The Making of A Great America Uprooting the Spirit of Racism

This is an excerpt from the chapter entitled "Renew Your Mind": 

Governor Wallace modestly refers to Southerners as “the greatest people that have ever trod this earth.” He finds a way to credit Southerners for drafting the Constitution, the Bill of Rights, and championing America’s principles of freedom. Conversely, he finds a way throughout his speech to tie anything against the South back to the “Communists.”

President Trump almost interchangeably repeats all the same themes. He equates the heritage of the South with “everything we hold dear as Americans.” Just as Governor Wallace tried to claim that the South was part of what made America great, President Trump links the South’s “history and culture” to “our great country.” With great emotion, Wallace uses the words “tyranny,” “persecute,” “footballed about,” “twisted and distorted,” “set upon,” “denied” to describe what is happening to the Southern way of life. With similar emotion, the president uses the words “vandalize,” “desecrate,” “tear down,” “punish,” “cancel,” “persecute,” “demolish,” “impose,” and “ripped apart” to defend the same cherished “heritage” of the South. The president also calls taking down these symbols “sad” and “foolish.”

It’s as if 50 or 60 years would cause us to forget what the South’s “heritage” was all about—preserving a separate station or set of freedoms for blacks. George Wallace made it clear what that heritage was about. He even goes on to say that these separate categories of freedom and stations were what the Founding Fathers envisioned. He backs that up with an assertion that from his viewpoint seemed irrefutable—the Founding Fathers were Southerners. He implies that since they were Southerners that a segregated America vs. a “mongrel” America is what they wanted.

Wallace attributes three things to this vision of America not coming to pass: losing “the great War/damage inflicted upon the South, the international colored majority/Afro-Asian bloc, and the communists.”

President Trump's remarks mirror Wallace here as well. In place of the communists, the president used today’s term for communists, “the left.” Just who makes up the president’s “unhinged left-wing mob?” Who is the “they” that wants “to demolish our heritage” and “tear down our statues” and “everything we hold dear as Americans?” George Wallace already answered it. George Wallace said that the “our/we/Americans” was the white minority and that the “they,” the communists, were the “liberals” that seek to persecute the white minority.” He said the “they” was the “colored majority” that was footballing them “about,” the “Afro-Asian bloc,” the group of non-colored people. President Trump is implying the same thing. It’s no secret that the loudest voices in favor of removing the confederate symbols are people of color. People in the Afro/Asian/Latin bloc.