It’s fascinating to live in a world that castigates black people for critically interrogating their representatives. This is the same world that, for the last four years, has worked tirelessly to depict Donald Trump as a racial anomaly autonomous from whiteness as a whole. Trump’s gauche rhetoric, limited vocabulary, and overt racism and prejudices embarrass the white ideal that encapsulates many Americans and those who only know the continent through it’s self-proclaimed status as a dreamer’s space. To many, Trump does not meet the social standards for the dreamer and therefore compromises the dream’s global affect. Yet, the public does not castigate whites for opposing Trump as their representative or even as their leader. Instead, the public joins the majority, and now, critiquing and challenging Trump is national sport. As a national pastime, censuring Trump is both encouraged and a portrait of a country seemingly united under a shared enemy; however, what America exhibits is a shared standard for whiteness as a performance.

• 

• 

• 

Though seemingly united in public ridicule, Trump’s castigation illuminates a standard for anti-black racism, or a national decorum for denigrating the dark race. Thus, while anti-trump, this anti-black praxis is only seemingly anti-white nationalism, whereas in reality this national sport conceals a white nationalist core. What I mean here, is that castigating Trump delineates standards for anti-black racism, not a demand for anti-blackness’ abolishment. Trump as a topic of criticism reveals that many desire stealth racism, and hold whiteness in high regard. Specifically, Bill Clinton is an anti-black as they come, but he veils his racism and white nationalism with a pseudo amity. Moreover, this criticism calls for more Clintons than Trump, a distinction that is more synonymous that disparate. Particularly, there is as much distinction between Clinton and Trump as their is between the “super-predator” attack on black men that occurred during the Clinton administration in the 90s and Trump’s violent spread on the Central Park 5 in the late 80s. So while it seems that we have come together, national unity has once again occurred on the backs of the black collective.

Moreover, Trump’s censure remains encouraged because it foments white nationalism, whereas blacks castigating what exists to silence us through symbolism, functions as ignorance in a wold that needs blacks to second guess their cognitive strides toward intellectualism. Nevertheless, this is not the time to be silent; this is the time to speak up. This is not the time to second guess thoughts or feelings. This is the time to embrace all ideas and employ theses ideas to demand what an anti-black world hopes the black collective never even garners the courage to ask.