Your president, Donald Trump, allegedly made a few unsavory (read: racist) comments regarding Haiti, African countries and pretty much any immigrant of color, calling their home countries “shithole countries.”
While many people were shocked by his blatant racism, there are more of us who already knew of his racism. And, even further, there are people like The Root 100 honoree and CNN political commentator Symone Sanders, who knows without a doubt that this isn’t the first racist president.
With that discouraging truth and 45’s problematic opinion, I asked Sanders (whom I call my personal political oracle) how we continue to move forward. She said that in order for us to make any change, we have to be bold and revolutionary, the same way Haitians were during the Haitian Revolution. When they revolted, they were punished by the Europeans, and even the United States, but they revolted.
During Blackout for Human Right’s MLK Now event at Harlem’s historic Riverside Church, Sanders explained: “We have to realize, the work that has to be done is bigger than the president is, and in my opinion, it’s bigger than the institutions. We need bold, radical revolutionaries.”
Revolutionaries like the ones who revolted in Haiti, or Fannie Lou Hamer, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. or Malcolm X.
It’s been 50 years since King’s assassination, and I asked Sanders if we were closer to or further from King’s dream. She said: “Dr. King’s dream was not just racial equality. He died, they took him out, when he was talking about economic inequality, when he was talking about the war, when he was talking about militarism. He became dangerous when he started uniting all of these movements.”
Sanders continued: “Today in America, the gap between the wealthiest and poorest people in the country is the biggest it’s ever been in our history ever. Dr. King was fighting for economic justice—poor white people, poor Latino folks, poor Native Americans, poor black people ... we have yet to achieve the dream. I think where we are in the dream, we are on our way to achieving the dream.”
Check out the video above to hear the amazing Symone Sanders wax poetic about racist presidents and black America’s future.