and I think this is the reason why he will lose the election. My Nicaraguan barber and her husband have done very well. She arrived in the United States when she was nineteen. They have reached what most would consider the American Dream. A beautiful home in the Oakland hills and children and grandchildren who are achievers. She never talks about politics, but the last time she cut my hair she launched into a long tirade against Trump and even expressed sympathy for Mexicans, “illegal” to some, but to others, those who are returning to their stolen territories . Inadvertently, I believe, Trump and the Trumpistas have ignited a Pan Hispanic movement in the United States. One in which Hispanics will set aside their ethnic feuds and unite against the common enemy. This will not only dump Trump but the Republican Party.
Another sign of Trump’s lost cause? When I returned from the Istanbul Ataturk airport on May 23rd and approached customs in San Francisco, I noticed two lines. The first line was composed of whites mostly who were visiting the United States. The second line included those of an obvious Asian and Africans ancestry. Some of the Africans were wearing traditional clothing. These were Americans returning home.
Ishmael Reed
Author of The Complete Muhammad Ali”
