John Minchillo/AP Photo
The National Mall before the storming of the U.S. Capitol, January 6, 2021, in Washington, D.C.
After seven long days of how-did-this-happen-here recriminations, Donald J. Trump entered the history books as the only president to be impeached twice, the worst president in American history, and the only one to incite an attempted coup. In the House of Representatives, boos rained down on Rep. Cori Bush of Missouri, a victim of police abuse, sexual violence, and more, after she called for rooting out white supremacy starting with the white supremacist-in-chief. When Bush learned that Republican members of Congress may have given tours to the rioters, she warned the threat was already inside.
None of that mattered to Republican House members. Neither did the nooses, the Confederate flags, the zip ties, bear spray, pepper spray, and pipe bombs. Nor did white insurrectionists calling Black police “nigger,” vows to spread the mayhem to all 50 states, and having National Guard troops bivouacked in and around the Capitol. Only ten of their number voted for sanctions.
The rest of the House Republicans bloviated about unity and coming together in their all-too-predictable defenses of four indefensible years. As they speechified in the Chamber, not far away in the executive mansion, the object of their undying loyalty watched TV, raged at the traitors—beginning with his vice president—who’d deserted him, and ranted about an election he did not win, much as Shakespeare’s Richard III cursed those who’d run out on him and the fickleness of blind loyalty.
On January 6th, our Second Civil War began with an insurrection the likes of which haven’t been seen since the last war on American soil. That white members of Congress indulge those who want to bring about a Trump dictatorship is chilling, but not a revelation to anyone paying attention. And African Americans are always paying attention, because our lives and livelihoods depend on it.
Why aren’t African Americans surprised? Four hundred years of experience has induced a certain skepticism about American exceptionalism, that special brand of democratic idealism, tied with a red, white, and blue bow with stars and stripes and packaged for export to the unsuspecting in faraway places. On January 6th, the rest of the world got to experience in real time the vicious and uncivilized strain of white America that Black Americans know in their bones.
Navigating white anger is a skill set passed down since the time that Blacks were loaded up on ships like so much cord wood and dragged off to be sold like chattel. For hundreds of years, survival for Black Americans has meant learning to decode the signs of impatience, hostility, and threat from white people. It remains to this day a life-or-death calculation.
That anyone who holds the reins of power, political, commercial, or economic, failed to see this moment coming is a testimony to both their hubris and ignorance of history. On the eve of the 20th century, as the vestiges of Reconstruction petered out, white mobs clad in red descended on the town of Wilmington, North Carolina, to drive out the whites and Blacks who’d been elected to office in a biracial coalition. Dozens of Black people were killed and many others fled into the surrounding wilderness to escape.
There is a straight line from Wilmington to Washington, D.C. Whites who are shocked by what happened last week fail to grasp the deep-seated white resentment against the very existence of Black people. The victories for equality in the 1860s and 1960s aren’t something for many whites to celebrate but to eradicate. White supremacy had flourished in the shadows for decades, but fear of a Black president unleashed it. And now a faction gleefully brandishing the symbols of people who fought and lost a civil war generations ago in the cause of preserving and extending slavery is strong enough to use force to back a would-be tyrant who lost an election.
Donald J. Trump is the fullest expression of white supremacy’s authoritarian impulses. He has renewed and now passed on America’s distinct legacy of race hatred and white supremacy. In the 2016 campaign, he exhibited for all to see the racism, the conniving, the obsession with punitive policing, and the complete lack of interest in the nation’s actual challenges—health care, infrastructure, and climate—save as rhetorical devices. He was on to something and played to the cheap seats.
He had a recipe for civil unrest, for “American carnage,” and presented it as president on January 20, 2017. Particularly in the last year of his term, he found plenty of willing followers ready to spread hatred—laced with COVID-19 for good measure. If carnage was a measure of presidential success, he would be the most successful chief executive and chaos agent in American history.
Black people expected the insurrection that crept up on the rest of America. White pride is the banner that was paraded through the Capitol, hoisted on a flagpole, draped over shoulders, worn as a talisman and used as a weapon. That weapon is still hanging in the air, poised to sever America from democracy. Every transgression that Donald Trump commits has brought that threat closer. He has plenty of time left as president, and beyond, to command and commit mayhem.
In her short impeachment speech, Rep. Maxine Waters of California said that Trump could start a civil war. She was mistaken.
It's already under way.
