The famous 1968 Kerner Commission, called to make sense of Black people rising up against U.S. injustices in the 1960s, concluded, “Our nation is moving toward two societies, one Black, one white—separate and unequal.”
The commission’s report went on to outline a clear and easy choice America had, similar to the one voters face this election: honor this nation’s grand proclamations of its founding documents about freedom and justice and liberty for all… or don’t:
“Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American. This deepening racial division is not inevitable. The movement apart can be reversed. Choice is still possible. Our principal task is to define that choice and to press for a national resolution. To pursue our present course will involve the continuing polarization of the American community and, ultimately, the destruction of basic democratic values.”
“It is time now to turn with all the purpose at our command to the major unfinished business of this nation. It is time to adopt strategies for action that will produce quick and visible progress. It is time to make good the promises of American democracy to all citizens – urban and rural, white and black, Spanish-surname, American Indian, and every minority group.”
The crazy thing is that in the 2024 election, Vice President Kamala Harris vs. 34-time convicted felon Donald Trump is a choice between America’s reality and America’s aspiration—i.e., what this country really is vs. what it proclaims and supposedly aspires to be.
In a word, Harris and Trump are symbolic of two radically different American pasts and futures. We best choose wisely.
Mediocracy vs. Meritocracy
Trump represents America’s reality—the celebration of lies it tells itself and the truth behind those lies. America promotes itself as a meritocracy, where people of the greatest merit, work ethic, determination, grit, and best ideas are the ones who “make it.” But in reality, America is a “mediocracy,” where middling, supremely average and below beings are catapulted to prominence due to race, wealth, gender, etc., things that have zero to do with merit and ability.
Trump, the D student whose father bought Trump’s way out of military service, is the poster child for this American “mediocracy” that fronts as superior and belittles the far superior credentials of Black and Brown folk and women who dare challenge this lie.
Harris is a perfect example of an overqualified sister who, in a real meritocracy, would win this election in a landslide. Yet her resume is questioned and dismissed. But she symbolizes the aspirations of what America says it is on paper.
Racism or Righteousness
Trump represents this nation’s racist and sexist founding history (and current reality). Trump symbolizes America’s centuries old efforts to front like it possesses a colorblind justice system that promotes and protects equality for all, but actually enacts a system blind to justice. A system founded on stealing labor and innovations and lives from Blacks for hundreds of years, then telling the world Blackfolk are lazy. A system that made it illegal for Blacks to learn to read, then later (up to this day) purposely underfunded and under-resourced Black schools, then labeled Blackfolk intellectually inferior. A system that said all you need is grit and work ethic to succeed, and every time Blacks showed that and built multiple Black Wall Streets, white domestic terrorists bombed and burnt them down… then call Blackfolk social leeches unwilling to do anything for themselves. A system that purposely generates unequal access to healthcare, food apartheid, criminal justice system injustices, etc., yet swears an even playing field exists… and that all that 400-plus years of racism, white domestic terrorism, etc. is just “woke” misinformation used to make little white children feel bad.
Trump represents all that: the bad, the ugly and the uglier, and supported with the guns, badges, judges and laws of a reportedly colorblind justice system that has never, ever existed on these shores.
Harris symbolizes this country’s reported aspirations of being a “We the People,” “Justice for all,” multicultural society. Her own lineage, along with the groups she’s worked with and for, speak to this, as well as her upbringing and life experiences. Harris has risen to prominence despite societal barriers erected to keep her rise from happening. Trump’s ruse as a successful “whatever,” a lie believed by millions, reveals the ugly reality we face.
Violence versus Votes
Trump relies on and appeals to the basest beliefs and lowest impulses of so many of America’s citizens—beliefs and impulses that have been here since before America was called America. Thus, it only makes consistent sense that Trump’s “trump card” is a call to violence. Violence has been what this land has used from Day 1 to now to keep all its undesirables in check. Violence against the “others” is literally who and what America is.
The late political scientist and academic Samuel P. Huntington said this: “The West won the world not by the superiority of its ideas or values or religion… but rather by its superiority in applying organized violence. Westerners often forget this fact; non-westerners never do.”
Huntington was speaking on America’s global actions, but the same logic applies to what America has done within it’s own borders. Just replace “Westerners” with “Believers in the myth of white supremacy” and “non-westerners” with “people of color” and re-read Huntington’s words.
Reliance upon the vote and belief in its power to allow outsiders an inroad to the country’s promises of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” is foundational to aspirational America; the aspirational America Harris promotes. In real-deal America, however, the wealthy not only buy votes, they purchase U.S. senators and own Supreme Court Justices. Their wealth allows them to short-circuit the will of the people and do whatever the hell they want, laws and democratic values be damned. They then back it up with physical, political, social, etc. violence.
That’s Trump in a nutshell.
Ignorance vs. Intelligence
Trump is a notoriously “non-curious” individual. In other words, he’s extremely comfortable with his limited knowledge, because he believes whatever he knows is right and superior to anything anyone else knows no matter their level of expertise and commitment to lifelong learning, research, study, experiences, and deep contemplation.
His belief in the superiority of his whiteness allows him to believe any nonsensical thought he holds in his head to be directly from white nationalist God and NRA Jesus.
This commitment to ignorance is seen in this nation’s absolute fear of history, science, research, and inquiry. The real America, the one behind the mask, thrives on fairy tale lies and untruths, breathing life into its zombie corpse. And it has gone to war from jump street with real history and actual facts.
The America of aspiration is an HBCU graduate from Oakland thirsty for all the book learning and applying it and more to build a hard-earned career of fighting the powers that be. That America wants all the histories (the good, the bad, and the ugly) and all the smoke. Because that kind of smoke signals a fire and desire to not seek for life’s mountains to be removed, but rather for the strength to climb.
Aspirational America “ain’t scared” of the fact that religion, art, science and civilization began in ancient Kemet (Africa), and that America doesn’t even exist without Black genius.
And More
Trump’s America pimps faith for white nationalist favor and a modern-day apartheid white minority rule. It valorizes meanness, violence, and shameless cruelty, belittling people, ideals, and whole faith systems. Aspirational America doesn’t even realize that it wants and needs to heed the voice of African wisdom that says there’s one God known by many names, and that theirs is a common humanity worth fighting for.
That better America, that non-existent America, cringes at the cruelty this nation has so generously doled out over the centuries and continues to the present. This America that seeks birth, can be seen and felt in the joy and humanity Harris brings to the campaign trail and service in general.
Funding
Trump’s America is funded by the 1% of the 1% of the 1%. And they seek to maintain a world that bends the knee to their wills and desires. Harris’s America is funded by a lot of wealthy folk too, but also by the dreams of people who barely have two nickels to rub together. Dreams of the working poor who work two, three, and four jobs just to stay poor, seeking a living wage. Dreams of folk who want their humanity recognized so healthcare becomes a right, not a privilege. Dreams of folk who have bore the lash of this racist land yet foolishly believe in its promises nonetheless.
Folk say this election is between democracy and dictatorship. I agree. Yet, it’s about so much more, too. It’s about the choice laid out by the Kerner Commission many moons ago—a nation that makes good on the promises of American democracy to all citizens or the one we’ve been living in for the past 240-some-odd years.
