This essay addresses the question that is swirling around America today. What’s it all about, Alfie? Why are we losing 4,000 Americans per day due to COVID-19? Why has Trump been impeached twice in just over a year? Why was the Capitol invaded by Trump supporters? Why hasn’t the Republican Party condemned it. Even more to the point, why didn’t more Republican members of Congress address the attempted coup d'état? What’s with Pence not calling Trump out? Besides, some of the mob wanted to kill Pence.

George Santayana said, “Those who cannot remember the past, are condemned to repeat it.” Well, many of those that can’t remember the past can’t grasp the past. This is a teaching moment.

Let us learn from the past. Racism began in 1619 with the arrival of more than twenty slaves from Africa to the Virginia Colony on the Dutch ship, White Lion. By the end of the Civil War, nearly 400,000 Africans slaves had been brought to America.

The Civil War, which ended slavery, resulted in 750,000 Americans death. While the North won the war, the South won the peace, which meant segregation, Jim Crow laws, and thousands of lynching and murders of blacks in the South.

In spite of this horrific legacy, America is slowly, very slowly, attempting to resolve the sins of our past. In the mid-1950s, five women, Claudette Colvin, Aurelia Browder, Mary Louise Smith, Susie McDonald, and Rosa Parks, were arrested for not giving up their seat to whites on buses in Montgomery, AL.

The arrests in 1955 in Montgomery began the civil rights movement. However, whites didn’t join in the protest marches until the early 60s. Finally, some whites began to understand some of the issues that blacks had to face for four centuries.

It was President Lyndon Johnson that started to address segregation with the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Martin Luther King, Jr., Whitney Young, and James Farmer discussed voting rights prior to the legislation.

Southern Democrats, also called Dixiecrats, were a major problem for Johnson getting Civil Rights Act passed in Congress. Nevertheless, LBJ was successful in overcoming Dixiecrats. However, as a result his pressure, he said to one of his aides, “We (meaning the Democrats) have lost the South for a generation.”

That was nearly six decades ago. We are slowly dealing with racism. Fortunately, we are moving. I wrote an essay about Rep. Jim Clyburn. He was the single most important person to get Joe Biden nominated as the Democrat candidate to run against Trump. He, along blacks especially in the South, made it possible for Biden to beat Trump.

Jim Clyburn

Blacks came to the rescue of white Americans who want to restore America’s place as a “city upon a hill.” However, blacks didn’t stop there. On January 6th, Georgia’s Senatorial run-off election went to Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff who both beat their two Republican incumbents. They both received the huge black vote in and around Atlanta.

Trump claims that he was beaten in the presidential election due to fraud in Georgia. To make matter worse, one of the two new Senators is black. Trump claims that the runoff election was also rigged.

In the early afternoon of January 6th, Trump spoke to thousands in a long and rambling speech about the rigged election. He also suggested that they walk down Pennsylvania Avenue….

Thousand went down to the Capitol…and broke into the People’s House.

This is a white supremacist.

Interestingly, a black Capitol Police officer realizes that the door was open to the Senate Chamber. In a clever move, he lures the white mob in the opposite direction. The rioters saw a black cop and followed him. A black cop was concerned about protecting white Senators and staff members that he put his life in peril to do his duty.

Officer Goodman is a good man…. He is more than merely a good man. He is an excellent man. There are a lot of white Senators and their aides that are alive today because of an excellent American.

America thanks you, Officer Goodman.

America was founded on racism, and we are facing white supremacists. Call them a mob, rioters, Trump supporters, ad nauseam. Nonetheless, they are white supremacists and clones of Trump. They along with Trump are losers.

What’s it all about, Alfie? It is a clear choice. Either it is about white supremacy or equality.