By: Donald V. Watkins
Copyrighted and Published on July 21, 2024
An Editorial Opinion
The Donald J. Trump-led MAGA political movement in America does not want to experience “wokeness.” In fact, MAGA rails against all forms of "wokeness."
Based upon American history, very bad things happened to women and minorities whenever angry white Americans railed against “wokeness.” Here are ten examples of such bad things:
Between 1942 and 1946, more than 120,000 Japanese Americans were rounded up and place in concentration camps for no cause and without legal recourse. Korematsu v. United States (1944).
For over two hundred years in America, women had no rights over their bodies. They were the "property" of men. Married men could rape their wives and beat them with impunity. Doctors could impose forced sterilization upon poor women in mental institutions and prisons. A woman's right to an abortion did not exist.
Blacks had no rights that white men were bound to respect. Dred Scott v. Sandford (1857).
Native Americans were described as “merciless Indian savages” in the Declaration of Independence and millions of them were slaughtered by colonial militias and armies of white men and vigilantes over a 300-year period from 1612 to 1912.
In 1970, the U.S. military prepared a plan for the national internment of Black Americans who were deemed to be militant and a threat to white supremacy.
Asian immigrants (i.e., Chinese, Japanese, and any other oriental country) were banned outright or restricted from entering America by the Page Act of 1875, the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882, the Geary Act of 1892, and Immigration Act of 1917.
Up to 1.5 million non-white Mexican Americans and other non-white Hispanic migrants living in the U.S. legally and illegally were rounded up and deported in 1954 during “Operation Wetback.”
In 1964, the FBI tried to force Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., into committing suicide during the Bureau's infamous COINTELPRO program (1956 to 1971). Today, Dr. King is a national hero.
The Montgomery, Alabama-based Equal Justice Initiative documented 4,084 "racial terror lynchings" in twelve Southern states (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, and Virginia) between the end of Reconstruction in 1877 and 1950. Another 300 "racial terror lynching" occurred in Illinois, Indiana, Kansas, Maryland, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, and West Virginia during this period. In California and the Old West, the lynching victims were usually Hispanic Americans, Native Americans, and Asian Americans.
On May 31, 1921, an angry lynch mob of 1,500 white men invaded “Black Wall Street” in Greenwood, Oklahoma, shooting and killing hundreds of black residents on the spot. Later estimates put the death toll as high as 3,000. The mob destroyed 1,500 homes and burned down the Greenwood business district, thereby wiping out over 600 successful black-owned businesses. After two days of mob violence, “Black Wall Street" was gone.
What part of this American experience was "great," and for whom? It certainly was not "great" for me while I was experiencing the America depicted in the photo below as a young child and teenager growing up in Montgomery, Alabama.
Thankfully, God populated my life with: (a) loving parents who were able to explain this open racial hatred to me while I was a young child, (b) a childhood pastor (Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.) who taught me how to shower my haters with "agape love," and (c) a multiracial constellation of true friends who lifted me up as I traveled life's journey.
Of course, it is illegal today to teach these ten historical facts in public schools located in MAGA-controlled, Deep South, "Red States." We all know why.
Remember, I told you so! https://nypost.com/2024/07/24/us-news/university-of-alabama-shutters-dei-offices-joining-texas-florida-schools-in-kicking-wokeness-off-campus/
For thousands of years, there have been rulers, monarchs, and political figures who have tried to return their people to the so-called "glory days" of the past. In the annals of recorded history, none has succeeded.
Every now and then, somebody has to tell the truth about the ugly chapters in American history, especially when others are trying to reimagine it.
History teaches us that people who travel through life without a moral compass will crash and burn every time. It also teaches us that those who do not know their history are doomed to repeat it.
The greatest amount of incest, child sex abuse, child exploitation in the workforce, and child neglect occurred during America's centuries-long period of anti-wokeness.