If we are really honest with ourselves as Caribbean people, it should not matter one way or the other whether the United States gets a new administration; but if you happen to be a black Caribbean person who sees the bigger moral picture, then yes, Trump should have been gone long ago and good riddance to him.
I will not here regale my trickle of readers with an index of all that the former president did while in office, including distorting facts, spouting racist rhetoric that emboldened those Whites who had long kept quiet in their hatred of Blacks, and cosying up to the “religious right” who swallow a camel but strain at a gnat by being indignant about admittedly ungodly gay lifestyles and abortion but have no qualms about keeping minorities living in slave-like conditions or being ravaged by the deadly pandemic.
Nor will I blast the former president for describing the Holy Continent and Haiti as “s…hole countries” while determinedly advancing his mission to build a long wall in order to keep out Mexicans.
However, I am on the side of right and the value and dignity of people, so I welcome anyone replacing a president who flouted sexual immorality, threatened people who may not have had orange hair (lol), and basically repeated charges about a rigged election without a shred of evidence. Let me not even elaborate on the climax of his incendiary rhetoric: an armed attack on the Capitol which was basically domestic terrorism in the form of an insurrection by his supporters; had it been a Black Lives Matter protest, a bloodbath would have ensued.
I know little to nothing of Joe Biden, but at his side I see a vice president who looks like my people; and this is important because it comes against the backdrop of the revival of white supremacy once latent but brought to the fore again by Trump and his allies, thereby dividing the United States along racial lines. We who argue for racial equality did not start the inequality, and it pains me to say that if democracy had not won in this last presidential election that country might well be preparing for a return to Jim Crow law or civil war by now; and even the latter is not farfetched in light of how far Trump’s supporters are prepared to go.
Were I a US citizen, I would have voted for anyone – any person black, white, Jew or Greek – running against the last president.
Therefore, I hail today as a victory for those on the side of righteousness and fairness and truth, and I wait to see how the new administration performs. Will their actions benefit me? Probably not, but it is not about me but about a return to order and truth and love of people; all people, as opposed to an agenda driven by hate, division and indignant self-righteousness and conservativism masquerading as “law and order”.
I wait.
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