I Was Just Thinking….My July 4th Letter to U. S. President

By: Norma Adams-Wade

I feel like writing to the United States President on this July 4th holiday.

Of course, you, the public, will not read this missive until later when it is publicly circulated.

Still, here goes my conversation with our national leader.

Hello, Mr. President.

I use that title “Mr. President” with respect for the office you hold – and for all your predecessors who I choose to believe served our country with deliberate integrity.

You are number 47 among that noble parade extending back more than two centuries when Lieutenant General George Washington was our first U. S. President 1789.

Community celebrations vs bigotry

Today, of course, is when our nation celebrates its independence from British rule. Fireworks, public gatherings, special meals, flag displays…all these activities and symbols are front and center today.

At the same time, though, a lot of hate, bigotry, conflict, power grabs, and greed are equally spotlighted today.

Not that they haven’t been always. But currently, those undesirable traits are no longer hidden. Like the proverbial KKK hoods that covered faces in the past, all hoods are off today.

The majority of us are not confused by what you and your minions mean when you say, “Make American Great Again.” We interpret your meaning as, put people of color and the underprivileged back “in our place” and under your thumb, then American will be great again.

Interestingly, the July 4th special day comes not too long after the Juneteenth celebration. Just to remind you – because I’m convinced you already have eliminated the information from all your history books — Juneteenth commemorates June 19, 1865 when enslaved descendants of Motherland Africa in Texas learned that two year previously in 1863, U. S. President Abraham Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation ending slavery and making the nation’s enslaved people free. Texas powerbrokers had kept that information hidden so they could continue profiting from the free labor of enslaved Africans. Greed and cruelty on public display.

But I was just thinking… the burning question, Mr. President, is where is your heart today?

On some occasions I have pitied you, feeling that your childhood, for whatever reason, left wounds that fuel your current hateful behavior toward others.

I quickly have to acknowledge that you are not alone in your heartlessness toward people of color and humans who have little or no power or money. Far from it.

Many love you for your hate

Countless individuals — hate- filled fringe groups and far-right extremists – seem to admire and hold you in high esteem because of your behavior toward the downtrodden.

We’ve all heard some of the names: Proud Boys, Oath Keeper, right-wing Christian Nationalists, Islamophobics, white supremacist militia.

In 2016, the racist Ku Klux Klan’s official newspaper endorsed you for president. You did, however, quietly reject the endorsement sometime later – likely and wisely, perhaps, accepting counsel from your advisers.

Few people without money and power seem to escape your disdain. There are various examples that support the contention that your contempt covers groups that include immigrants, females with power, and anyone who fails to treat you like a king.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) is cursed in your administration – labeled as an unfair advantage for people of color. Likewise, was affirmative action that originally was designed to make employment hiring more racially equitable.

There are few African-Americans to be found in ranking positions in the Trump administration. Critics loudly proclaim, rightly or wrongly, that your administration is full of DEI hires that are not people of color, but your incompetent loyalists and puppets.

There are rare occurrences, such as Republican Scott Turner who is the current secretary of Housing and Urban and Development. He follows African American Republicans in previous administrations who also served in that position, including Ben Carson and Alphonso Jackson.

Trickle down attitudes, actions

An old adage states that attitudes and behaviors in corporations and organizations start at the top and trickle down to employees. Yet, there is little to no evidence that former Republican president Ronald Reagan’s “Trickle down” economics philosophy worked. Reagan’s theory was that if you improve the financial status of the
wealthy, their riches would trickle down to the poor. Not so.

Currently, society is reeling under government cut-backs and new legislation that pundits say will rob countless citizens of health coverage, food, housing aid, and put certain jobs and social security in danger of extinction.

Abominations include ordering libraries and museums to remove Black History books, and memorabilia.

Forbidding schools and universities to teach Black History courses. And threatening corporations and businesses with losing funding if they continue programs designed to help people of color attain equal footing and higher statue on their jobs.

The underlying motivation in all of this is fear – fear of losing white supremacy statue and power over traditionally marginalized people.

Statue of Liberty & Frederick Douglass

The Statue of Liberty was long revered for proclaiming “Give me your…huddled masses yearning to breathe free.” Now suspected undocumented immigrants are treated as dangerous criminals — yanked off streets and jobs in handcuffs by masked Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents, to be imprisoned or deported.

In his famous 1852 speech, prior to President Lincoln ending slavery more than a decade later in 1863, abolitionist Frederick Douglass poignantly asked, “What to the slave is the Fourth of July?” Douglass pointed out that while the nation celebrated, enslaved African descendants had nothing to celebrate while they remained in bondage.

In closing, Mr. President, I urge you to walk in the shoes of the unemployed, the single mother raising children alone, the elderly relying on social security, the unhoused with no roof over their head, the father smothered in bills, struggling to feed his family with pittance pay from his low-income job, the mentally ill who wander our streets talking to themselves since former President Reagan drastically cut federal funding in the early 1980s to the point where mental health facilities shut down putting the mentally on the streets.

So, where is your heart, Mr. president? We say the way to make America great is to finally live up to the July 4, 1776 Declaration of Independence creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men (and women) are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Add to that President Lincoln’s 1863 Gettysburg Address: “…our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men (and women) are created equal… that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.”

Norma Adams-Wade, is a proud Dallas native, University of Texas at Austin journalism graduate and retired Dallas Morning News senior staff writer. She is a founder of the National Association of Black Journalists. norma_adams_wade@yahoo.com.