SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED

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.