Ivanka Trump’s Black History Month tweet is a slap in the face to Black History Month
Perhaps she should direct message her dad with the tweet
Ivanka Trump's Black History Month tweet does not align with her father's policy decisions
Late Thursday evening, spawn of President Cheeto Ivanka Trump posted a tweet in celebration of Black History Month. She name-dropped Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., all of whom her dad probably thinks are still alive and plotting against him at the NAACP chapter in Annapolis, Md. right now.
Ivanka is merely an advisor to her father, so I tried to take an objective lens to her tweet and assume that maybe she genuinely wanted to acknowledge the month on her private Twitter account. She started out strong in her tweet before she shat the bed and reminded me that we should probably throw the whole damn family in the bin for next Tuesday’s recycling pickup.
She writes, “we resolve to continue to bring greater equality, dignity, and opportunity to all Americans, regardless of race or background.” To which I ask, what is this “we” shit? Certainly not “we” as in the Trump administration, which is currently dad-bod-deep in the middle of an ongoing, and heartbreaking, controversy about the handling of undocumented immigrants and their children.
Not to mention our president is still at the top of most melanated human beings’ shit list for allegedly calling underdeveloped black and brown countries “shitholes” less than a month ago, which is just the latest in a dreadfully long line of racist comments he’s made dating back to the embryonic days of his presidential campaign. If the “shithole” comment really was a bridge too far for you, you’ve either been hanging out in one of Michael Jackson’s old hyperbaric chambers these past couple years or someone backed over your moral compass with a Mack truck.
During #BlackHistoryMonth, we celebrate heroes like Harriet Tubman, Rosa Parks, and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. who were sojourners for freedom – and we resolve to continue to bring greater equality, dignity, and opportunity to all Americans, regardless of race or background.
— Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) February 1, 2018
There’s also the end of her sentence: “all Americans, regardless of race or background.” Clearly, she’s using the term “American” loosely, considering the president is willing to throw an asterisk on your American status if you’re brown and your first language isn’t English. Or if you dare to routinely drop to your knees to pray to the East.
Can we not have 28 measly-ass days out of any given year to shine a spotlight on our unique history and attendant struggles, without Ivanka #AllLivesMattering the shit out of the whole thing? It’s the equivalent of using #MeToo to suggest that we need to protect the fat white dudes responsible for camera and lighting from all of Hollywood’s powerful sexual predators.
There’s also the disconnect of seeing the little Black fists that the #BlackHistoryMonth tag generates on a tweet from a woman who’s so Master Race-level white that her own father has creepily noted that he would probably date her if she wasn’t his daughter. But that’s just how Twitter codes, so whatever. I’m surprised Ben Carson hasn’t penned a #BlackHistoryMonth tweet under Donald’s account yet, but keeping his eyes open to type out 140 characters might be a struggle.
In reality, there’s no way that any member of the Trump family will ever be able to tweet anything from the heart and expect anything less than hatred – these fools could live-blog the cure for cancer and we wouldn’t have it. But I was willing to give Ivanka the benefit of the doubt, and she ruined it within 20 words. That’s what I get for not listening to mama and trusting these white women. At least this time I don’t need a cream to fix it – I can just close my browser.
Dustin J. Seibert is a native Detroiter living in Chicago. Miraculously, people have paid him to be aggressively light-skinned via a computer keyboard for nearly two decades. He loves his own mama slightly more than he loves music and exercises every day only so his French fry intake doesn’t catch up to him. Find him at his own site, wafflecolored.com.