Black and White

“If you’re white, all right.”

“If you’re Black, stand back.”

If indeed “the arc of the moral universe is long, but bends toward justice” — as MLK said —  it is because the minority population now, mostly people of color, will become the majority population by 2050. Whites will be the minority. Importing South African white farmers won’t stop that. The demographic tide, fast and deep, is flowing to shore.

Nevertheless, Trump is laser-focused on protecting, favoring and encouraging white supremacy, largely by limiting, excluding or ending most minority progress. Blacks are currently 14% of the total US population and must not be denied full participation in the nation’s civic life. Assailing DEI initiatives has worked well: businesses and NGOs have rushed to end such arrangements. Trump flings frivolous lawsuits and tries to extort money from elite universities to punish them for using affirmative action to redress past discrimination.

A predominantly white US Supreme Court has gutted the Voting Rights Act, reversing decades of progress in the enfranchisement of Blacks. Fifteen states are already moving to create new voting maps that will favor whites and relegate Black citizens to election purgatory.

Among them is South Carolina. For example, rearranging its 6th Congressional District is intended by Republicans to push out James E. Clyburn, the powerful Black Democrat who brought the ailing-failing Joe Biden presidential candidacy back from collapse. The Black voting-age population in SC numbers over 971,000; it is the second largest racial group in South Carolina. Clyburn is elderly but the state’s only Black Congressman. In Florida Democrat Debbie Wasserman Schultz has been re-jiggered into another election district that is mostly Black, thereby "stoking tensions" as the Times reported.

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The pro-natalist tilt of The Trumpeters is unlikely to reverse the decline in birth rates. This is not a mystery in search of a solution. For whatever reason, economic or otherwise, fewer people are choosing to bear children. Teen pregnancies are down. Women are marrying later in their lives. At the lower end of the economic scale, banging out babies in the absence of health, welfare and supportive services for infants, children and families is a national disgrace. Bringing a child to adulthood, let alone two or three, is increasingly costly, even for the well paid.

The Supreme Court and the Trump autocracy are careening to the wrong side of history. He is currently viewed positively by only 37% of those polled by Creative Commons* and reported in The New York Times. The Supreme Court has abused its power and no longer enjoys the trust and veneration in which it was once held. Chief Justice Roberts, once viewed as an institutionalist, has caved to his right flank. Under him, the Court is neither neutral nor apolitical. Was it ever? The Justices read the newspapers. They watch TV. They write books and make money.

In his second term, Trump continues to enrich himself and his family: The estimate by The New Yorker is over $2 billion so far. Through a pliant Justice Department, he has now pardoned himself and his family for all eternity.   

Many of us will not live long enough to see the full restoration of small d-democracy.

If only Black and White was just a cookie!

*According to its website, Creative Commons is an international nonprofit organization dedicated to defending and nurturing a commons of shared knowledge and culture that powers human creativity, equity, and innovation. www.creativecommons.org.