Over fifty years ago Fannie Lou Hamer described with powerful
eloquence the emotional state of African Americans. Two hundred and forty years
ago, the U. S. Constitution declared us to be three-fifths human; and, even
today, we keep on being sick and tired of being sick and tired.
The moneyed white men who founded America generated
incredible wealth through the trans-Atlantic slave trade and the genocide of
the First Nations people and the unconscionable plunder of their lands. For two
centuries there was a trickle down of some of this wealth to the majority white
population. About one generation ago, the trickle dried up, leaving the white
working classes empty handed. So, they have become sick and tired.
It took the white working class just one generation to
become sick and tired of being sick and tired. Donald Trump speaks to their
rage and holds out the promise of restoring the benefits of white privilege.
Starting in the early nineteenth century, the Monroe
Doctrine, Manifest Destiny, the Platt Amendment have made Latinos sick and
tired. So Latinos have been sick and tired of being sick and tired from at
least as far back as the Alamo. Of course, African Americans have been sick and
tired of being sick and tired for nearly four centuries.
Latinos and African Americans can trump Trumpism tomorrow.
This is the only way that the nation will finally begin to address the
fundamental problems that have made the majority of its citizens sick and tired
of being sick and tired.
