Racism Was Invisible to Him … Until It Targeted His Family

MAGA’s Racism Was Invisible to Him … Until It Targeted His Family

Comedian Michelle Wolf tells a funny story about racism. Her partner is a Black man, and she says sometimes dating a Black man really puts things into perspective for her.

She’ll say she’ll come home and see her partner upset because of another police-related shooting, and meanwhile, she’ll complain about her day at the office and being belittled and called a girl, not a woman.

Racism Becomes Real Up Close

It’s a hilarious story, but it puts into perspective how some white people realize the realities of the indignities that Black people suffer when they have close relationships with them.

I’ve seen this before from friends I’ve had. When they see what I go through, it opens their eyes. And this is the ugly reality about racism in the Western world. Many, I would say most, white people do not have an understanding of the struggles that Black people go through until it comes into their lives and becomes real.

A great example of this is Prince Harry. I’m sure his eyes were opened by the racism hurled at his wife, Meghan.

Several years ago, I wrote an article interviewing Dr. Gabe Crenshaw, a Black USC psychologist, who said he’s counseled white parents who have adopted Black boys and had to adapt to the realities of raising a child in an environment where much of society sees their child as a threat.

This issue was recently raised by a statement from New York Times columnist David French on the “The Fifth Column” podcast. French is getting dragged online for saying adopting a Black child from Ethiopia awakened him to the realities of racism.

“All of a sudden, I realized that I’d been in a bubble and that my white, educated, upper-middle-class bubble in the South had really intentionally screened out racism,” French said on the podcast.

However, French’s late realization about the reality of racism points to a bigger problem with conservatives: An issue is only real when it affects them.

The Dark Racist Underbelly of MAGA

It’s ironic because French lives in Tennessee, the heart of the South. He was shocked at some of the indignities his daughter faced, such as being almost run down by a group of rednecks in a truck.

I’ve read some of French’s work, and he’s been extremely critical of the MAGA movement, even though he’s a conservative. In response to his criticism of the Orange God, he’s received death threats and racist messages saying that his daughter should be put in an oven.

“I saw firsthand the dark racist underbelly of MAGA before a lot of other people did,” French said during an appearance on “Stay Tuned with Preet.” He said that racism later “metastasized” within the larger conservative movement.

I recently listened to a podcast critique French’s naivety about race by former ESPN presenter Jemele Hill. She was amazed at how he could be so ignorant of the realities of racism, especially since he was born in 1969. Hill said French was a product of a cloistered upbringing and the American education system that skims over this country’s racial history.

But the rise of Donald Trump and his fomenting of white resentment is proof that racism hasn’t gone away. And at the rate things are going with Trump’s mental decline, I’m sure he won’t get out of the White House without publicly saying the N-word.

What’s the moral of this story? Listen to Black people. We’ve been telling the truth about racism for a long time. Millions of us can’t all be telling the same lie.

**Buy me a Kofi.**