By Shahmar Beasley
It might strike some as odd that I, a 21-year-old-Black man, am grateful for President Donald Trump. After all, I was raised in a lower socioeconomic environment, I am a liberal, and every single one of my family members despises him. But not I, I see an unbelievable value in our president that he isn’t even able to see in himself. I see a man who could dramatically better race relations than anyone else by his mere presence.
For you see, Trump causes cognitive dissonance for most White folks. Here you have a man who is white in every meaning of the word, yet simultaneously fits every nonsensical, negative stereotype about Black men that one has been taught since childhood. He has had multiple “baby mamas.” He is hyper-aggressive, even to the point where he almost struck a protestor at one of his campaign rallies. He is hyper-sexual and has been on camera many a time bragging about his plethora of sexual escapades with women. He is too immature to properly handle criticism. He is so physically and socially uncouth that it is upsetting to various groups of people. Not to mention he is so far from an intellect that he almost always appears incompetent from his various incoherent rants. This is nonetheless the man who, for many, was the “Great White Hope” and the type of man that many expected former President Barack Obama to be.
Interesting enough, Barack Obama didn’t fit any of these stereotypes that people have come to know as “Black traits.” As President, he stood as another impetus of cognitive dissonance that one can only hope is perpetual. President Barack Obama, before even entering the White House, was strongly critiqued as being inadequate to be the leader of the free world. As is now 100 percent obvious, for hindsight is 20/20, said doubts were wholly racially charged. President Barack Obama was openly mocked for his vernacular, was said to have been entering the “White Heezy” by conservatives, and was even accused of having a “terrorist fist-bump” with his wife. Nonetheless, the President persevered and showed the world the skill and ability of a Black man. He was cunning, quick witted, and an absolutely stunning intellectual. It was wild — almost as if his skin color was not at all an indicator of his ability or his behavior (as we knew all along).
It is from the very bottom of my heart that I want to fully thank both of these men for who they are. For without this strong contrast between the racial expectations and the reality, people would still be grounded in their nonsensical way of thinking. But it is after Barack Obama’s legacy and the unsettling new reign of Donald Trump that we as a society should recognize the most basic of human truths that has existed for eons: Skin color is not an indicator of anything but people’s response to it. And so it is time that we move past these archaic, asinine racial stereotypes and respond to each other as the fellow loving, caring human beings we are. For the only race that is the most intelligent, the most generous, and the most beneficial to the world is the human race.
Shahmar Beasley is a Black 21-year-old political science student at Drexel University. He has founded the Drexel Black Action Committee, Drexel Rotaract club, serves as the president of the Drexel College Democrats and is the youngest ambassador to State Representative Margo Davidson of the 164th Legislative District.
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