Welcome to DU! The truly grassroots left-of-center political community where regular people, not algorithms, drive the discussions and set the standards. Join the community: Create a free account Support DU (and get rid of ads!): Become a Star Member All Forums Issue Forums Culture Forums Alliance Forums Region Forums Support Forums Help & Search

tulipsandroses

(5,092 posts)
Wed Jul 17, 2019, 11:37 PM Jul 2019

This land is OUR land, Donald Trump!

One of the best written articles I've read - re: Trump' s unpatriotic racist rhetoric
[link:https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/leonard-pitts-jr/article232738672.html|

The writer was on Lawrence O'Donnell earlier tonight.
Well worth the read.


Dear Donald Trump:

Years ago, I got to visit Kwethluk, an Alaskan town of fewer than 900 souls. It is an isolated place where the people, most of them Yup’ik and Eskimo, live on what the tundra provides: ptarmigan, moose, seal, salmonberries. I remember standing upon that snowbound landscape and marveling that I was further than I’d ever been from everything I’d ever known.

It was a feeling I’d had once before, at a village in Niger. But this was different, because I’d needed no passport to get to Kwethluk. Though I stood in a distant place with people who did not look like me and whose traditions were not like mine, the marvel of it was that I was yet standing with fellow citizens, together in our country. Because this was America, too.

I doubt you would have understood that. Your vision of what makes an American is too niggardly and cramped to allow it.


Best line of the article

But this has never been just your house, Donald, grandson of a German immigrant. It belongs to all of us, to every Yup’ik in Kwethluk, every Cuban in Miami, every black boy in Compton, every Muslim in Dearborn. We get to criticize it, we get to love it, we get to fight with it, we get to fight for it, because we built it. And we do not need your permission.

“Go back where you came from?” We’ve heard that one often. It is less an expression of geographic reality — again, three of the women you slurred were born in the USA — than it is of white fear. The notion that you live here on probation if you are black or brown is one of racism’s oldest canards. And it was not surprising to see members of your party offer tepid rebukes of your behavior or none at all, while stepping gingerly around the “r” word like a body on the sidewalk.

5 replies = new reply since forum marked as read
Highlight: NoneDon't highlight anything 5 newestHighlight 5 most recent replies
This land is OUR land, Donald Trump! (Original Post) tulipsandroses Jul 2019 OP
Do you have a link to the rest of it, please? The Velveteen Ocelot Jul 2019 #1
Oops! Link provided now tulipsandroses Jul 2019 #2
Thanks! The Velveteen Ocelot Jul 2019 #4
Thanks for this. yonder Jul 2019 #3
They Don't Own this Country-We All Do dlk Jul 2019 #5
Latest Discussions»General Discussion»This land is OUR land, Do...