this story first run in the New Vision of Friday August 28th, 2020
Sometime during the late eighties, I attended a get together of basketball players at the home of one of the American Baptist missionaries that had set up camp in Kampala. It was an informal meet, with a barbeque in the garden and plenty of drinks (of the right type). In attendance was a diplomat from the American embassy, and we chatted about everything American.
We all liked Americans, of course; they were a breath of fresh air from the very stuffy and stuck-up up Brits, we played basketball with them, and they made a fantastic barbeque. We couldn’t understand why then, others wanted to bomb them out of existence.
The American diplomat tried his best to explain to his audience of college students the intricacies of world politics. We probably didn’t understand much of what he said, or maybe, being the diplomat that he was, never actually said much. But we had a great time, and went out afterwards and played a great pick-up game of basketball.
Like that bunch of wide-eyed college students, many people in the world loved Americans. Even if Europeans insist Americans are loud, abrasive and talk with food in their mouths, hey, they had saved the world not once, but twice from the Germans and then the Japanese.
America had given us soul music, Motown and the Jackson Five, and we loved it for that. The NBA probably got more Africans liking America than the aid that was given to the countries to fight all kinds of inequalities. Magic Johnson, Kareem Abdul-Jabaar, Michael Jordan – damn, we loved us some America.
We watched the Blaxploitation films with glee, tried to walk like John Shaft, and couldn’t get enough of that poster of Pam Grier in a tight top and an Afro from the film Coffy. And the civil rights movement seemed cool and romantic, even as white policemen broke heads of the then Negroes (they would later become Black Americans, and then African-Americans) as the latter fought for a better life in the supposed land of the free.
I have lived and travelled widely in the USA, and somehow I have never been subjected to overt racism. Or maybe it was too subtle for me, just a guy passing through, to notice.
But I now regret the numerous arguments and debates I’ve had with African-Americans; and my stance that, in spite of its failing, America was still the greatest country in the world. I knew about the racism, and the inequality that a history of slavery had left. But hey, this was America, land of the free and the brave, surely they will work it out.
When they elected a black man as President, who for eight years was leader of the most powerful nation in the world, our cups overflowed; and we knew, just as those old Negro slaves had sung, that a change was surely going to come.
Then they elected Donald J. Trump, and in four short years, all that we had loved about America has gone sour. If Trump had become a leader of any other nation in the world, I still would have disliked him intensely.
Almost everything I don’t like in a person is enshrined in the personality of the American President. He is a bully, a liar, a racist, a pathological narcissist, not very smart, and tries to influence people through populism. I have never liked people that try to ingratiate themselves through life; if I meet you for the first time and you’re smiling like we’ve known each other for years, chances are I will not greet you ever again.
So how did he become President of the USA? How did we even get here? This is not the America we had loved and thought was the best country in the world. The America that voted Donald Trump was not the America of those jovial Baptist missionaries that played a mean game of basketball, but then made you sloppy joes afterwards.
To many of us, it was always the greatest and most powerful country in the world, so what other greatness were they looking for in Donal Trump? Sadly, we found out that the greatness some Americans wanted was the preservation of the entrenched white privilege.
It was disheartening to see a country that fought in two world wars to keep the world free, kowtow to the Russians and show love to dictators. It was sad to see the most powerful country in the world lose almost all of its allies, because of a megalomaniac President. And it was most horrible to see a country that built its greatness on the shoulders of immigrants, turn against them and put them in cages.
But maybe we should be glad that Donald Trump showed up when he did. All that nascent racism that had been simmering just under the surface has mainly come out now, and a way will be found to deal with it.
Sad as the death of George Floyd was, it probably was the trigger that will make America truly great; when it finally faces its racist past, and makes the amends that are needed.
Stella might have got her groove back in that 1998 film, but sadly America has lost any groove it had. If I was a religious person, I would say that even God was tired of Trump’s America, and sent the covid-19 to get rid of him. It is funny and ironic that many religious Americans thought that God had sent Trump to lead them to their ‘promised land’ of eternal white privileges. Don’t hold your breath, folks.
kalungikabuye 
Racism has moved from the overt and violent clashes of the past into a more insidious form today. George Wallace was dangerous, Bull Connor advocated violence. Men like that were amateurs. While they were posing and bellowing in a way that invited certain federal intervention, Northern cities were practicing a quiet version of racism that made them look like rank amateurs. New York had redlining that was more effective than any Jim Crow law. Chicago divided its neighborhoods with highway projects that were as precise as a scalpel and stood far longer than any line of armed state troopers. Those old warriors of southern segregation in the 50’s were silenced by the country’s white majority who found those men to be crass, garish, and repugnant. Meanwhile, those same northerners went to sleep every night in monolithic white communities that Dixiecrats only dreamed of.
The Civil Rights Movement flourished at a time of growing economic opportunity and open rebellion against the federal government by segregationists. It ground to a halt when faced with the long-term economic recession of the last forty years as economic gains have ground to a halt for most Americans.
That early feeling of hope has been pushed to the side has exposed the old hate that never really healed. It has found a voice in a President who takes that fear and hate and encourages people to wear it like a badge of honor. Or in this case, a red hat.
In the short term, this dangerous new politics is something we need to resist. We need to offer sane alternatives like civil rights leaders did when America was striving to be better…when it had its groove. In the long term, this ideology is better exposed and revealed for the poison that is is.
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