In an op-ed for TIME magazine discussing Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan, PBS host Tavis Smiley writes that he fears black people could once again be enslaved in America.
From TIME magazine:
In my lifetime, I have never seen Congress so blatantly mock our Constitution. It’s especially striking that it comes from the political party that’s always lecturing us about the “rule of law”. What’s worse is that they’re getting away with it. Republicans have turned this Constitutional issue into a political football and suckered the White House, Democrats in Congress and the news media into playing the game by their rules. This is a travesty of justice, but it has all but disappeared as a news story.
I wonder what other Constitutional mandates Congress could just decide to ignore. Is it possible that the White House, the opposition party in Congress and the news media could be cowardly complacent, too frozen by fear to actually do anything to stop their overreach? They haven’t in this situation. It’s all “politics,” they say. Sound familiar? That’s exactly what we said when Trump’s campaign was just a joke. He won once. And could win again.
So, could the Constitution be thwarted and black folk end up enslaved again? Legal scholars, of course, will find the question ludicrous and laughable.
It wasn’t farfetched for the young student who pressed me at Lehigh that evening. And, honestly? With the hair-raising, bone-chilling, spine-breaking, nerve-wracking path we’re on right now, I shudder to think where this democracy could end up one sad day, if we don’t get off this low road and make our way to higher ground soon.
Read the rest here.