“Make America Great Again,” Donald Trump’s 2016 campaign slogan, always irritated me. I felt that our country was great already – the greatest in the world. In the aftermath of the George Floyd murder, his niece showed me another point of view. She asked, “When has America ever been great?”
If your ancestors were held in slavery, if your children were sold for profit, or bound as collateral on loans as they were by Thomas Jefferson, this was not a great country.
If as recently as the 1950s you could not send your children to the schools, had relatives lynched, and could not stay overnight in many “Sundown Towns” around the country, this was not a great country.
And for minority citizens today, with the average African American income and housing far below that of white people, and their children watching black men strangled or shot by police while our president resists police reforms and refuses to condemn white supremacists, this is not a great country.
This has been a great country for my family through many generations, but for minority citizens, much work is needed before we all can equally say this is a great country. Donald Trump, the master of the racist dog whistle, is not the man for the job.
JAMES MOYER
Epsom