With everything that is going on it is easy to get lost in sensationalism. We have to ask was something done in the past for all this to be happening now?? Now more than ever, if we are crying out about systemic unfairness and racism etc. We should be looking at the system and what policies got us here, ( laws and bills line by line), let us take a walk down memory lane, let’s say almost 25-30 years ago. These are the times when we should be asking, who, what, when, and how. Trump, is a scapegoat, a lot of people call him stupid and indirectly blame him for everything that is going wrong with the country now, he is the dumb president that somehow got into the highest office of the land. People also believe that somehow America was such a Utopia before Trump who just “messed” everything up.
Let us look at a few facts. I’d like to start with something that is connected to what is going on at the present moment, something very current. We all know black neighborhoods are over overpoliced, but where did it all start… I will like to go back to a set of policies put in place by the democratic party. President Bill Clinton first got into office in 1992, started his term from 1993-2001. Ah, the 42nd president some might even call him the first black president, he was so cool, he played the saxophone on the Arsenio Hall show, GREAT!!. In his 1993 state of the union address he asked for 100,000 more police officers,( this was his first year in office by the way) this was before the famous 1994 crime bill. Funny it is almost as if he had an agenda before getting into office ….
Then came the 1994 crime bill which was co-authored by Joe Biden, In the 1995 state of the union address he asked for 100,000 police officers again, then in 96 then in 98 and in 2000 guess what he did, after getting 100,000 police officers he asked for an additional 50,000, he told congress they should be focused on high crime areas. There you have it, over-policing was actually put in place by the one who least gets the blame.
This is not to say that over-policing did not exist before, it certainly did, we had the war on drugs, amongst others. but what this man did in his 8-year term was quite interesting, it is almost as if his presidency, ( when it came to blacks) was based on putting more black people in jail.
Isn’t it amazing that a few years after, we are now crying about police brutality and over-policing of black people? Most people won’t go back that far in history. In 8 years the democratic party gave us the crime bill, and extra police to go along with it. Yet there are a few people who believe that if Democrats were in power, all this wouldn’t have happened. President Barack Obama held a town hall meeting via zoom, about recent events yet he never mentioned once that all this started with the very party he supports. Believe it or not, Trump has taken steps to counter the 1994 crime bill which is the “The first step ACT. “ From Bill Clinton to George Bush to Barack Obama, Black people were still the most locked up In the country. Sadly Presidents like Bill Clinton made sure of that by signing the 1994 crime bill.
Let look at immigration. People use that as the argument against Trump, sort of a “gotcha” thing against him. Let us took a look, does anyone remember the Muslim ban? People acted as if they loved refugees and Muslims, people protested and marched just like anything else. Go back far enough, there was a time when every Muslim face was a suspect. The truth is most governors did not really want refugees in their states but somehow kept quiet about it while the marching and protesting were going on. Fun fact, the 7 countries Trump was being racist about? they were actually chosen by Obama. Obama was the one who ordered tough restrictions on people from those countries. Funny how he has been quiet through all this. Let go to another issue, it is still linked to immigration. Ah, the separation of the children at the border. This is a very complex issue. It is interesting to note that the separation started under Obama’s administration. Trump did start the zero-tolerance policy but it was under Obama that children were being locked up. No one seems to mind then. What the media isn’t saying is that the Obama administration is just as guilty as the Trump administration. Another fun fact, Obama had a nickname “deporter in chief”.
I’m sure we can guess he didn’t get such a nickname because he was pro” illegal immigrant”, something Trump was accused of.
Does anyone remember the famous picture of children’s faces down on the floor, in a chained cage? Well, that picture was taken in 2014. who was president in 2014???? I betting anyone $10.00 that it wasn’t Trump.
Finally, the wall that Trump wanted because he was a racist and crazy??
Another fun fact, most famous democrats you see today wanted a wall back in 2006. When Trump was debating Hillary Clinton, he said plainly and simple, “Hillary Wanted a wall, but as you know she can’t get anything done” to which her response was “ I voted for border security” and then she went on to change the conversation to what Trump said about immigrants or shall we say, she said Trump was bashing immigrants, If anyone goes back to read the “Secure Fence ACT of 2006″, and who voted for it, they will find out that their beloved democrats wanted that wall, funny how they changed because Trump wanted the same thing. Here are some democrats who were for the wall as well,
- Senator Barack Obama
- Senator Hillary Clinton
- Senator Joe Biden
- Senator Dianne Feinstein
- Chuck Schumer.
Barack Obama said in a speech on September 21, 2006, 2 years before he became president, that building the wall will certainly do some good. Of course, how could I leave out Joe Biden, he said in a town hall meeting that “ I voted for a fence” I voted for 700 miles of fence. People are crossing the border with tons of cocaine to heroin to methamphetamine” doesn’t he sound a lot like Trump????
In the information age, we should be careful not to buy into sensationalism!!!
