OPINION: Ya’ll Tripping: Maxine Waters and the “Angry Auntie” antics are EXACTLY what we need to fight Donald Trump
Race isn't the problem, racism is!
This week some of ya’ll have lost your damn minds and turned your backs on Maxine Waters, our patron saint of side-eyes, social justice, and snatching the wigs off all things including the one on Donald Trump’s head.
I am here to tell you very respectfully: cut that ish out. Right now.
This past weekend, after White House press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders was asked to leave a restaurant by its owner because of her association with the Trump administration and her role as the President’s official mouthpiece. Rep. Maxine Waters addressed that incident during a rally protesting the Trump Administration’s policy of separating migrant families crossing the border.
“Let’s make sure we show up, wherever we have to show up,” she told attendees in Los Angeles. “If you see anybody from that cabinet in a restaurant, in a department store, at a gasoline station, you get out and you cause a crowd, and you push back on them, and you tell them they’re not welcome – anymore, anywhere – we’ve got to get the children connected to their parents, the children are suffering.”
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https://twitter.com/RealSaavedra/status/1010981944056664064?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fthegrio.com%2F2018%2F06%2F25%2Fmaxine-waters-americans-should-confront-trumps-cabinet-members%2F
Now, I don’t know what MAGA edition of the constitution everybody else seems to be reading, but in the version I was forced to learn in school, the First Amendment says that there is legally nothing wrong with what Waters said.
Auntie Maxine told us to tell our elected officials who support oppressive, bigoted, and inhumane policies that they are not welcome. Meanwhile President Trump supported and enforced the policy that continues to keep children of color in cages like rabid dogs.
And ya’ll think she crossed the line?
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If this is Earth as we know it, someone needs to get me a ticket to Mars because the world has just officially stopped making the last semblance of any sense.
Why are we acting like telling people they aren’t welcome isn’t as American as apple pie and baseball?
White people tell us we’re not welcome all the time; to our faces, at barbecues in public parks, at public pools, outside of stores, at Starbucks, taking a nap on a college campus or generally just while breathing.
They shout “YOU’RE NOT WELCOME N***ER” from pick up trucks in the south and on buses in New York City. They imply it as they grab their purses and cross the street, or hold up an #AllLivesMatter signs at rallies because just the visual of the word “Black” makes them see red.
We are very violently, “not welcome” simply for the color of our skin, the kink of our hair, the breadth of our noses and the fullness of our lips. We lose jobs for looking too “ethnic,” speaking too “urban,” or dressing like a “thug.” They’ll use codes words in public to call us the N-word so as to not take on the added burden of being called out as a genuine American made racist.
In the midst of all that, this fly ass, 80 year old Black goddess of a women with a spine strong enough to hold up the Empire State Building, stands before a crowd mourning the mistreatment of children. There she reminds us that it’s time WE tell crooked, oppressive and problematic politicians that they are the ones who are no longer welcome… and ya’ll really have a problem with that?
You have got to be kidding me.
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When it comes to issues of social justice or politics, this weak as water, turncoat mentality is exactly why I’m hesitant to mess with you “I don’t see race” ninjas to begin with.
Not seeing race may sound like a cute thing to say while you’re standing in line at Whole Foods, but in practice, it often leaves people of color feeling invisible.
Race isn’t the problem geniuses, racism is!
Some of you want so badly to appeal to the white gaze that you have distanced yourself from the stereotype of the radical Black activist who needs a therapist more than a picket line, run clear to the extreme other side and ended up standing outside of Ben Carson‘s house asking for directions.
To put it bluntly, I refuse to let ya’lls Drake-like emotions slow down the revolution and stand very staunchly with Auntie Maxine Waters.
Full stop.
She’s fighting for freedom during a time of her life when most elders would be sunbathing in Florida and eating hard candy in the shade. She’s trying to create a better world she may not even get to see, but that our grandchildren’s grandchildren will truthfully enjoy.
Are you ungrateful bammas really about to sit here and pull away from her just because she had a little bass in her voice and (much more eloquently) said something that you watch white men say all the time without even flinching?
I’mma have to pass on jumping on this particular bandwagon.
Donald Trump may be alarmingly blasé about the likes of Kim Jong-un, but even he is rocked by the ferocity of Maxine Waters. If that doesn’t tell you you’re on the wrong side of history, I don’t know what will.
Congresswoman Maxine Waters, an extraordinarily low IQ person, has become, together with Nancy Pelosi, the Face of the Democrat Party. She has just called for harm to supporters, of which there are many, of the Make America Great Again movement. Be careful what you wish for Max!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) June 25, 2018
The greatest irony is if her efforts work, many of her fair-weather supporters will be the first ones in line shouting, “Yaaaaas. Auntie did that.”
Have we not learned by now to listen to Black women?
Did the polling data in several recent elections not already illustrate to you how collectively unstoppable we are when it comes to shouldering movements others are afraid to take on?
We’ve all heard that old saying, “When a women’s fed up, there ain’t nothing you can do about it.”
And the only thing more formidable than a fed up woman, is an older, fed up Black woman who stopped giving a damn about your feelings a long time ago.
Maxine Waters is #BlackElderMagic in full flight. Put some respect on her name. Period.
PS – For those of you who don’t understand the difference between Auntie Maxine asking you to figuratively “push back” and tell your local representatives how you feel about their dehumanizing polices, versus Donald Trump telling his goons to literally attack minorities from a place of hatred… below is a video of her reading a list of times Trump has called for violence.
Stop falling for fake news fam. It serves no one.
WATCH: Maxine Waters reads list of times Trump has called for violence https://t.co/0vxEB7wwX9 pic.twitter.com/NrqwoqDz6Y
— The Hill (@thehill) June 26, 2018
Follow writer Blue Telusma on Instagram at @bluecentric
