Back in 1936 after having honored the United States with four gold medals in front of Nazi Germany, when asked about Hitler, Jesse Owen reminded his interviewer that the U.S. president would not receive him either at the White House because he was black.
Shortly thereafter, World War II broke out in Europe causing one of history’s greatest human tragedies. America sent hundreds of thousands of its young men, black and white, to the front to help change the course of the war and reshape contemporary history. At the end of the war, the young American men returned and benefited from the greatest socioeconomic engineering campaign in American history, called the G.I. Bill. This program almost singlehandedly created the American middle class which has fueled the economy ever since. Excluded from these benefits were African Americans, with effects that are felt very much to this day, as described in Ta-Nahisi Coates’ The Case for Reparations.
Fast forward to 2016 and the White House looks like a very different place than it would have to Jesse Owens had he been treated any better by Roosevelt than he had been by Hitler.
So I don’t know what Mr. Trump is talking about. If we are going to make America better again, in which point of American history is he talking about? The one that wouldn’t let Jesse Owens into the White House? That of the Greatest Generation when our young men came back from the war to receive huge government benefits which built the middle class for White America only, while leaving Jim Crow in the South and housing discrimination in the North? It seems to me looking at the White House today that we are doing alright. At least those of us who aren’t complaining that we’re not so great anymore are doing just fine. We are doing just fine, thank you very much.
And watching the sitting President of the United States receive people at the White House to celebrate America’s unique cultural heritage, tell me whether you can think of a cooler place on Earth.
Grave Error 