I went to a funeral once where the person while eulogizing the decedent stated their year of birth and their year of death and emphasized all the living is in the hyphen. When you look back to the presidential election which took place on November 3, 2015 which elected donald trump as the 45th president and look at where we are now as a nation, as a people, as human beings, all the destruction is in the hyphen.
donald trump ran his campaign and presidency baiting the base hatreds, fears, evils and prejudices of citizens (majority white folks) that felt maligned by the country and its government. White folks that felt like Blacks and immigrants were getting too big for their britches and as as result putting their (white) way of life at risk. Data shows that white folks will in the coming decades be the minority. I believe their biggest fear is that as a minority they may be subjected to the behaviors that perhaps they exhibited when they thought all was right in the world and white folks ruled. Leading up to November 3, 2015 and for the four years following the United States of America saw rises in hate crimes, white folks who have apparently for years harbored these prejudices and hates were emboldened to display them every time an opportunity whether real or fabricated presented itself. Why? because the person in the White Hose spewed the same rhetoric. he brought voice and validation to what they always believed to be true, that if you are not white you are not right but rather lessor than. They wanted to "Make America Great Again". One can only assume this meant the return to the pre-civil rights era. A return to a time when white folks were unquestioned in anything they did. When blacks and browns and immigrants were overtly disadvantaged, redlined, red circled, discrimintated against, kept out of housing, education, medical care, access to financing, good jobs all the things that are supposed to be the American dream. A dream not always available to everyone.
The neo-nazi, white supremacist found a leader that "legitimatized" them. They had to be legit, he was the president and he supported their views. And with that it became open season on any non-white folks, non-european immigrants, queer folks and other white folks that didn't and don't share their beliefs and ideologies.
This hyphen represents for me some of the darkest times in America.
During this period it became open season on Black men, women and children. The killings carried out by the very folks hired to protect the community. Cops killed Black men and boys for just the mere fact that they were Black. The killings that brought this all to a head were George Floyd and Breonna Taylor. George Floyd who was executed on national tv.
There were scores ahead of him. And each time the victim was demonized, marginalized or criminalized all for the purpose of rationalizing of the actions of the cops and the downplay of the severity of the killing epidemic. Social media was flooded with videos of white folks fighting with cops, pulling their weapons, stealing their cars and living to screw up another day. In contrast social media was also flooded with black men and women being pulled from their cars for traffic violations and being tased, and beaten and shot while cops yelled stop resisting to handcuffed folks that were either not moving or dead. It became evident that Black Lives didn't Matter in this country and after Ferguson and Baltimore and other cities around the country that began to see the outright attack on the black community, the Black Lives Matter organization grew. It was met with All Lives Matter and Blue Lives Matter all again looking to minimize and rationalize and discredit what was happening to people of color in this country. But when a white cop put his knee to the neck of a black man laying on the ground, hands cuffed behind his back posing no threat and the cop kept his knee there on that mans neck for 7 minutes executing him on national tv it was the capping moment. Only to be followed by a group of white cops showing up at the home of a black woman Breonna Taylor and shooting her in her own own home. The attack was based on a no knock warrant looking for a person already in custody who did not reside at the home. And those cops walked away unscathed. There were so many other incidents before and many many after -folks accosted, brutalized, killed for jogging while Black, driving while Black, sleeping while Black, working while Black...Living Black. The summer of 2019 was filled with protest that were peaceful in nature but in some situations erupted into violence. There was rioting and looting. While that behavior was not the majority of activity that occurred it was what was primarily focused on. What didn't get as much scrutiny were the infiltrators that started much of the violence. BLM was then labeled by trump as a terrorist group while he referred to neo-nazis that killed a person in Charlotte as "very fine people". trumps pied piper affect on his followers would keep this country in crisis from November 3, 2015 until January 6,2020 when his followers at his behest staged an insurrection, an all out attempt to overturn the 2020 election results which ousted trump from office.
As I write I understand this is so high level it doesn't do justice to the full gravity of the situation and environment in which we had been living. It was 4 years of terror.
