Coard: Indian-hating MAGA hat-wearing students are racist

(By the way, I used the term “Indian” in my title because it’s a common and recognizable term. However, it’s incorrect. In fact, the only reason the indigenous people in this country are erroneously called “Indian” is Christopher Columbus in 1492 had sailed west from Europe while thinking he had sailed east and upon arrival mistakenly thought he was in India. As a result, he arrogantly imposed the “Indian” name on the inhabitants. But the correct name is Ongweoweh.)

Donald Trump describes Andrew Jackson — who loved to be called by his nickname “Indian Killer” — as his all-time favorite president. But that’s no surprise since Jackson as an Army Major General was a genocidal monster responsible for the slaughter of approximately 30,000-50,000 Red men, women, and children. He later became president and signed the horrific Indian Removal Act of 1830 that robbed the indigenous people of 25 million acres of fertile land and doomed them and their descendants to reservation ghettos.

Trump also placed a framed portrait of Jackson inside the Oval Office. Furthermore, he reversed President Barack Obama’s official decision allowing the Mashpee Wampanoag Nation (whose members in the 17th century were the first to greet the Pilgrims) to have complete autonomy as sovereigns over its land in Massachusetts.

You want proof that these Lil Trumps are as racist as Big Trump? Here are five irrefutable facts:

1. A racist is what a racist does. (Part One)

Sandmann confronted Phillips. Phillips didn’t confront Sandmann. By the way, apologists for Sandmann and his cavalry need to understand that “confront” doesn’t mean approach. I mention that because they claim Phillips actually approached the students. So what? Does anybody really think this quietly chanting 61-year-old man approached them all by himself to intimidate them, to mock them, to demean them, and to smirk in their faces?

Although he did approach them, he did so in a humble attempt to diffuse a volatile situation they were involved in with a group unrelated to him (a group, parenthetically, that did not force them in any way whatsoever to treat him with such palpable disrespect and malicious intimidation).

While he did approach them and did so for good reasons, they “confronted” him for bad reasons. Incidentally, Merriam-Webster Dictionary defines “confront” as follows: “to face, especially to challenge or oppose.” They challenged him and opposed him by intimidating him with their enclosing and loud physical presence, by mocking him with their offensive “Tomahawk chop,” by demeaning him with their insulting “woo-woo-woo” war chants, and by having Sandmann get all up in his face with that creepy nonstop dumb-assed smirk.

2. A racist is what a racist does. (Part Two)

Although not all MAGA hat-wearers are KKK members, all KKK members wear MAGA hats. If you think that’s hyperbole, consider this. David Duke, former head of the KKK, endorsed Trump for president. So did neo-Nazi leader Andrew Anglin of The Daily Stormer. So did white supremacist spokesman Richard Spencer.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Trump — the man who defended Nazis as “very fine people” — also defended the teens by tweeting that they had “become student symbols of Fake News and how evil it can be.” He also invited them to be his personal guests at the White House.

3. Great must mean evil.

Since the Covington students attend one of Kentucky’s most academically proficient parochial high schools (despite wearing full body minstrel blackface to taunt African-American players from competing high school basketball teams), they surely know that because America was never great in the first place, it logically can’t be great again, meaning a second time.

At this country’s birth in 1776 and up to the 13th Amendment in 1865, it enslaved millions of Black men women and children (in addition to continuing its slaughter of Red men, women, and children and the robbery of their land).

From 1865 until the much-needed Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the much-need Voting Rights Act of 1965, it passed Black Codes throughout the South to return Blacks to a slave-like condition, implemented draconian convict leasing policies, established financially exploitative sharecropping scams, inflicted brutal violence during the reactionary Redemption Era to overthrow the progressive Reconstruction Era, stole Arizona, California, Colorado, New Mexico, Texas, and Utah from Mexico, and created Jim Crow.

From 1965 until 2019, it kept schools segregated, increased “stop & frisk,” expanded mass incarceration, systemically exonerated cops seen on video murdering unarmed Blacks, and elected a president who in 1973 was sued by the federal government for housing discrimination, who in 1989 published a full-page ad seeking the death penalty for the innocent Central Park Five children, who in 2011 led the “birthers” by lying about President Obama being a foreigner, who in 2016 said Mexicans are rapists, and who in 2018 called African nations “s—hole countries.”

4. Jedi Mind Trick.

Every single angle of every single video of the entire January 18 incident clearly shows the Lil Trumps to be the bad guys and Phillips to be the good guy. I don’t care how much Sandmann’s wealthy parents, his high-priced public relations team, and influential politicians try to spin it.

His parents hired RunSwitch PR, a major public relations firm, that wrote a three page letter for him to rehearse and read to the media. They also received the support of Thomas Massie, a powerful Kentucky State Representative who commended Sandmann for his “composure” while confronting Phillips. And then they got their son a gaslighting TV show appearance on a major news network to repeat the PR firm’s well-crafted talking points. All that for a so-called innocent kid? In a dispute with a so-called guilty old man? Who does that?

5. Hate is never having to say you’re sorry.

Believe it or not, the Diocese of Covington on January 25 issued an apology to Sandmann. That’s right. I said Sandmann. I didn’t say Phillips. The apology to Sandmann from Covington Bishop Robert Foys states, “I especially apologize to Nicholas Sandmann … who … [has] felt abandoned during this ordeal.” What? Whoa! Wow!

A few days earlier, when Sandmann was asked during that TV interview if he, as a child, should apologize to an elder who was serving as peacemaker, who was being confronted, who was being ridiculed, and who was being smirked at, Sandmann unemotionally responded, “I can’t say I’m sorry for ‘listening’ to … [Phillips] and standing there.”

And I can’t say what I’m really thinking about Sandmann and how to deal with him because The Tribune would fire me and the police would arrest me.