Martin Luther King, Unfinished Racism and the 2016 U.S. Elections -By Adeolu Ademoyo

“I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood. I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King.

Martin Luther King

“In America when we stand together, there is no barrier too big to break. Despite what you hear from the other side, we do not need to make America great again. America has always been great. America has never stopped being great. But we do need to make America whole again. I believe what we need in America today is more love and kindness. Instead of building walls we need to be tearing down barriers that are holding back families and our country….” – Hillary Clinton, Democratic Party candidate.

“A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian… This is not in the gospel” – Pope Francis, Servant of God.

“For a religious leader to question a person’s faith is disgraceful. If and when the Vatican is attacked by ISIS, which as everyone knows is ISIS’s ultimate trophy, I can promise you that the Pope would have only wished and prayed that Donald Trump would have been president.” – Donald Trump, Republican Party candidate.

Secretary Hillary Clinton of the Democratic Party and Mr. Donald Trump of the Republican Party have partly defined the 2016 American election, through the question of whether the United States will return to a racist and white supremacist past or would remain an open democratic society which continues to grow her wholeness and inclusiveness. This question has brought back Martin Luther King as one of the leading voices of the vision of contemporary American national inclusivity.

On the campaign trail, from the issues of race to gender, religion, and immigration, all sounding the note of the likelihood of a return of the United States to a racist and xenophobic past, Donald Trump has fired up a section of the political base of the conservative Republican party, particularly around xenophobia and racial exclusivity.

Donald Trump once said that if elected, he would ban Muslims from coming to America. And on the border challenges between the United States and her neighbours, Trump said that he would build a 2,500 mile WALL of Separation between the United States and Mexico. And the Trump campaign has humiliated and thrown blacks and people of African descent out of his rallies.

In an interview, Pope Francis aptly said building WALLS to separate our humanity is not a Christian belief. Trump replied the Pope and called his claim “disgraceful!” Trump’s response to the Pope through the word “disgraceful” shocked the world, especially the Christian world, because the Republican Party – on whose platform Trump is campaigning – claims to defend the Christian faith, of which the Pope is one of the leading figures.

During the slavery period, the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) was one of the main tools of racism, fascism and the practice of white supremacy against other American people, especially African Americans. The KKK ideology is similar to that of the Nazis, which led to 1940s genocide against the Jews. And just like the Nazis, the KKK engaged in mass lynching of African Americans.

Despite the formal end of slavery and segregation, the Klu Klux Klan (KKK) continues to exist in America, occasionally reliving and bring back its fascist, racist, lynching, and, genocidal past. One of the leaders of the KKK in the contemporary period in America is David Duke. Through David Duke, the KKK has endorsed Donald Trump, the front-runner in the primaries of the Republican Party, thereby injecting racism, fascism and division into the 2016 American elections.

When asked if he would disavow the endorsement of his campaign by a racist group – KKK – at a point, Donald Trump claimed ignorance of KKK, David Duke and his endorsement of him! But though Duke who, according to the New York Times, “equated the extermination of Jews in Nazi Germany with affirmative action programs in the United States” has had a long history of relationship with the Republican party. So it is strange for Donald Trump to claim that he does not know David Duke who is a well known associate of the Republican Party!

Donald Trump’s initial reluctance to immediately disavow the KKK’s endorsement, coupled with his xenophobic, racist and sexist rhetoric on the campaign trail against African Americans, people of African descent, women, new immigrants, Muslims, etc suggests the less than covert driving of a racist and fascist agenda. Also, David Duke tweeted the KKK’s racist message in support of the candidacy of Donald Trump of the Republican Party. Trump grabbed the tweet and promptly retweeted it.

Trump also tweeted a message of the founder of the Italian fascist movement, Benito Mussolini! In a NBC “Meet The Press” interview, Trump said he found the message of Mussolini “interesting.”

Donald Trump continues in his rallies to walk the path of xenophobia. In Louisville, Kentucky, a black woman, Shiya Nwanguma was manhandled, humiliated and repeatedly shoved by Donald Trump campaign. One of those who pushed and shoved Nwanguma, Joseph Pryor, a trainee in the American Marines Corp later proudly posted pictures of his hate act on his Facebook account. However, the American Marine Corps Training Program subsequently dismissed Joseph Pryor. The American Marine Corps released the statement that, “Joseph Pryor has demonstrated poor judgment in his use of social media that associates him with a racially-charged altercation at a political rally…Hatred toward any group of individuals is not tolerated in the Marine Corps, and he is being discharged from our Delayed Entry Program.”

On February 29, Donald Trump held a rally at Valdosta State University in Valdosta, Georgia, and before he began, he asked that about 30 African American students who were standing quietly on the bleachers be removed. Valdosta University was an all-white campus only up until 1963. At another rally, as an African American was being harassed and led out, Trump asked the fellow over the microphone: “Are you from Mexico?”

It is strange to see that the Republican party only just suddenly woke up to distance itself from the xenophobia, racism and emerging fascism of the Trump campaign (which some members of the Republican party have euphemistically but wrongly described as “bullying”).

The Republican Party needs to look at itself in the mirror. When racism and xenophobia meet to produce fascism, it is the product of a false and rather unfortunate mass consciousness, located right in the Republican party – the self styled GOP. In other words, fascism – that involves racism, sexism and sectarianism – is not just about one or two individuals, such as Donald Trump and David Duke, but about individual fascists who are leaders and who emerge to represent a movement. In other words, fascism is a movement of people. This is what the history of fascism has shown.

It is not difficult for discerning Americans and citizens of the world to see how the Republican Party fuels racism in America and contributed to the xenophobic and hate movement Donald Trump now leads. There are too many examples, but one stares America and the world in the face, and it is about employment. This is an important issue in the lives of we human beings. Any president who contributes to solving the problem of unemployment in any country ought to go down in history as a major hero of the country and of all the people therein – but not so for the American Republican party, and some folks. This simple moral and historical fact does not hold true for the Republican Party and some folks in the United States.

To be unemployed is a major brutalisation of the psyche of any human being because work is synonymous with being human. Before ex-president George W. Bush left office in 2008, he inflicted on Americans a 14 percent unemployment rate. Within eight years and under President Barack Obama presently, the unemployment rate in the United States of America is 4.9 percent. This is the fact. This is a significant moral victory for President Barack Obama against capitalism whose nature is to keep a pool of unemployed as a blackmail and bargaining chip against the employed, to keep them in check and to keep doing the biddings of capitalism. But the Republican Party is anti-truth, and anti-history. It has refused to acknowledge this.

The Republican party and some folks in the United States of America, for the reason that President Barack Obama is black and African American fail to acknowledge this major contribution of his to the public, private and emotional lives of ordinary American families. The American Republican Party denies the truth in President Obama’s major positive contributions to the economy of the United States and lives of American people and families by saving them from the humiliation, shame and the brutalities of the grave unemployment rate President Bush left them with. And by this moral denial, the Republican Party and some folks in America have created the mass fascist and racist base within the Republican Party, which Donald Trump is presently leading.

The nature of ethics is clear. When you assault truth based on race and the colour of the other person as the Republican Party has done against President Barack Obama, you create horror and deepen racism. That horror is what Donald Trump leads today within the Republican Party.

So it will be wrong if the few elites and leaders of Republican Party such as Paul Ryan, the speaker of the House of Representatives (whose condemnation of Donald Trump’s racism is feeble, little and too late), Mitt Romney, Senator John McCain and others simply isolate Donald Trump as a culprit, and scapegoat him. The Republican Party must look at itself in the mirror and interrogate itself. For someone to hold conservative views is not a bad idea. Some of us do hold what might be called “old school” conservative views on some issues. But conservatism with a racist, fascist face and base is evil. This must be disavowed. Through its historic failure to rebuild and re-brand itself in the 21st century as an inclusive party, the American Republican party is gradually remaking itself into a medieval age party with a fascist and racist mass base.

For example, if Trump’s candidacy is driven by xenophobia as it is being driven, then the party elites in the Republican Party need to look at the blocs driving it. Two of these are the Tea Party and Klu Klux Klan-KKK. The Tea party (a bloc within the Republican party) like the KKK does not hide its xenophobia and supremacist beliefs. Both cynically in an a-historical manner talk about “making America great again” i.e. return the United States of America to a racist past.

The blocs driving Donald Trump’s xenophobic and racist campaign have burrowed deep into the skin of the Republican Party. For example, in the 2008 election Mrs. Sarah Palin from Alaska and a member of the Tea Party-a bloc in the Republican party which does not disguise its xenophobia – was the Vice presidential candidate of the Republican party when Senator John McCain was the party’s presidential candidate.

On the other hand, David Duke of the KKK was a former one term Republican Louisiana State Representative. David Duke of KKK ran as a Republican in the Governorship election in Louisiana State in 1991. So the Republican Party has been in bed with political forces with xenophobic and racist inclinations for quite some time.

Some leaders of the Republican Party have tried to distance the party from Donald Trump’s racism and xenophobia. For example, Mitt Romney, the candidate of the Republican party in the 2012 elections called Trump a fraud and a phony character, while Paul Ryan the Republican speaker of the house of representative and the chair person of the Republican Convention Committee has said there is no place for racism in what he Ryan, called the party of Lincoln (i.e. Republican party).

But such evocation of the name of Abraham Lincoln to save and burnish the Republican party may be coming too little too late because the party of Abraham Lincoln may be on its way to jointly with Klu Klux Klan present someone who promotes Racism, Hate and Xenophobia against our common humanity as their candidate in the 2016 elections.

On the other side of the political aisle is the front-runner of the Democratic Party-Secretary Hillary Clinton. She said America has never stopped being great, but that we all must make America Whole. In the middle of Donald Trump’s darkness Secretary Clinton’s comment seems to be a light at the end of the tunnel for Americans and the world at large.

In this 2016 American election, it has become clear that one of the central questions is whether the United States of America will continue to make herself Whole by continuing to heal a racist past steeped in the evils of the transatlantic slavery by not returning to a racist past to which Donald Trump wants to take her or whether the voters will vote for a return to a racist past.

Americans have a choice – (i) to listen to the voice of Martin Luther King, (ii) make America Whole like Secretary Clinton has said, or (iii) make America “great” by returning America to racism, fascism, 21st century slavery in promotion of the Nazi and Klu Klux Klan’s and Benito Mussolini’s fascist ideology whose tweet and message Mr. Donald Trump, the Republican party candidate re-tweeted gleefully.

While elections are domestic affairs of each country, and Americans are free, and have the right to elect anyone as their president, the world also has a moral right on behalf of our common humanity to watch to see who will become the next face of the United States of America between a fascist and a racist, supported by the Klu Klux Klan or a unifier of people who asks us to break down barriers and make America whole. The choice is stark.

On moral ground, there is no middle ground between light and darkness, between (i) permanently ending fascism and racism and their evils or (ii) returning the world to a fascist and racist era.

As Americans speak, all citizens of the world and the world must watch and speak for the sake of our common humanity.

Adeolu Ademoyo, aaa54@cornell.edu, is with the Africana Studies and Research Center, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY.