History repeats itself
For four years, hatred has permeated the United States and it just may take four years to rid this country of this hate. For four years, white supremacy, anti-Semitism, and hate speech was given a global platform through the office of the President of the United States. The United States of America became a Divided States of America.
President Joe Biden has been sworn in as President and Vice President Kamala Harris has been sworn as Vice President. The White House administration reflects that of the demographic of the United States of America, from African American, to South Asian, to female, etc. by far, the most diverse administration since 2016. This comes only weeks after the infamous siege of the Capitol. Of course, not all is well. In fact, it is far from it.
To reach a point where diversity has ascended to the highest office in the country suggests that the permeated hatred has only subdued. Take for example, the saga of the Ku Klux Klan. The Ku Klux Klan reached an apex of high regard and membership one hundred years ago during the 1920’s. Joshua Rothman, in his 2016 article for The Atlantic, “When Bigotry Paraded The Streets”, writes, “the Klan was easily at its most popular in the United States during the 1920’s, when its reach was nationwide, its members disproportionately middle class, and many of its very visible public activities geared toward festivities, pageants, and social gatherings…packaging its noxious ideology as traditional small-town values and wholesome fun, the Klan of the 1920’s encouraged native-born white Americans to believe that bigotry, intimidation, harassment, and extralegal violence were all perfectly compatible with, if not central to, patriotic respectability.”
Flash forward to one hundred years later, and the storm of the Capitol was done in the same vein of pomp and circumstance. Millions of white Americans who felt it was their patriotic duty to resort to violence as a means to take back “their America.” Only this time, history could not erase or rewrite this chapter. With the presence of social media and news outlets, history not only has been repeated and perpetuated but has been transformed before America’s very eyes.
This has happened before. America has been here before. Just because the impossible has been made does not mean America is the land of equality and equity. Fear, hatred, and ignorance permeates the land of the free and the home of the brave. Antiquated rhetoric of white elitism disguised as political propaganda are slowly making their way into the textbooks, films, and media sources of the American people.
