His words were clearly meant to voice his frustration, though he didn’t take a position or address his social media comment to anyone in particular. A young man I know — now old enough to vote — turned to Facebook this week to make a point, a good point that he seemed to feel strongly about. At a time when there are so many important issues that need attention — climate change among them — he wanted to know why in the world everyone is making such a big deal out of a stupid tweet?
It’s a fair question and one that’s crossed my mind countless times about many tweets over the past few years. It’s just a stupid tweet. Who cares?
But, you see, it’s not just a stupid tweet when it morphs into something more. Within days, this particular stupid tweet led to a stupid chant that reinforces a historical mindset that somehow, some of us are less American than “real Americans” — this time because we’re criticizing and questioning our leaders. Ironically, criticizing and questioning our leaders is as about American as it gets, seeing how people in other countries can be jailed or killed for it.
Is it just a stupid tweet when it carries racial undertones that have ugly roots in this nation for people of color? Or is it something that’s inappropriate for the president to say, demeans the office and should be called out as such?
Years ago, during a heated argument with a former neighbor, she screamed at me to “Go the fuck back to Mexico where you belong, you dirty wetback.” Forget that I was born in this country, as were both of my parents. Forget that I’ve never lived in Mexico and that my Spanish wouldn’t get me very far. In her mind, I somehow didn’t belong in the U.S. because of my skin color or heritage or even just my last name. She, on the other hand, did belong because, well… you get it, right?
I laughed at her ignorance but her words stuck with me because they forced me to recognize that this was a deeply-rooted mindset within her and that it was quick to rear its ugly head in a moment of anger. I can’t help but wonder how many others out there have that same deeply-rooted mindset or how many proudly wear it on their sleeves. How many are willing to say it loud and act on it?
Maybe it’s more than just a stupid tweet when it’s actually a series of tweets, as well as public statements, that reinforce a mindset about the leader of the free world. His tweets say a lot about his temperament, his intelligence and his vulnerabilities. Certainly, this most recent tweet doesn’t tell us anything new about him. He’s not hard to figure out. He’s been sounding off on Twitter and in public statements for years, long before he ran for President. The video footage, the newspaper headlines and the testimonials by people who have done business with him tell us everything we need to know about him.
The problem is that he’s no longer just a loudmouth rich guy from New York. As the president, he’s trying to turn the U.S. into a racist nation and silence his critics along the way — from the cries of fake news to the insistence that people who don’t agree with him should go back where they came from.
Sure, his words are numbing and the crap that he spews is always just more of the same. But once we start ignoring the tweets, we’re essentially saying that we’re OK with them. When no one challenges the racist speech, it begins to seep back into everyday conversations — and we as a civilized nation find ourselves backtracking to an uglier time in our history. When these words and phrases are allowed to be re-baked back into our debates and arguments and encounters with one another, you end up with strangers confronting each other about the languages they’re speaking or the police being called because others are minding their own business and not breaking any laws.
So, even though it is just a stupid tweet and there are absolutely other arguments that we should be having, we cannot just sit back and turn a blind eye to any of it. That’s part of the challenge of newsrooms across the country — and around the world for that matter. No one cared when it was just some loudmouthed business guy sounding off. But now it’s the president, whose words are supposed to matter — because they can impact lives. It’s unfortunate that the current officeholder doesn’t understand that.
Knowing what we know about the ugly chapters of our own history, we cannot allow the words and the hate and the racist sentiment to become normalized. We cannot allow ourselves to be manipulated and divided over the words of a man who’s only concerned about his own personal (and political) interests. We cannot allow a dangerous tweet to spread its hate and racism into normal conversation.
If we do, then we’ll never be able to find ways to work together to solve the bigger issues facing the world — issues like climate change.
