Great Grandkids Make Life Great Again Signs

(CNN)Information technology matters that they wore "Brand America Smashing Again" hats.

I'grand talking well-nigh those high schoolhouse kids in the video that went viral over the weekend, the one that showed the immature men laughing and jeering while an older American Indian man drummed and sang. It seemed at first to be an obvious case of white bros interim shamefully, but then another, longer video showed the same meet with more than context and new characters -- a racist fringe group of black men, who identify equally members of the Hebrew Israelites, and who seemed to have been the chief provokers of tension and aggression.

This twist in the story gave the whole country a case of interpretive whiplash, feeding frenzied new rounds of argument over who the real victims were, and who was being disgraceful to whom.

But that's a pointless argue. Based on independent reporting, those students should share in the arraign, despite their denials stating they were innocent bystanders.

The Native American protester could accept inadvertently made things worse even if he was sincerely trying to calm things. The Hebrew Israelites hurled insults at but nearly everyone who crossed their path. We can even enquire why there weren't more adult chaperones to counsel those students to do the only sensible thing: shut up and walk abroad. That would have shown real courage and wisdom.

Have at information technology. Choose whichever facts that volition fuel your outrage. But I won't become involved in that considering the debate threatens to obscure a broader, more than important truth, that we are living through what feels like a "back to the back of the bus" moment for many people of colour.

That's why those MAGA hats affair.

That's why it matters that they were young white men representing the Christian faith supposedly for a march to emphasis the sanctity of all life -- while wearing those hats.

It matters that this occurred under a President who won his office by openly spouting bigoted rhetoric, who kicked off his campaign maxim Mexican immigrants were rapists and bringing crime, after spending several years spreading the bigoted conspiracy that the first black President wasn't fully American, and who defended white supremacists in Charlottesville, Virginia, every bit good people.

That context cannot be divorced from the image of the MAGA hat any more the Confederate flag tin be divorced from the brutality of chattel slavery. And withal, every Donald Trump apologist will effort to say otherwise -- that information technology's merely a lid, or that it is worn by dissimilar people for dissimilar reasons. How do I know? Because I've listened to like excuses in my native South Carolina most those who wear or fly the Amalgamated flag. They do and then to honor their ancestors, I've been told, or to embrace Southern heritage, or because they are exercising their First Subpoena rights.

The MAGA lid, like the Confederate flag, wouldn't arm-twist outraged reactions if it were only a piece of cloth that harkened back to bygone days never to be relived. But it isn't. It is a signifier for those who believe America was great during some point in the by they cartel non proper noun, knowing if they exercise, it would reveal a time when it was worse for people of colour. When was America "great"? When millions of black people were slaves? When hundreds of thousands of black men were sold to United states of america companies via convict leasing? Perchance during the heart of Jim Crow, the height of lynching, or when black people struggling with drug addictions were viewed as criminals to be controlled, not beau human beings needing help?

The Confederate flag wouldn't elicit such outrage if that flag didn't wing on statehouse lawns and in statehouse buildings and in other public spaces for so many decades, fifty-fifty into the 21st century. But it did, and does. That MAGA hat wouldn't elicit such outrage if Trump were just a man who used bigotry for his own ends, and a reality Idiot box star instead of President of the U.s.a.. Simply he is President of the United States.

That truth was underscored by this by weekend's events, which seemed to have begun with a exact confrontation between white students from a Southern Christian school and a small group of black men most Americans never heard of. The difference between the two: those students represented the demographic that well-nigh strongly supports Trump -- a human being who had the ability to substantially steal people's children at the border without knowing whether they would ever be returned to their families -- while the grouping of black protesters constituted literal street preachers shouting into the wind.

At that place's no way to sensibly defend the Hebrew Israelites. Their ugliness fanned the flames that became a storm this by weekend. Notwithstanding, in that location'due south an important element to the relative power represented by the Hebrew Israelites and the students from that by and large-white Catholic high school. Only i of them supports a man who has both spouted hate-filled language and has the ability to scroll back Obama-era oversight of law enforcement to curtail law brutality and unwanted shootings -- and that'southward the 1 those students chose to proudly align with.

That matters.

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Source: https://www.cnn.com/2019/01/21/opinions/maga-hat-has-become-a-potent-racist-symbol-bailey/index.html

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