a gift so that the US economy could be built on their backs, with their stolen labor.
Besides, the way that stupid comment is phrased excludes "the African-American faith community" from the category of "America and its people." How can they be considered a "gift to America and its people" if they are part of America and its people?
Oh, man, this makes me so mad! I swear steam is pouring out of my ears.
I despise carelessly tossed around clichés anyway, but this jackass's cheesy clichés are spouted with no thought at all, no awareness of what the words mean and how disgustingly at odds they are with the reality that is the history of black enslavement, torture, and murder, which continues even now, along with ongoing social, economic, and political dispossession, disempowerment, and disenfranchisement that imposes a tax on every endeavor, every success.
As we have seen all too often, it doesn't matter how accomplished, successful, or celebrated a black person is. His or her accomplishments will be discounted as the result of affirmative action, and his or her success will be devalued by racist commentary and action.
Think of Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, a respected, world renowned academic/author/TV personality, who was badgered, disrespected, manhandled, and arrested for entering his own home in an upscale neighborhood and then failing to sufficiently "Yes, sir" the young racist cop who showed up to harass him after a white neighbor called the cops on him--because of course a black man had to be breaking into such a fancy house; he couldn't, you know, belong there!
Think of Charles Belk, the successful film producer handcuffed while on his way to a pre-Emmy party and forced to sit on the curb during rush hour by cops who claimed he "fit the description" of a man who had robbed a nearby bank (IOW, he was black):
Belk told NBC that he was “convinced that I would still be locked up” if he had not been able to reach an attorney.
“I get that the Beverly Hills Police Department didn’t know that I was a well educated American citizen that had received a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California, an MBA from Indiana University … and an executive leadership certificate from Harvard Business School <emphasis added>,” Belk said on Facebook. “Hey, I was ‘tall,’ ‘bald,’ a ‘male’ and ‘black,’ so I fit the description.”
“If something like this can happen to ME, it can certainly happen to ANYONE!” he wrote in the Facebook post, which was titled ‘When you ‘Fit the Description.’”
http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-producer-arrest-beverly-hills-20140827-story.html
Think of Harvard educated James Blake, the tennis star, who was violently tackled by a plain-clothes cop (who never bothered to identify himself) as he leaned against a wall and texted, because the cop saw a black man and automatically assumed he
must be the criminal they were investigating for credit card fraud:
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/more-sports/ex-tennis-star-james-blake-mistakenly-tackled-white-cops-article-1.2353983
Retired black tennis star James Blake, in an NYPD double-fault, was slammed to a Manhattan sidewalk and handcuffed by a white cop in a brutal case of mistaken identity.
SNIP
“It was definitely scary and definitely crazy,” Blake told the Daily News. “In my mind there’s probably a race factor involved, but no matter what there’s no reason for anybody to do that to anybody.”
Blake, on his way to make a corporate appearance for Time Warner Cable at the U.S. Open, said none of white cops identified themselves, including the officer who charged straight at him and bounced him off the E. 42nd St. concrete around noon.
“Don’t say a word,” snapped the officer, who Blake said was not wearing a badge.
They are automatically assumed to be dangerous criminals, no matter how respectable and well-heeled they look, no matter how well-spoken they are, and no matter that they are not behaving in any suspicious way, not speaking rudely, and not resisting or running away when accosted by LEOs. Even worse, they aren't just arrested and handcuffed, but they are also treated rudely and brutalized, and if they dare to ask why they are being arrested, they are told to shut up and often beaten for daring to ask a question at all.
And then, of course, there is the disrespect and blatantly racist questioning of every single attribute of and accomplishment President Obama--including his citizenship--as well as those of his wife and daughters. Their intelligence, grace, dignity, and decency are evident, yet the racist yahoos endlessly deny that they have actually earned anything that they have accomplished.
How dare Trump say such a thing. Yeah, I know they were prepared remarks--prepared by someone else--and that he was just reading them aloud. But no one should dare say such a stupid, stupid thing when so much has been stolen and continues to be stolen from African-Americans.
Someone needs to smack that jackass upside the head with a smelly dead fish. And then they need to do it again, and again, and again.
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